CEEL Projects

Previously Funded Projects

Amy Corning
CEEL Graduate Student Affiliate; 4th Year Graduate Student in Sociology. Supplemental funding given to pursue research on identity and memory. Although the main thrust of Amy's project departs somewhat from center interests, a portion having to do with the relation between work and identity is of interest. Her project explores the issue of how memories from the adolescent/adult transition period--when work, family, and other social identities are formed--serve as markers of self concept that help to maintain those identities through out later life. Supplemental award given to bolster an NSF grant and allow long, open-ended interviews with informants.

Janet Dunn
Anthropology, University of Michigan. "The Time Crunch: Managing Home and Work in a Fast-Paced Society". Janet officially begins her post-doctoral appointment in November 1999. She will be working closely with Sandy Hofferth on the project described above and will be providing much of the ethnographic work informing the study of children's and parents' time use in the contexts of dual career families.

Sandra Hofferth
Research Scientist at the Institute for Social Research and Adjunct Professor of Sociology. Active research: "The Time Crunch: Managing Home and Work in a Fast-Paced Society." This research focuses on addressing parents and school-age children's expectations and experience of the dilemmas of managing their work and home life. The research links the configuration of work with middle-class parents' expectations for their children, children's schedules and how both parents and school-age children experience these schedules. The focus is on families with children in elementary and middle school. Our ethnographic sample will consist of approximately 50 middle-class families located in the central and southeastern regions of Michigan.

Collaborators: Janet Dunn and David Kinney

Leslie Perlow
Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, University of Michigan Business School. Active research: "Family Values and E-Commerce: Generational Shifts in Work Culture within an Internet Start-up Company." Versity.com began as a group of twenty-two year old college dropouts who had a creative idea how to aggregate a large number of college students on the web. As the company has grown and recently raised 10 million dollars, they have been forced to bring in a set of older, more experienced managers. Therefore, what began as a study of a new generation of employees and the short-run tradeoffs they are willing to make with the dreams of longer term gain has evolved into an exploration what happens when the values of the new, younger generation meet the values of the older, more established generation and the two groups must co-exist in a single organization. This is a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly common in the age of the internet where the best innovations, technical skills and determination are found in the young. It is members of the younger generation who are the most computer savvy. At the same time, it is the older generation that have managerial experience and also family obligations. This research explored the intersection of these two generations and their contrasting work/family values and responsibilities, a pattern of interaction which promises to become pervasive as we enter the Twenty First Century.

Jennifer Robertson
Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan. "Class Act: Art, Aesthetics, and the American Middle Class". Developing a project having to do with middle class artistic representation and work/family values.

Frank Stafford
Professor, Department of Economics & Research Scientist, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. Developing a project in conjunction with a post-doctoral fellow with convergent interests in wealth & consumption. Also work on time use of Americans based on rigorously gathered time-budget survey.

Collaborator: Hiromi Ono

Abigail Stewart
Professor, Department of Psychology & Director, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, University of Michigan. Active research: "Family Values: Ideas about Work, Family and Social Responsibility across Generations of Michigan Families." This project explores intergenerational transmission of certain "family values" about work, family and social responsibility in Michigan families. Work and family values are expected to reflect both accepted and contested aspects of gender; they are also expected to be challenged by middle-aged adults; changed experience of work in the context of their own aging and impending retirement, and of their newly "empty nests". Values about social responsibility are especially likely to reflect aspects of generation, since even slightly different cohorts of middle-aged adults experienced vastly different formative pressures in this domain. Intergenerational communication of family values will be explored through two small qualitative studies attached to larger survey samples tied to particular Michigan educational institutions. These two small studies will involve open-ended interviews with middle-aged adults who participated in the initial surveys.

Collaborators: Donna Henderson-King, Eaaron Henderson-King, David Winter, Amanda Lewis and Allison G. Smith

Rebecca Upton
Anthropology, Brown University. "Having the Second Child: The Negotiation of Work, Family and Gender Expectations in the United States". This project is an ethnographic investigation of the negotiation between work and family obligations by women and men who have recently had or are expecting a second child. It examines how certain dual-earner couples in the Ann Arbor/Detroit area articulate and maintain balance between the economic obligations, time pressures and gender expectations they experience in the domains of work and family life. These obligations and expectations are particularly significant after couples have had one child are potentially more aware of the impact that decisions about family building may have upon resources and professional achievement. The issues surrounding family building are of interest as childbearing has become increasingly delayed in the United States and women have entered the paid workforce in increasing numbers. For many couples, and women in particular, this may contribute to the perception of more intense social and institutional pressures to succeed as a parent and mother in addition to the paid professional. This project, with its unique focus upon the considerations of family building after having had one child, adds depth to studies of the interaction between paid work and family life in the United States by providing ethnographic data of how women and men balance issues of work, familial obligations and changing gender role expectations in an era of delayed childbearing and increased female labor force participation.