Belinda Hewitt
Biographic Data
| ID | 88425 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Belinda Hewitt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Belinda |
| FAMILY NAME | Hewitt |
| SIGNATURE | HEWITT B |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2525-8708 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 442 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Family relationships of young people with disability from young people’s perspective
Family relationships are critical sources of support for young people with disability as they transition to adulthood. However, limited research has examined the experiences of young people with disability, with most studies relying on proxy reports from parents or siblings. This scoping review explored relationships with parents and siblings from the perspectives of young people with disability, drawing on nineteen studies identified through six…
Perspectives on the future
The work-family interface is in constant flux and faced with numerous future challenges. Yet much work-family scholarship problematizes current work-family issues or analyses past experiences with little detailed consideration of the risks and opportunities individuals are likely to encounter in the future. This perspective is needed to challenge and extend current work-family scholarship to how external developments are likely to affect the ways…
Health and well-being in cohabitation versus marriage
We investigated the similarities and differences in health and well-being for individuals in cohabiting relationships compared to marriage, enriching the extant literature by differentiating cohabitants with the intention to marry from those with no intention to marry. We used 18 waves of panel data from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey (n = 2820) and fixed-effects models to examine within-individual difference…
Collaborating With Young People
Characteristics of geographic environments that support the health and wellbeing of young people with disability
This scoping review characterised the existing evidence around the key characteristics of geographic environments that support (or hinder) the health and wellbeing of young people with disability, and identified several important gaps and opportunities for future research. This includes developing a better understanding of the place-based experiences, geographic scales, and environmental exposures that are most relevant for young people with disa…
The gendered associations between precarious employment and mental health in working-age Australians
Trajectories of Unpaid Labour and the Probability of Employment Precarity and Labour Force Detachment Among Prime Working-Age Australian Women
Worldwide, women are over-represented in precarious and insecure employment arrangements. Importantly, the high unpaid labour demands women experience over the life course compromise paid labour force participation for women. This study explores the way different trajectories of time spent in unpaid labour throughout women's prime working and child-rearing years (from baseline age of 25-35 yrs to 42-52 yrs) are associated with indicators of preca…
Restless sleep and emotional wellbeing among European full-time dual-earner couples
Role strain theory illuminates how work and family impinge on our intimate lives in gendered ways. Drawing upon data from the 2012 European Social Survey, we estimate structural equation models to understand the links between work and family conditions on full-time dual-earning couples’ restless sleep and emotional wellbeing. Our results show that young children (aged two or under) disrupt full-time working mothers’ but not full-time working fath…
Reciprocal relationships between time pressure and mental or physical health in Australian mothers of preschool aged children
The consequences of household composition and household change for Indigenous health
Households are important health contexts, providing social, emotional, financial and material support, but little is known about the role of household composition in the social etiology of Indigenous health. Our research is framed by an Indigenous standpoint, using eight waves of data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children. We investigated whether household composition and change in household composition were associated with the self-…
Parents' Sleep Across Weekdays and Weekends
Children increase time demands with important consequences for sleep. Here, we test whether parents' paid and unpaid time demands and the presence of young children equally reduce mothers' and fathers' sleep, comparing the married/cohabiting to unmarried. Applying data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS, 2003-2016), we find married/cohabiting mothers report less sleep when young children or multiple children are present; they are employed; t…
Life transitions and women's desired number of children
To better understand the gap between women’s childbearing aspirations and actual levels of childbearing, this paper investigates the importance of employment, relationship and motherhood transitions for predicting women’s desired number of children. Women born in 1973–78 participating in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health were asked, at three-time points over six years, how many children they would like to have by the age of 35 y…
Indigenous family life in Australia
