Noted Social Scientist Suzanne Bianchi Dies

Suzanne Marie Bianchi, a noted UCLA social scientist who studied the evolving American family life as more women entered the work place for the past three decades died on Nov. 4 in Santa Monica.

She died of pancreatic cancer, according to the New York Times.

In her most influential study, co-authored with John P. Robinson of the University of Maryland, she discovered that, contrary to popular opinion, working mothers in the ‘90s spent just as much time with their children as stay-at-home moms in the 1960s. Mothers spent an average of 5.8 hours a day with their children 1998, compared with 5.6 hours in 1965, the Los Angeles Times reports. 

Bianchi, the oldest of six children was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa on April 15, 1952. In 1973, she received her bachelor's degree in sociology a Creighton University and in the following year she received her master's degree from Notre Dame University. In 1978, she received her doctorate from the University of Michigan. She joined the UCLA faculty in 2009.

She is survived by her husband, Mark Browning, her three children, Jennifer, James and Jonathan Browning, her mother and five siblings.