M. Rosenfeld. 2007. THE AGE OF INDEPENDENCE: Interracial Unions, Same-Sex Unions and the Changing American Family. Harvard University Press. Available now from Amazon.com. You can also find the book, along with a selection from the text and the index, at the Harvard University Press website.

     The Age of Independence is a book which offers a new theory of family trends and social change in the US. The argument revolves around the independent life stage, a life stage which has emerged since 1960. Young adults experience the independent life stage after they have left their parents' homes, but before they have settled down to start their own family. During the independent life stage young men and women go away to college, travel, begin careers, and enjoy a period of relative social independence.
     The rise of the independent life stage has reduced parental control over the dating and mate selection choices of their children. The decline of parental supervision and control results in a sharp rise in interracial and same-sex unions, the kind of unions that previous generations of parents were able to prevent. Although most Americans and many scholars believe that young adults are returning home to the parental nest in ever greater numbers (a phenomenon the press has dubbed 'the boomerang effect'), this widely held perception has it exactly backwards. In fact what really distinguishes modern family life from previous eras is the new independence (geographic, residential, and social) of young adults from their families of origin.

     Until very recently, individual level census data from the past had never been available for scholarly analysis. What we knew about family life in the past came from diaries, from the official records of a few towns and churches, or from travel writers such as Tocqueville. Now that we have individual level census records from 1850 through 2000, we are able to look into long term trends in family life in a way that inevitably must cast some of our previous assumptions aside. I use the newly available census data to describe the rise of the independent life stage, and the sharp increase in the number of interracial and same-sex unions in recent years. My analysis of census data offers a new explanation for why the tumult of the industrial revolution failed to produce an increase in nontraditional unions: most families in the industrial revolution moved to cities and factory towns together, so the basic structure of parental supervision over young adults was maintained.
     By placing the post-1960 family changes in a long term historical and demographic context, I am able to offer a new perspective on the dramatic recent diversification in American family forms. I use in-depth interviews to explore the life histories of families and couples, and to illustrate the role that the independent life stage plays in social change.
     Same-sex marriage is one of the most divisive issues of our times. My book attempts to answer several questions related to same-sex marriage. First, why now? Why has the climate for gay rights in the U.S. changed so much in the past few years? Second, what next? What do the historical precedents and current demographic trends portend for the future of same-sex marriage in the US?
     The independent life stage has implications beyond the rise of nontraditional unions, which after all are still a small minority of all couples in the US. Because parents raise their children with their future independence in mind, parents raise their children differently, and these differences affect how we all think about individual freedoms.

Information for the Press, and prior media coverage:

     Related Figures and Data:
      * A figure and worksheet describing the increasing percentage of American couples that are interracial, by several definitions of interracial.
      * A figure and worksheet describing the increasing number of interracial and same-sex couples in the US.
      * A figure and worksheet describing the decreasing support in the US for laws against interracial marriage.

     PRESS Attention for the book:
      *KGO Radio San Francisco, David Lazarus show, 1/20/2007
      *Chicago Tribune, cover story, "A Cultural Taboo Fades" on the rise of intermarriage, March 11, 2007
      *USA Today, "Boomerang Generation Mostly Hype," on the growing independence of young adults, March 14, 2007.
      *Featured on NBC national nightly news with Brian Williams, in their series on the "State of Our Unions," March 29, 2007, see the story and the video here. The video seems to work better with IE than Firefox...
      *USA Today, "Free as a Bird and Loving It: Being Single Has Its Benefits," April 12, 2007
      *AP National News, picked up by many papers including the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Interracial Marriages Surge Across the US" April 13, 2007, another link is here.
      *WAOK talk radio Atlanta, Shelley Wynter show, April 13, 2007
      *Kieran Healy, blogging at Crooked Timber has some lovely things to say about my book and about the age of independence, and about David Brooks' typical misunderstanding of the independence of young adulthood.
      *KZSU radio Lunch Special show, hosted by Byrd, July 2,2007, interview (a 13 minute section of the hour long show, in mp3 format, 4.5MB).
      *I was a guest on Jefferson Public Radio's Jefferson Express show on October 5 (link provides audio files for the last 10 episodes only...)
      *I was quoted in a cover story in the Sunday Oregonian, Sept 23, 2007, titled "Marriage Today: Fewer I do's and more just I's," but no web link is currently available.
      *I was quoted in a December 14, 2007 story in The Indian Express, about intermarriage and Indian-Americans.
      *I was the September 13, 2009 guest on KALW's Sunday morning Philosophy Talk show, talking about the postmodern family.