Indigenous family life has been a key target of family and child policies in Australia since colonisation. In this paper, we identify four main policy eras that have shaped the national and state policy frameworks that have impacted Indigenous families: the protectionism, assimilation, self‐determination and neoliberalism eras. Our analysis of these national and state policy frameworks reveals an enduring and negative conceptualisation of Indigen…
Becoming a Female-Breadwinner Household in Australia
ObjectiveThis study longitudinally investigated the associations between becoming a female-breadwinner household and changes in relationship satisfaction for men and women.BackgroundFemale-breadwinner households pose a fundamental challenge to gender norms, particularly in countries such as Australia with a strong male breadwinner culture. Despite an increase in their prevalence, the implications for relationship satisfaction is understudied. Hyp…
Does part-time employment status really reduce time pressure
Part-time employment rates are increasing in Australia, for both women and men. However, gendered patterns in part-time employment status are typically associated with mothers', rather than fathers', transition to parenthood. This study uses data from the 2006 Negotiating the Life Course survey to investigate whether part-time employment reduces time pressure for women compared to men, when temporal job quality is considered. Our results show tha…
Discrimination at the Intersections
Researchers have established that both nonmonosexual, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) persons of Color face unique forms of alienation. However, little work has been undertaken to examine how these identities interface with one another. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with nonmonosexual persons of Color (n = 5) and nonmonosexual White persons (n = 5) residing in Melbourne, Australia to explore intersections of rac…
Do active modes of transport cause lower body mass index? Findings from the Habitat longitudinal study
BACKGROUND: Few studies have examined the causal relationship between transport mode and body mass index (BMI). METHODS: We examined between-person differences and within-person changes in BMI by transport mode over four time points between 2007 and 2013. Data were from the How Areas in Brisbane Influence HealTh and AcTivity project, a population-representative study of persons aged 40-65 in 2007 (baseline) residing in 200 neighbourhoods in Brisb…
Gender Equality and Restless Sleep Among Partnered Europeans
Sleep is situated in the work–family nexus and can be shaped by national norms promoting gender equality. The authors tested this proposition using individual data from the European Social Survey matched to a country‐level measure of gender equality. In individual‐level models, women's sleep was more troubled by the presence of children in the home and partners' unemployment, whereas men's restless sleep was associated with their own unemployment…
Contemporary fatherhood
Time pressures around work and care within families have increased over recent decades, exacerbated by an enduring male breadwinner culture in Australia and manifested in increasingly long work hours for fathers. We identified fathers who spent relatively long hours actively caring for children despite long work hours and we compared them with other fathers who did less work, less childcare, or less of both. Using 13 waves of the Household Income…
The benefits of paid maternity leave for mothers' post-partum health and wellbeing
Young Mothers’ Experiences of Receiving the Baby Bonus
The year 2014 marked the abolition of the Baby Bonus and its replacement with a substantially reduced parenting payment. While often criticised as “middle-class welfare,” or publicly denounced due to its purported misuse by disadvantaged mothers, this paper argues that the Baby Bonus provided valuable financial assistance to families experiencing high financial stress. To investigate young women's experience of receiving the Baby Bonus, 19 semist…
Young maternal age at first birth and mental health later in life
Digital socialization
This study investigates emerging differences among young people in their judgements about the benefits and risks of internet use. To ascertain how and why diverse values and practices emerge, and their implications for young people's careers and relationships, we examined influences on youth internet use over a five-year period between adolescence and early adulthood. Qualitative interviews were conducted with a subset of young Australians (n = 2…
The maternal health outcomes of paid maternity leave
Disagreements among cohabiting and married couples in 22 European countries
Cross-national research suggests that married people have higher levels of well-being than cohabiting people. However, relationship quality has both positive and negative dimensions. Researchers have paid little attention to disagreements within cohabiting
Life Course Transitions and Housework
We examine the effects of transitions in marital and parenthood status on 1,091 men's and women's housework hours using two waves of data from an Australian panel survey titled Negotiating the Life Course. We examine transitions between cohabitation and marriage, and from cohabitation or marriage to separation, as well as transitions to first and higher-order births. We find extraordinary stability in men's housework time across most transitions …
Labor and Love
