Interview 16 Annette P. Lareau

Abstract

Annette Lareau is currently the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor in the Social Sciences in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her B.A. in sociology from the University of California at Santa Cruze in 1974, and M.A. as well as Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1978 and 1984 respectively. She started her career at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 1986 and then she went to teach in Temple University and the University of Maryland before she joined the University of Pennsylvania in 2008 as the Stanley I. Sheerr Professor. Lareau is a sociologist who studies family life. She is interested how the social position of children and parents has an impact on the quality of their life experiences. She has explored these issues in the arena of family-school relationships, the cultural logic of child rearing, the process through which parents go about deciding where to live and send their children to school. Her works have received numerous awards. Unequal Childhood is one of her masterpieces, which won the C. Wright Mills Award in 2004. She was elected as the President of American Sociological Association in 2013.