      *On the subject of Barack Obama and multiracial America, I was cited in an interesting story by Charles Lewis in Canada's National Post, June 7, 2008. Obama's electoral success so far means this particular conversation about race and multiraciality will continue. In the New York Times coverage of Barack Obama's inauguration, in the January 21 2009 edition, Jodi Kantor wrote an interesting story about Obama's multiracial ancestry, which quoted me.

      *In recognition of the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court decision which ruled all state bans against interracial marriage unconstitutional, there were several stories, including:
      *Washington Post, Love is Colorblind, June 9, 2007
      *Stanford Report, "Nontraditional Unions got boost from Changing Family Structure, Sociologist Says," June 13, 2007
      *The Virginian-Pilot, "Mixed-Race Marriage Gained Legal Status in Virginia 40 Years Ago," June 10, 2007
      *If you have a print edition of the July, 2007 Cosmo, you'll find me on page 27.

      *In memory of the May, 2008 passing of Mildred Loving, one of the litigants in Loving v. Virginia, syndicated columnist Clarence Page wrote a nice column which cited me and which makes the relevant connection between the debate over same-sex marriage today and the legacy of Loving v. Virginia.

      *The evidence shows that same-sex couples do a perfectly fine job raising children. These couples need all the rights and recognition and obligations of marriage. See my June 19, 2008 Op-Ed in the Sacramento Bee. See also my paper on "Nontraditional Families and Childhood Progress Through School."

     PRESS Attention for the "How Couples Meet" study:
      * USA Today, a nice story by Sharon Jayson on friends, the Web, and How Couples Meet. Feb 11, 2010.
      * Stanford Report, a feature story on How Couples Meet, with video. Feb 11, 2010.
      * San Jose Mercury News, "Growing Number of Singles Find Their Valentines Online," Feb 14, 2010.

Other Scholarly Publications:

M. Rosenfeld, 2009. "Nontraditional Families and Childhood Progress Through School." Forthcoming in Demography.
      * Because this paper is the only paper in the literature which compares children raised by same-sex couples to children raised by other types of families, using large sample nationally representative data, this paper's results were discussed in depth during the hearing phase of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Federal district court 2010 (the case which puts the constitutionality of the anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 on trial). See link to transcript of day 5 of the trial here.

Syllabus

Articles on the reading list (external links accessible to Stanford users only)
Shammas, "Anglo American Household Government in Comparative Perspective" (I recommend that you download and print)
Arnett and Taber, "Adolescence Terminable and Interminable" (read in HTML or click on the PDF version, then print)
Rosenfeld and Kim, "The Independence of Young Adults and the Rise of Interracial and Same-Sex Unions"
Rosenfeld, "Young Adulthood as a Factor in Social Change in the US"

Questions for each reading

Student presentation schedule

Readings available online:
Kinder and Sears, 1981: "Prejudice and Politics"
Bobo, 1983: "Whites' Opposition to Busing"

Guide on how to present

Syllabus

Questions for each reading assignment.

What is expected of in-class and in-section presenters

in-class presentation schedule

Rosenfeld section presentation schedule

Legal Decisions relating to contraception and abortion:
*Griswold v Connecticut, US Supreme Ct 1965 (the first supreme court ruling that famously cited individual privacy rights, struck down Connecticut's law which prevented even married couples from purchasing birth control).
*Eisenstadt v Baird, US Supreme Ct 1972 (struck down a Massachusetts law which had prevented unmarried persons from accessing birth control, thereby expanding the Griswold decision).
*Roe v Wade, US Supreme Ct 1973 (guaranteed abortion rights and forced all 50 states to legalize first trimester abortions, and second trimester abortions with some limitations).

Sodomy Cases:
*Bowers v Hardwick, US Supreme Ct, 1986 (upheld Georgia's anti-sodomy law).
*Lawrence v Texas, US Supreme Ct, 2003 (reversed the Bowers decision and struck down Texas's anti-sodomy law, and by extension all the state laws against sodomy).