We theorize how social policy affects marital stability vis-à-vis macro and micro effects of wives' employment on divorce risk in 11 Western countries. Correlations among 1990s aggregate data on marriage, divorce, and wives' employment rates, along with attitudinal and social policy information, seem to support specialization hypotheses that divorce rates are higher where more wives are employed and where policies support that employment. This is…
Who Uses Paid Domestic Labor in Australia? Choice and Constraint in Hiring Household Help
This paper investigates why some Australian households use paid help with domestic labor while others do not. Consistent with earlier studies, the analysis examines hypotheses relating to resources, objective demand, and gender attitudes. Additionally, this paper examines the impact of attitudes toward using paid domestic labor, an area that has not been investigated previously. The findings suggest that resources and objective demand provide the…
Pathways Into Marriage
Does time spent in a cohabiting relationship prior to marriage lead to more egalitarian housework arrangements after marriage? Previous research has shown that housework patterns within cohabiting relationships are more egalitarian than in marital relationships. But do these patterns remain when couples marry? The findings from previous studies are mixed. This article uses three waves of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Aust…
Who Decides? The Social Characteristics of Who Initiates Marital Separation
This study investigates gender differences in the associations between social characteristics and men's and women's reports of which spouse initiated marital separation. Using retrospective data on 9,147 first marriages from the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia survey (2001), we find that some social characteristics differentiated between separations initiated by wives compared to husbands, but few differences were statistically s…
Post-Familial Families and the Domestic Division of Labour
This paper examines independent living among elderly Brazilians age 65+ of different racial groups using 1980 and 2000 census microsamples. Although there was an overall increase in independent living among Brazilian elders, that increase mainly reflects change among Whites whereas there was little change among Browns or Blacks. Since Whites tend to have higher socioeconomic status than Browns or Blacks in Brazil, one might suppose that a racial …
Marital loss, mental health and the role of perceived social support
OBJECTIVES: To investigate the impact of transitions out of marriage (separation, widowhood) on the self reported mental health of men and women, and examine whether perceptions of social support play an intervening role. METHODS: The analysis used six waves (2001-06) of an Australian population based panel study, with an analytical sample of 3017 men and 3225 women. Mental health was measured using the MHI-5 scale scored 0-100 (α=0.97), with a h…
The benefits of paid maternity leave for mothers' post-partum health and wellbeing
Women and part-time employment
This article investigates satisfaction with time pressure for men and women with different hours of paid employment using data from the 2006 'Negotiating the Life Course' project. In Australia, part-time employment is a common strategy adopted by women with dependent children to reconcile paid work and family responsibilities. However, women employed part-time are not a homogeneous group. This study differentiates between women employed for minim…
Negotiating Domestic Labor
Recent research in the United States has found that wives' absolute earnings level is more important than their earnings relative to their spouses in determining time spent on housework. Utilizing data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, this article examines whether women's housework time in Australia is associated with relative or absolute earnings and extends previous work by examining possible mechanism…
Becoming a Female-Breadwinner Household in Australia
ObjectiveThis study longitudinally investigated the associations between becoming a female-breadwinner household and changes in relationship satisfaction for men and women.BackgroundFemale-breadwinner households pose a fundamental challenge to gender norms, particularly in countries such as Australia with a strong male breadwinner culture. Despite an increase in their prevalence, the implications for relationship satisfaction is understudied. Hyp…
Do coresidence and intentions make a difference? Relationship satisfaction in married, cohabiting, and living apart together couples in four countries
A large body of research has compared relationship satisfaction and quality in cohabiting versus married relationships. Despite increased recognition of couples in living apart together (LAT) relationships, very little research has examined the experiences
Expecting the unexpected
Many social theorists argue that institutions such as organized religion, the nuclear family and social traditions more generally, are in a rapid and potentially terminal decline. At the same time, there has been a growing emphasis on the processes of individualization, the rise of the 'reflexive self', de-traditionalization and an emergent view of life as a 'planning project' where individuals determine their future pathways through autonomous d…
It's Not Just About the Money
This article explores the question 'Why do fathers resist paying child support?' through interviews with 26 separated or divorced non-residential fathers in Australia. Drawing on Zelizer's typology we argue that the men in this study attempt to define child support as a gift - a payment that emphasizes the power and beneficence of the payer and the obligation of the receiver - but struggle to do so in legal and bureaucratic structures that positi…
