Her research examines the ways in which gender governs the division of labor and the production and distribution of key €œgoods€ in families, often with a focus on the consequences of these arrangements for family stability, and on how these consequences, in turn, are shaped by the legal or economic environments confronting couples. She is also interested in what underlies social change in couples' work and earnings arrangements. Her research combines interests in gender and sexualities, family relations, stratification, the economics of households, and the social psychology of close relationships. Brines is the author of widely-cited papers on economic dependency, gender, and the division of housework, and (with Kara Joyner) the operating principles of durable cohabiting and marital unions. A recent paper, in collaboration with lead author Sabino Kornrich and Katrina Leupp, examines household task division and sexual frequency in marriage, and advances a new framework for understanding how enactments of gender through the work married men and women do also sculpt a couple's sex life. This research received international media attention, including coverage by allAfrica, the BBC, Ha'aretz, Reuters, Scientific American, TIME, TV Globo, and U.S. News and World Report. Brines has also been involved in research on income-driven disparities in the preventative health care that families provide to sons and daughters, on perceptions of fairness in marriage and the risk of divorce, and on patterns of nonstandard employment in dual-earner households. An ongoing project, with Brian Serafini, models the effects of unemployment, changing housing markets, and labor-sector dominance on marital disruption in the wake of the Great Recession.