Marriage Cases:
*Loving v Virginia, US Supreme Ct 1967 (struck down Virginia's law against racial intermarriage, helped establish marriage as a fundamental right, and by extension made all the state laws against interracial marriage unenforceable).
*Turner v Safley, US Supreme Ct 1987 (found, among other things, that prisoners had an inalienable right to marry).
*Baehr v Miike, Hawaii trial, 1996 (the first trial of same-sex marriage rights where the state had to meet a high standard of evidence for why they wanted to deny same-sex couples the right to marry; the court's decision was a victory for same-sex couples).
*Baehr v Miike, Hawaii reversal after state constitutional amendment, 1999 (after the state of Hawaii passed a constitutional amendment to make same-sex marriage illegal in Hawaii).
*Baker v State, Vermont, 2000 (the decision that forced Vermont to adopt same-sex union rights for gay couples).
*In Re Gardiner, Kansas, 2002 (the decision that voided that marriage of Gardiner and Ball because of Ball's previous sex change).
*Goodridge v Dept Public Health, MA 2003 (the decision that forced Massachusetts to adopt full marriage equality for same-sex couples).
*Varnum v Brien, Iowa 2009 (the decision that has brought marriage equality to Iowa).

The Three California same-sex marriage cases:
*Lockyer v. San Francisco, California 2004 (ordering San Francisco to stop marrying same-sex couples and nullifying the marriage of same-sex couples at San Francisco city hall until the court could rule on the constitutionality of California's same-sex marriage ban).
*In Re Marriage Cases, California, 2008 (deciding that California's same-sex marriage ban was inconsistent with California's constitution, forcing the state to allow same-sex couples to marry)
*Strauss v Horton, California 2009 (acknowledging the legality of Proposition 8, which amended the California constitution to redefine marriage as only between a man and a woman, but the decision also upheld the legality of the same-sex marriages performed in California in 2008).

First draft of potential final exam questions (updated for Spring 2009)

First draft of potential midterm questions (updated for fall 2009)
Midterm grade distribution Fall 2009

Preliminary Instructions for the GSS paper project (updated Nov 3, 2009)

Some Additional Relevant Links:

Judith Stacey's "Good Riddance to the Family"
David Popoenoe's "Two-Parent Families Are better"
Moynihan's 1965 Report on "The Negro Family"
A 1995 US Dept. Health and Human Services Report on Unmarried Childbearing
A 2003 US Census report on Marriage and Cohabitation
An international comparison of Non-Marital Fertility Rates
Smith, Morgan, and Cox paper on Nonmarital fertility
Ruggles paper on history of black family structure

Two graphs to get you thinking about life course versus historical and cohort effects, from the 2000 CPS. Mean income by age and gender, and mean education by age and gender.. Figures for health status by age are here.

Syllabus

First homework assignment, due Oct 9

Second homework assignment due Oct 18, see the links page for the dataset.. Homework 3 (due October 30) is here, see class notes on how to download the data. I have also posted instructions for the abstract and final paper (NOTE updated due dates and instructions).

Soc 149/249
Urban Studies 112

Syllabus

Questions for the Assigned Readings

What is expected of in-class and in-section presenters.

In-class presentation schedule: Goldring, March 4.

Study guides for the exams, based on last year's exams:
Sample midterm questions (updated for 2009)
midterm grade distribution 2009
And even more relevant, the midterm grade distribution for 2010
Sample final exam questions (updated for 2009)

Moynihan's 1965 report, The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, published by the US Dept. of Labor (PDF file, 4MB).

Links to reports on HOPE VI, the 1990s housing policy which included tearing down the worst high rise public housing projects:
A Brookings Report by Turbov and Piper
An Urban Institute/Brookings report by Popkin et al
A Critique by Venkatesh and Celimli
An Urban Institute brief report by Buron
An Urban Institute brief report by Popkin, Eiseman, and Cove

Links to reports on Moving To Opportunity

Two terrific undergraduate student theses from recent years that I will refer to in the class.
1) Kelsey Finch's Trouble in Paradise: Postwar History of San Francisco's Hunters Point Neighborhood, copyright 2008 Kelsey Finch.
2) Jackelyn Hwang's Perceptions and Borders of the Changing Neighborhood: A Case Study in Philadelphia, copyright 2007 Jackelyn Hwang. For citation or use outside of Soc 149/249/ Urb 112, you must get permission from Jackelyn Hwang.

