Graduate Sociology at SUNY Albany

Area of Specialization: Sociology of Families

Sociology of Families is an area of major strength in the Department of Sociology. Many faculty members focus the majority of their research on families and several others pursue research issues related to families. The department offers numerous opportunities for students to develop their interests and to work with faculty on diverse topics related to the Sociology of Families. Faculty members routinely include graduate students in their research leading to jointly authored publications, and students are encouraged early to begin their own projects.

Faculty and graduate students working in this area address many issues concerning changing definitions and compositions of families and households. These include gendered paid and unpaid work roles, both heterosexual and gay/lesbian couple relationships, and parenthood, and the well-being of individuals over the life course from childhood to the older years. While most of our research focuses on contemporary American families, some is crossnational and historical. Faculty and graduate student dissertation research includes both qualitative interview studies and quantitative research based on surveys and available statistical data.


The quality of research and education offered in the Department of Sociology generally, and in the area of Sociology of Families specifically, makes the University at Albany an exciting place to pursue graduate studies. The graduate program in sociology is designed to provide a basic core of courses in theory, methods, and statistics, while allowing for specialization in Sociology of Families. Students may take relevant courses and may choose to focus on families for one of their specialization examinations at the doctoral level, as well as for their master’s thesis and dissertation topics. Course work relevant to this area is found throughout the curriculum; however, Sociology of Families is also the focus of the teaching of several faculty members with special expertise.

Families and Families-related courses in the Sociology Department

• Soc 560 Families
• Soc 665 Families and Households
• Soc 665 Children and Public Policy
• Soc 666 Work and Family
• Soc 640 Gender Inequality
• Soc 662 Sociology of Aging
• Soc 551 Demography
• Soc 553 Social Stratification
• Soc 575 Ethnicity and Race
• Various special topics courses offered by the sociology faculty

Students are also encouraged to take related courses offered outside the Sociology Department.

Other institutional resources include two multidisciplinary research centers:

Other institutional resources include two multidisciplinary research centers: The Center for Social and Demographic Analysis (CSDA) and the Institute for Research on Women (IROW). Both of these centers have affiliated faculty from sociology and other disciplines with research interests in families and house many useful resources for graduate students and faculty.

Titles of Dissertations Recently Completed or in Progress

The following lists of faculty and of recent dissertations by graduate students will provide you with a more detailed description of the research relating to families being pursued here at Albany.

• Modern Day Mary Poppins:
Uncovering the Work of Nannies and the Expectations of Employers
• An Exploration of the Effects of Mid to Late-Life Parental Divorce
• Reconceptualizing Cohabitation: Commitment among Nonmarried Heterosexual Couples
• Doing Engagement: Couples and Commitment to Marriage
• Exploring a Culture of Intimacy: Individualism and Solidarity in Heterosexual Relationships
• Adult Grandchildren Providing Care to Frail Elderly Grandparents
• Intermarriage Patterns of New Immigrants
• Work Flexibility, Work Culture, and Gender
• Reciprocal Relationships Between Homeless Families and Their Informal Social Supports
• Determinants of Son Preference in India and Health Outcomes for Children
• The Relationship between Fertility and Union Type
• Lessons from the Office: The Implementation of Work-Family Policies
• “Making It” in America: Korean Immigrants in Small Business in the New York Metropolitan Area
• Child Well-Being in Cohabiting Homes: A Study of Outcomes and Processes

Faculty in Sociology of Families

Angie Chung
Ph. D. University of California, Los Angeles

Professor Chung’s research interests include urban sociology, international migration, race/ethnicity, gender/family, Asian American studies, and qualitative sociology. Recent work explores how adult second-generation Korean and Chinese American sons and daughters negotiate their childhood experiences in an immigrant family, thus shaping their long-term decisions on ethnicity and culture. She is also writing on the role of extended family/kinship networks in shaping the processes of racial/ ethnic identity formation among foreign-born and native-born South Asian Americans in NY.

Glenn D. Deane
Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Professor Deane has worked in the areas of historical demography, intergenerational mobility, and family relations. Current research investigates new questions regarding how relations between parents and each adult child are imbedded in and influenced by relationships with other adult children. Knowledge of these family influences will help us to understand how entire family networks operate and how family structure influences the allocation of intergenerational resources over time.

Donald J. Hernandez
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley

Professor Hernandez’s research interests include life course processes, children and families, social and economic stratification, immigration, race and ethnicity. His book America’s Children: Resources from Family, Government and the Economy focused on how life course experiences of children have been transformed by changes in the parental life course, with attention to race and ethnicity. Recent work assesses historical change and contemporary differences in the lives of children in immigrant and native-born families, and how children’s well-being are influenced by public policies.

Karyn Loscocco
Ph.D. Indiana University

Professor Loscocco studies the connections between work and family lives. She has investigated the influence of family on many work-related outcomes, from job satisfaction to income. Professor Loscocco has also written on issues of work-family conflict from a life course perspective. Her current research exam-ines the work-family nexus among self-employed women and men. She is also interested in how the interplay of culture and gender norms affects marital roles.

Scott J. South
Ph.D. University of Texas

Professor South's research in family sociology focuses primarily on patterns of family formation and dissolution. His recent studies have examined the effects of marriage market imbalances on marital and fertility behavior, the determinants of divorce, and the impact of migration and community context on adolescent behavior. He also studies racial and ethnic differences in geographic mobility and neighborhood attainment.

Glenna Spitze
Ph.D. University of Illinois

Professor Spitze's research interests include gender and families, intergener-ational relations, and paid/ unpaid labor. She is co-author (with John Logan) of Family Ties: Enduring Relations Between Parents and Their Grown Children (winner of the 1997 Goode Distinguished Book Award). Her current work focuses on family divisions of paid and unpaid labor, sibling relations, relationships between older parents and adult children, and the role of personal networks in older adults’ health outcomes. She holds a joint appointment in Women’s Studies.

Kate Strully
Ph.D. New York University

Professor Strully’s research focuses on health, class, and social policy within family contexts. Past work has focused on how low birth weight is related to inter-generational inheritance of socio-economic status and health in families. Related work has used the case of low birth weight to examine how U.S. welfare policies may be revised to more effectively target children who face the double jeopardy of poor health and poverty. Recent work examines how the Earned Income Tax Credit affects parents’ investments in children’s health.

Katherine Trent
Ph.D. University of Texas

Professor Trent's research interests in families focus on attitudes, fertility, and family relationships. Her work has examined a range of attitudes about family issues focusing on group differentials and how attitudes are related to family behaviors. She also studies various dimensions of fertility behavior for different age groups of women, the determinants of marital quality and divorce, and adult sibling relationships. Her research mainly focuses on American families and households, although she also studies family issues in other countries.

Russell A. Ward
Ph.D. University of Wisconsin

Professor Ward has interests in the sociology of aging that include family issues. His research has investigated implications of social networks, including family, for well-being and access to services. Focusing on marital and inter-generational relations in middle and later life, he has studied effects on marital happiness of relations with adult children and parents, and of retirement and the division of household labor. Other research has investigated antecedents and consequences of coresidence by adult children and their parents.

-From 2007 Brochure