Abigail Ocobock

Associate Professor

Research Interests

Family sociology, Gender, Sexualities, Institutional sociology

Subfields

Gender, Sexuality and Family, Stratification and Inequality, Theory

Profile

Dr. Abigail Ocobock obtained her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 2015, where she was a William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellow, and the recipient of a National Science Foundation SBE Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant.

Her research combines family sociology and gender and sexualities studies with institutional sociology. Her work is driven by questions about how social institutions impact our most private, intimate and familial relationships. She is particularly interested in studying how the institution of marriage shapes and constrains relationship aspirations, choices and experiences.

Her book, Marriage Material: How an Enduring Institution is Changing Same-Sex Relationships (Fall 2024, University of Chicago Press) focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) individuals who gained access to legal marriage. Drawing on mixed methods research with 116 participants, it examines the institutional mechanisms through which marriage impacts their couple relationships, and what this teaches us about the enduring power of marriage as an institution.

Her next book project continues to examine diverse marriage populations, and the ways individuals navigate institutional, gender, and sexual expectations in marriage but shifts attention to bisexuals. Bisexuals constitute the fastest growing identity group within the LGBTQ+ umbrella. Yet, puzzlingly, most continue to form relationships with different sex partners. What does this mean for sexual and gendered negotiations within relationships? She seeks to answer this question with a longitudinal study of bisexual identity and relationship formation.

Dr. Ocobock is also interested in how families shape, and are shaped by, gender inequality. She is currently investigating how exogenous social shocks provide opportunities for gendered change within relationships. Drawing on interview data she collected with partners in heterosexual couples who were both working from home and homeschooling children during the pandemic, she is investigating how equalizing work and parenting positions leads to gendered change, and what gets in the way.

Her work has been published in The American Journal of Sociology, The Journal of Marriage and Family, Gender and Society, and Current Sociology.