Links relating to welfare reform:
See various working papers from the Three City Study including Andrew Cherlin's paper, "The Consequences of Welfare Reform for Child Well-Being"
See also Cherlin et al 2002, paper from Social Service Review (accessible to Stanford students only)
And see also Rebecca Blank's thorough summary and evaluation of welfare reform.

Robert Moses's response to Caro's biography of him.

Some overheads from class are replicated here, so you don't have to copy them down. Introduction to some of the basic ideas in the class. A figure on transitional neighborhoods and neighborhood turnover, based on the game theory analysis of American economist Thomas Schelling. Timelines: Chicago time line, and Civil Rights time line. Notes on Marxist views of history. Outline of the Culture of Poverty ideas. My notes on neighborhood effects, and an illustrative simulation (in pdf format; an excel version that is easier to play with is here) of what the segregation indices mean. My notes on different causes of segregation are here. Further notes on the effects of segregation. My notes on free market economics and mortgage lending are here. A pdf figure which describes gerrymandering and reverse gerrymandering (and a powerpoint version of the same gerrymandering slides). Two excellent maps of Chicago, prepared by Victor Thompson, are now available. There is the neighborhood map (especially useful as a companion to Hirsch's book), and the map of Black residential concentration. Two graphs of black-white income differences are here.

How progressive is the US Income tax (in theory)? See the history of marginal tax rates.

Weblinks with more up-to-date information about residential segregation in the US (links open in separate windows) with thanks to students Ashley Daly and Katherine Lee.
* A Census Bureau report, "Racial and Ethnic Residential Segregation in the United States: 1980-2000"
* The Lewis Mumford Center, with various reports on segregation.
* The Civil Rights Center at Harvard University.
* Stanford's CCSRE has various reports on local diversity and segregation.

Student notes:

Evaluation of Evidence

Syllabus

Guidelines for the Soc 280B presentation and proposal.

Soc 280B presentation schedule (proposal due to Rosenfeld by email one week before presentation)
Mar 4: Paige, Siri
Mar 9: Qinglian, Alice
Mar 11: Alexis

Guidelines for working together on home work

My notes on research terminology and types of bias are here. This page will be undergoing regular revision during the class, so be sure to check back. Newly added: my notes on the mean, the variance, and simple statistics (these notes under construction). An Excel file on means and standard errors (will be updated). Freedman's statistical distribution tables from the back of the book. My notes on what changes and what doesn't change in regression when you change the inputs.

Final Exam Preview is ready.

Project 1, Historical/ Archival: Information: Some notes on potential topics and library resources at Stanford. Notes on how to read sources, and guide for project 2 proposals. Some additional helpful hints about how to write the historical paper.

Project 2, Quantitative Data Analysis
Key materials:
*The dataset for HW 1, and most of the rest of the homeworks is the 2000 March CPS dataset (14MB, Stata 10 version). Right-click to download the data files. I include here some housekeeping procedures I have done to the March CPS file which may helpful to you when you work with your own CPS files.

More relevant stuff for the quantitative data project (links repeated from above):

*mean, the variance, and simple statistics
* Excel file on means and standard errors
* Freedman's statistical distribution tables
* what changes and what doesn't change in regression when you change the inputs.

My own brief Introduction to STATA, contains lots of key information.

* The first assignment for the quantitative part of the class is HW1. HW1 Answers are now available.
* As part of HW 1, you will be required to register with ipums CPS, and download a dataset of your own

* HW 2 assignment. HW2 Answers and supplementary Excel file now available.
* HW3 assignment is now available.
* HW4 assignment is now available, datasets for HW4: Anscombe's data (Excel format) and a 50-state CPS dataset (Stata format).

A link for CPI inflation data.

