Kathleen Gerson, PhD

Research Description:

I study the intertwined revolutions in gender, work, and family life that continue to unfold in the United States and globally. To make sense of these connections, my work uses in-depth interviewing and other research techniques to examine how people fashion commitments to the worlds of paid work and family life as they grow to and through adulthood. By combining the deep understandings afforded by depth interviewing with research designs that stress systematic sampling and theoretical discovery, my research focuses on how large-scale institutional change prompts individuals, communities, and social groups to develop new ways of living and how, in turn, these social actors reshape the contours of social institutions and political debates. My past projects have produced a series of books and articles that have charted the sources, consequences, and social implications of gender, work, and family change, with special attention to how Americans experience, impart meaning, and seek to resolve the dilemmas created by rising conflicts between work and family structures. My books include “The Science and Art of Interviewing” (co-authored with Sarah Damaske, 2020); “The Unfinished Revolution: Coming of Age in a New Era of Gender, Work, and Family” (2010); “The Time Divide: Work, Family, and Gender Inequality” (with Jerry A. Jacobs, 2004); “No Man’s Land: Men’s Changing Commitments to Family and Work” (1993); and “Hard Choices: How Women Decide About Work, Career, and Motherhood” (1985). I’m currently writing a book about how Americans are responding to the work-care crisis created by a growing collision between paid work and unpaid caregiving, tentatively titled “Why Can’t Anyone Have It All? Work and Caregiving in the New Economy.”