Family

Oct 2 2013
When: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: Harman Academy
Event Type: Polymathic Pizza

Event Details

Man is a sexual and procreative creature as well as a social animal.  From sexuality, tradition holds, came children and family formation to protect child development.  Until recently, most political philosophers began their treatise on the nature of the commonwealth or the state with a consideration of the family.  But what does the family mean today?  Have the old relationships of family, kinship, and tribe disappeared or have they been merely transmogrified?  Are new types of families being formed?  And how does a growing population of single people fit into this family formula?  What, in short, are some of the deeper transformations at work in our culture that are affecting family formation? Over pizza, family style, Assistant Professor Jennifer Hook will discuss with students these issues central to our social existence.

Speaker Information

Speaker

Jennifer Hook

Assistant Professor of Sociology, Jennifer Hook arrived to USC in Fall 2012. A Fulbright scholar, Professor Hook focuses on how social contexts, particularly social policies and work opportunities, impact individuals and families. Her research areas include gender, family demography, inequality, work-family, social policy, child welfare, and comparative sociology. Professor Hook focuses on how social contexts, particularly social policies and opportunities in the labor market, impact individuals and families. Her recent work examines the influence of country context on fathers' time with children, the division of household labor, and women's employment, as well as the impacts of state policy and practice on foster children's outcomes and the economic vulnerability of parents involved with the child welfare system. Her research has appeared in journals including the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, and the European Sociological Review. She is coauthor of Gendered Tradeoffs: Family, Social Policy, and Economic Inequality in Twenty-One Countries.