Change in the Association Between Premarital Cohabitation and Separation, Australia 1945 - 2000
We investigate change in the association between premarital cohabitation and the risk of separation. Using retrospective marriage history data from the first wave (2001) of the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australian survey, we examine 6,210 first marriages formed between 1945 and 2000. We find the association between premarital cohabitation and separation is changing. The increased risk of separation for cohabitors compared to noncohab…
Discrimination at the Intersections
Researchers have established that both nonmonosexual, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) persons of Color face unique forms of alienation. However, little work has been undertaken to examine how these identities interface with one another. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with nonmonosexual persons of Color (n = 5) and nonmonosexual White persons (n = 5) residing in Melbourne, Australia to explore intersections of rac…
The validity of publication and citation counts for Sociology and other selected disciplines
The use of bibliometric data is a means of comparing research productivity and scholarly impact for individuals, work groups, institutions and nations within and between disciplines. Central to this debate is the notion that disciplines differ in the ways in which they exchange ideas and disseminate information and therefore have diverse publishing and citation patterns. In this article we use two different approaches to compiling bibliometric da…
Disagreements among cohabiting and married couples in 22 European countries
Cross-national research suggests that married people have higher levels of well-being than cohabiting people. However, relationship quality has both positive and negative dimensions. Researchers have paid little attention to disagreements within cohabiting
Marriage breakdown in Australia
Marriage breakdown through separation and divorce is a pervasive feature of Australian society. But little research investigates the social factors associated with marital breakdown in Australia. This study builds on and extends Australian research by using survival analysis models to examine patterns of association among temporal, life-course, attitudinal and economic factors associated with marital breakdown. Using data from the Household Incom…
Fatherhood in the 21st Century
Editorial for a special issue of the 'Journal of Family Studies' on fatherhood in the early 21st century
Separated Parents Reproducing and Undoing Gender Through Defining Legitimate Uses of Child Support
The use of child support is a politically and personally contested issue and a policy challenge across developed countries. This offers an opportunity to identify family practices and relationships through which hegemonic masculinity and socially valued femininities are reproduced and challenged. We present data from interviews with 28 fathers and 30 mothers to argue that when people discuss how child support is or should be spent, they are manag…
Non-standard employment and fathers’ time in household labour
This paper examines the ways in which non-standard employment conditions of fathers and their partners are associated with the time fathers spend in household labour caring for children and doing housework. The data come from a national telephone survey conducted in 2010 with a unique purposive sample of 300 fathers who contributed at least 30 per cent to the total time spent in household labour. We find that fathers who worked irregular hours, n…
Family, work and health
We investigate multiple-burden and multiple-attachment hypotheses for the association among marriage, parenthood, employment and health for Australian men and women. Using longitudinal data from the Australian panel survey, 'Negotiating the Lifecourse', we find that men and women employed full time report better health than those employed part time or not employed. Previously married women report worse health than married women, but there is no a…
Young maternal age at first birth and mental health later in life
The gendered associations between precarious employment and mental health in working-age Australians
Socioeconomic differences in food purchasing behaviour and suggested implications for diet‐related health promotion
Background The relationship between socioeconomic position (SEP) and diet has been examined mainly on the basis of food and nutrient intake. As a complement to this work, we focused on the socioeconomic patterning of food purchasing, as many educational dietary messages emphasize behaviours such as food choice when shopping. Also, the type of food people buy influences the quality of their nutrient intake. Methods A probability sample of househol…
Measuring socio-economic position in dietary research
Objectives: To examine the association between socio-economic position (SEP) and diet, by assessing the unadjusted and simultaneously adjusted (independent) contributions of education, occupation and household income to food purchasing behaviour Design: The sample was randomly selected using a stratified two-stage cluster design, and the response rate was 66.4%. Data were collected by face-to-face interview. Food purchasing was examined on the ba…
The validity of publication and citation counts for Sociology and other selected disciplines