:The variables and their descriptions are best located at the website www.ipums.org, where the data come from. You will find that ipums is easy to navigate and has lots of relevant information. You can register for free and create your own dataset. For class purposes, I will be using
* ipums variable descriptions for CPS
* and ipums introduction to the CPS methodology

Rosenfeld's 2010 class logs
* First class log (a first look at labels, creating new variables, tabulate, weights)
* Second class log (using table, weights, cross tabulations, reading in datasets)
* Third class log (table and ttest)
* Fourth class log (includes ttest, commands for the Normal and t-distribution, as well some additional material posted after the class to introduce regression and the unequal variance t-test)
* Fifth class log (on ttest, regression, and dummy variables with some additional stuff posted after class about how to use xi for multiple categories)
* Sixth class log (with extended notes on what regression results mean, on dummy variables, and on using desmat to generate the dummy variables)
* Seventh class, no log, see the Excel file
* Eigth class log (log just about taking t-tests with random sub-samples. Mostly we talked about What changes and what doesn't change in regression).
* Ninth class log (we talked a lot about predicted values of regression models, and when the predicted values will and won't coincide with the actual real data that we use to create the models).

Rosenfeld's 2010 section logs
* First Section Log (some basic intro stuff)
* Second section log (on categories, tabling ranges, codebook)
* Third section log (generating the median)
* Fourth section log (on using regress and desmat with categorical and continuous predictor variables)
* Fifth section log (on updating Stata and more on predicted values. See also class nine and my Excel file).

Additional and supplementary Information for the quantitative data analysis project:
* In case you need it, but you probably won't, A multiyear CPS dataset, in zipped format (37MB Zipped, 95MB when expanded, Stata 10 version). Here is a link to the ipums codebook for the CPS data extraction I used (the 2000 data is just a subset of this multiyear extraction).

Purchase Stata here. You should be buying Stata/IC 11, perpetual license which comes with the Getting Started Manual, for grad plan price of $179:
http://www.stata.com/order/new/edu/gradplans/gp-campus.html

My notes on how to match husband to wife or householder to partner, to create couples data, using STATA and census data from ipums.

Two graphs to get you thinking about life course versus historical and cohort effects, from the 2000 CPS. Mean income by age and gender, and mean education by age and gender. A log for the creation of the graphs is here. Figures for health status by age are here, embedded with commands and notes.

* Materials relating to a famous debate about the influence of outliers. 1) Jasso's original article on coital frequency. 2) Kahn and Udry's critique. 3) Jasso's response.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Archives of 2009 Stata class logs (note that the 2009 Stata logs were all generated in Stata ver 10)
* Class 1 Stata log (summarize, tabulate, weights, March 2000 CPS); Class 2 Stata log (table, cross tabulation, generate, labels); Class 3 Stata log (first introduction to t-test and regression, see also my notes on means and variance, and my Excel file on statistical comparisons above); Class 4 Stata log (more on regression, with and without weights, and on the Normal and T distributions); Class 5 Stata log (dummy variables, random subsets); Class 6 Stata log (equal and unequal variance T-statistics, and generating probabilities from T-statistics and Z scores); Class 8 Stata log (how regression changes or doesn't change when the inputs are changed); Class 9 Stata log (a bit on interactions, dummy variables, and plotting lines and scatter plots); Class 10 Stata log (brief introduction to logistic regression, also residual plots and dfbetas);Class 11 Stata log (a bit on predicted values and additivity)

Archives from 2009 Rosenfeld section logs:
Section 1 (incl also generate, and labels); Section 2 (some fun with tables and box plots and histograms); Section 3 (more on regression and dummy variables, plus ttest to P value conversion, plus desmat as an alternative to xi); Section 4 (some very unhelpful box plots of income by age, and a procedure for tabling the means and then capturing them over to Excel); Section 5 (some more about graphing Anscombe's data); Section 6 (a brief note or two about graphing on the 50 state dataset)

Download a pdf version of the documentation (~1.94 MB), and the March 2000 CPS dataset itself (~9.5MB, Stata 8 version, but does not have all the nice labels nor all the variables of the above version)- Note: if your browser tries to display rather than download this file, try control-click for Mac or right-click for windows). New: a pdf version of the official explanation of the methodology of the CPS (~2.2MB- don't print this- it is many hundred pages long). Also, you will find that the online documentation at ipums is more helpful anyway. A brief tour (old) of the 2000 CPS variables, without all the variable labels from ipums.

  "Introduction to Social Research"
Note: This class has been superseded by Soc 180B/280B

Project 2, Ethnography: Some guidance about what the proposal for the first project should look like. Guidelines for the first project paper. Some key terms from Goffman.