Caitlyn Collins

Associate Professor of Sociology, Washington University in St. Louis

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About Caitlyn

Collins conducts cross-national qualitative research on gender inequality in the workplace and family life. She is broadly interested in the relationship between policy; culture; and social inequality. Her first book is Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving (2019; Princeton University Press). Outside academia; she has written for public audiences in The Atlantic; Slate; Harvard Business Review; and The New York Times.

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

The Public and Private Logics of Child Care in Germany and the United States

Basic Facts Brief, July 2017

No Jargon Podcast

Episode 174:
Making Motherhood Work

May 2019

In the News

Research discussed by Aisha Sultan, in "America is not for mothers," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 10, 2019.

Guest on HBR IdeaCast, March 26, 2019.

Opinion: "The Real Mommy War Is Against the State," Caitlyn Collins, The New York Times, February 9, 2019.

Opinion: "In Germany, Parents Can Sue the Government for Failing to Provide Child Care," Caitlyn Collins, The Atlantic, January 10, 2017.

Quoted by Emily L. Hauser in "Of Course Hillary Clinton Went to Work Sick. That’s the American Way," The Washington Post, September 15, 2016.

Research discussed by Cara Birnbaum, in "Is Work-Life Balance for Moms Total BS?," Parents, August 1, 2016.

Guest on Writing on the Air, October 11, 2015.

Publications

"Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving" (Princeton University Press, 2019).

A moving, cross-national account of working mothers’ daily lives—and the revolution in public policy and culture needed to improve them.

"Effects of Work-Family Policies on Parenthood and Wellbeing" (with Jennifer Glass), in Handbook of Child and Family Policy, edited by Guðný Björk Eydal and Tine Rostgaard (Edward Elgar, forthcoming).

Discusses how state-provided public policies supporting families help reduce the gap in wellbeing between parents and non-parents across industrialized countries.

"A Proposal for Public Sociology as Localized Intervention and Collective Enterprise: The Makings and Impact of 'Invisible in Austin'" (with Katherine Jensen and Javier Auyero). Qualitative Sociology 40, no. 2 (2017): 191-214.

Discusses how scholars can intervene effectively and widely in the local public sphere with their research.

"Altruistic Agencies and Compassionate Consumers: Moral Framing of Transnational Surrogacy" (with Sharmila Rudrappa). Gender & Society 29, no. 6 (2015): 937-959.

Documents the ways in which transnational surrogacy in India persists and thrives despite its common portrayal as the “rent-a-womb industry” and “baby factory.”

"The Difference between a Cocktail Waitress and a Stripper? Two Weeks" in Invisible in Austin: Life and Labor in an American City, edited by Javier Auyero (University of Texas Press, 2015), 115-137.

Details the life of a 23-year-old woman working to survive in Austin, Texas as a waitress and exotic dancer, and presses readers to consider issues of coercion and consent for women in service sector work.

"Higher-Status Occupations and Breast Cancer: A Life-Course Stress Approach" (with Tetyana Pudrovska, Deborah Carr, and Michael McFarland). Social Science & Medicine 89 (2013): 53-61.

Shows how women in higher-status occupations who exercise authority on the job have a higher risk of receiving a breast cancer diagnosis than housewives and women in lower-status occupations. This suggests that there are negative health consequences to gender inequality in workplaces.