The use of bibliometric data is a means of comparing research productivity and scholarly impact for individuals, work groups, institutions and nations within and between disciplines. Central to this debate is the notion that disciplines differ in the ways in which they exchange ideas and disseminate information and therefore have diverse publishing and citation patterns. In this article we use two different approaches to compiling bibliometric da…
Post-Familial Families and the Domestic Division of Labour
This paper examines independent living among elderly Brazilians age 65+ of different racial groups using 1980 and 2000 census microsamples. Although there was an overall increase in independent living among Brazilian elders, that increase mainly reflects change among Whites whereas there was little change among Browns or Blacks. Since Whites tend to have higher socioeconomic status than Browns or Blacks in Brazil, one might suppose that a racial …
Marriage breakdown in Australia
Marriage breakdown through separation and divorce is a pervasive feature of Australian society. But little research investigates the social factors associated with marital breakdown in Australia. This study builds on and extends Australian research by using survival analysis models to examine patterns of association among temporal, life-course, attitudinal and economic factors associated with marital breakdown. Using data from the Household Incom…
Family, work and health
We investigate multiple-burden and multiple-attachment hypotheses for the association among marriage, parenthood, employment and health for Australian men and women. Using longitudinal data from the Australian panel survey, 'Negotiating the Lifecourse', we find that men and women employed full time report better health than those employed part time or not employed. Previously married women report worse health than married women, but there is no a…
Who Decides? The Social Characteristics of Who Initiates Marital Separation
This study investigates gender differences in the associations between social characteristics and men's and women's reports of which spouse initiated marital separation. Using retrospective data on 9,147 first marriages from the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia survey (2001), we find that some social characteristics differentiated between separations initiated by wives compared to husbands, but few differences were statistically s…
Who Uses Paid Domestic Labor in Australia? Choice and Constraint in Hiring Household Help
This paper investigates why some Australian households use paid help with domestic labor while others do not. Consistent with earlier studies, the analysis examines hypotheses relating to resources, objective demand, and gender attitudes. Additionally, this paper examines the impact of attitudes toward using paid domestic labor, an area that has not been investigated previously. The findings suggest that resources and objective demand provide the…
Life Course Transitions and Housework
We examine the effects of transitions in marital and parenthood status on 1,091 men's and women's housework hours using two waves of data from an Australian panel survey titled Negotiating the Life Course. We examine transitions between cohabitation and marriage, and from cohabitation or marriage to separation, as well as transitions to first and higher-order births. We find extraordinary stability in men's housework time across most transitions …
Change in the Association Between Premarital Cohabitation and Separation, Australia 1945 - 2000
We investigate change in the association between premarital cohabitation and the risk of separation. Using retrospective marriage history data from the first wave (2001) of the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australian survey, we examine 6,210 first marriages formed between 1945 and 2000. We find the association between premarital cohabitation and separation is changing. The increased risk of separation for cohabitors compared to noncohab…
Which Spouse Initiates Marital Separation When There Are Children Involved
This report examines whether the presence of children in marriage differentially influences the risk of wives or husbands initiating separation. The analytic sample consists of 9,118 first marriages from the Households, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (2001). Using event history and competing risks analysis, I find weak evidence that wives are less likely than husbands to initiate when they have infants, and husbands are less likel…
The implications of child support for housing after relationship dissolution
In this article we investigate the associatiom between the payment and receipt of child support andhousing circumstances of both resident and non-resident parents. We do so by analysing data fromWave 4 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. The finalanalytic sample comprised 1,043 separated parents (637 resident parents, 406 non-resident parents).Our finding indicate that for resident parents the receipt of chil…
Pathways Into Marriage
Does time spent in a cohabiting relationship prior to marriage lead to more egalitarian housework arrangements after marriage? Previous research has shown that housework patterns within cohabiting relationships are more egalitarian than in marital relationships. But do these patterns remain when couples marry? The findings from previous studies are mixed. This article uses three waves of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Aust…
It's Not Just About the Money
