Faculty

Arland Thornton

Arland Thornton is Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, where he is also Senior Research Scientist at the Survey Research Center, and Research Associate at the Population Studies Center. His research focuses on trends, causes, and consequences of marriage, cohabitation, divorce, fertility, gender roles, adolescent sexuality, and intergenerational relationships. He is interested in behavioral, attitudinal, and cultural elements of these dimensions of family life and their intersections with economic, educational, and religious institutions.

He conducts research on these topics in Taiwan, Nepal, and the United States. He is director of the eight wave thirty-one year Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children. He is co-author of Social Change and the Family in Taiwan, published in 1994 by the University of Chicago Press. This book is the winner of the 1995 William J.Goode Book Award and the Otis Dudley Duncan Award of the American Sociological Association. Dr. Thornton is also the coordinator of Developmental Idealism Studies at the University of Michigan and author of the forthcoming "Reading History Sideways."