This article explores the question 'Why do fathers resist paying child support?' through interviews with 26 separated or divorced non-residential fathers in Australia. Drawing on Zelizer's typology we argue that the men in this study attempt to define child support as a gift - a payment that emphasizes the power and beneficence of the payer and the obligation of the receiver - but struggle to do so in legal and bureaucratic structures that positi…
Who gets married in Australia
Although there is broad agreement that marriage patterns have changed there is little understanding of the individual level factors associated with these changes. We investigate this question by examining the associations between a range of economic and social characteristics and the transition into first marriage. We use panel data from the first six waves of the Households, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (2001–6) to run a mixed …
Negotiating Domestic Labor
Recent research in the United States has found that wives' absolute earnings level is more important than their earnings relative to their spouses in determining time spent on housework. Utilizing data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, this article examines whether women's housework time in Australia is associated with relative or absolute earnings and extends previous work by examining possible mechanism…
Fatherhood in the 21st Century
Editorial for a special issue of the 'Journal of Family Studies' on fatherhood in the early 21st century
Non-standard employment and fathers’ time in household labour
This paper examines the ways in which non-standard employment conditions of fathers and their partners are associated with the time fathers spend in household labour caring for children and doing housework. The data come from a national telephone survey conducted in 2010 with a unique purposive sample of 300 fathers who contributed at least 30 per cent to the total time spent in household labour. We find that fathers who worked irregular hours, n…
Marital loss, mental health and the role of perceived social support
OBJECTIVES: To investigate the impact of transitions out of marriage (separation, widowhood) on the self reported mental health of men and women, and examine whether perceptions of social support play an intervening role. METHODS: The analysis used six waves (2001-06) of an Australian population based panel study, with an analytical sample of 3017 men and 3225 women. Mental health was measured using the MHI-5 scale scored 0-100 (α=0.97), with a h…
Expecting the unexpected
Many social theorists argue that institutions such as organized religion, the nuclear family and social traditions more generally, are in a rapid and potentially terminal decline. At the same time, there has been a growing emphasis on the processes of individualization, the rise of the 'reflexive self', de-traditionalization and an emergent view of life as a 'planning project' where individuals determine their future pathways through autonomous d…
Labor and Love
We theorize how social policy affects marital stability vis-à-vis macro and micro effects of wives' employment on divorce risk in 11 Western countries. Correlations among 1990s aggregate data on marriage, divorce, and wives' employment rates, along with attitudinal and social policy information, seem to support specialization hypotheses that divorce rates are higher where more wives are employed and where policies support that employment. This is…
Relationship Dissolution and Time on Housework
This paper investigates gender differences in time on housework with relationship dissolution. Using longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (2001-2005) and a linear mixed modeling approach, we examine changes in housework hours before and after separation from marriage or cohabitation. The results indicate that relationship type affects change in housework hours of men and women following separation. …
Women and part-time employment
This article investigates satisfaction with time pressure for men and women with different hours of paid employment using data from the 2006 'Negotiating the Life Course' project. In Australia, part-time employment is a common strategy adopted by women with dependent children to reconcile paid work and family responsibilities. However, women employed part-time are not a homogeneous group. This study differentiates between women employed for minim…
Disagreements among cohabiting and married couples in 22 European countries
Cross-national research suggests that married people have higher levels of well-being than cohabiting people. However, relationship quality has both positive and negative dimensions. Researchers have paid little attention to disagreements within cohabiting
Do coresidence and intentions make a difference? Relationship satisfaction in married, cohabiting, and living apart together couples in four countries
A large body of research has compared relationship satisfaction and quality in cohabiting versus married relationships. Despite increased recognition of couples in living apart together (LAT) relationships, very little research has examined the experiences
Sociology (34 works) · Psychology (32 works) · Economics (27 works) · Demographic economics (23 works) · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics (23 works) · Work-Family Balance Challenges (23 works) · Political science (21 works) · Family Dynamics and Relationships (17 works) · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving (17 works) · Social Psychology (17 works)