R Hertz
Biographic Data
| ID | 105628 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R Hertz |
| GIVEN NAMES | R |
| FAMILY NAME | Hertz |
| SIGNATURE | HERTZ R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wellesley College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9954-5611 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 357 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Sociological Accounts of Donor Siblings’ Experiences: Their Importance for Self-Identity and New Kinship Relations
A fundamental part of the adolescent self is formed through interaction with intimates, usually family members whose roles are reasonably well-defined. However, donor siblings-children who share a sperm donor-lack social scripts for interacting with one another, particularly when they are raised in different households. Moreover, they are often challenged to figure out their relationship to newly discovered genetic relatives. This article examine…
When Paid Work Invades the Family: Single Mothers in the Covid-19 Pandemic
The Novel COVID-19 pandemic has dissolved the spatial distinction between production/workplace and reproduction/home. With essential services like childcare and public schools either shut down or dramatically curtailed, families have been stretched to the breaking point. Nowhere is the stress greater than among single mothers. This paper presents the results of a survey of single mothers who live alone with their children and single mothers who l…
Single Mothers as Bricoleurs: Crafting Embryos and Kin
Single mothers by choice who delay having a child without a partner can choose to conceive with donor sperm and eggs. When they do, however, they face twin paradoxes: (a) advances in assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) make it easier to have a child but harder to make an unquestioned claim to being a mother in light of a conventional genetic narrative; and (b) children who come from the same batch of donor embryos have more in common with e…
Reassembling Motherhood: Procreation and Care in a Globalized World
Michael’s Clan
The same-sex couples highlighted in this narrative are members of the “families of choice” cohorts that arose during the 1980s. Although they were establishing a new family form, the mothers in a two-mother family told their child that he had a sperm donor “father” whom he could meet when he turned eighteen. When the meeting occurred, the two formed a limited father-child bond. The donor provides emotional support, but he does not offer any mater…
The 7008 Builders
This chapter introduces the members of the 7008er network at the occasion of a significant gathering, when seven families with children born from the same sperm donor come together at a hotel in the Midwest. From the beginning, the children in this network seek to construct themselves as a family. Love, trust, and harmony serve as guideposts in the unscripted land of donor-linked families. They also use structures they know from traditional famil…
Connected Soul Mates: Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings, and the Creation of New Kin
The Soul Mates network is distinctive on two counts. First, it is a large network with over twenty-two children. Second, it represents a turning point in network creation: the initial group formed when all of the children were toddlers. The children in this network thus have known about donor siblings for as long as they can remember. Among the members of this network one finds neither group cohesion nor bland disinterest. Rather the network prov…
Donantes de esperma en los Estados Unidos de América y las relaciones con su descendencia
New forms of family are emerging in an era of rapid change in reproductive technologies, particularly technologies that employ donor gametes. Donor anonymity has become more problematic as more countries require all donors to be identity release. The role of the sperm bank donor –whether anonymous or identity release– who has contact with his offspring remains unexplored in sociological research. In the United States donors are asked to choose th…
Donor-Insemination Motherhood: How Three Types of Mothers Make Sense of Genes and Donors
This article analyzes how the variables of partnership type and gestational status that differentiate among partnered women who achieve motherhood through their own (or a partner's) donor insemination are relevant to shaping that experience. The article demonstrates that the three groups of mothers defined by these two variables differ on a variety of attitudes concerning whom the child resembles, the influence of genes, the position of the sperm…
Pride and concern: Differences between sperm and egg donors with respect to responsibility for their donor-conceived offspring
Comparative research on sperm donors and egg donors in the United States suggests that while men view themselves as fathers of their offspring, women do not view themselves as mothers. Comparative research suggests as well that men and women are equally interested in contact with offspring, equally curious about them, and equally likely to hold themselves responsible for those offspring. This paper re-examines these differences and similarities u…
Donor Sibling Networks as a Vehicle for Expanding Kinship: A Replication and Extension
This article replicates an earlier study of mothers who had used the same sperm donor to conceive their children and connected through the Internet. The original study finds that these groups interact mainly on the Internet; donor siblings are latent affiliations that could answer questions about the paternal side. This new study of 2,217 parents and 419 offspring offers a comparison of the manner in which these relationships develop, finding tha…
Turning Points in the Lives of Chinese and Indian Women Leaders Working toward Social Justice
Institutional change has a human face. This paper explores how a select group of women in China and India experienced economic and political turmoil and why they chose to become change agents. Through in-depth interviews with 40 women from NGOs, government agencies and private business, four broad moments in the evolution of a change agent are identified and discussed: (1) awareness of a double-bind; (2) reframing the tension induced by that doub…
Gendering gametes: The unequal contributions of sperm and egg donors
Who Pays for Dates? Following Versus Challenging Gender Norms
Chivalry dictates that on a "date," the man pays, whereas egalitarian ideals suggest that gender should not determine who pays. We examined the extent to which people embrace or reject these competing notions. Unmarried heterosexual participants ( N = 17,607) reported their behaviors and attitudes regarding who does and who should pay for dates on a survey posted on NBCNews.com . Although most men (74%) and women (83%) report that both members of…
Mothering, Ideologies of
Donor conceived offspring conceive of the donor: The relevance of age, awareness, and family form
Donor-Shared Siblings or Genetic Strangers: New Families, Clans, and the Internet
Donor-shared sibling families have recently emerged. Families who conceived using the same anonymous donor are locating one another through websites designed to match children with their biogenetic half-siblings. Based on a survey of 587 parents with donor-conceived children, we discovered that a growing number of unrelated parents whose children are genetically related are organizing into durable groups. These groups mainly exist on the Internet…
Economic Crisis and New Social Realities: Bait and Switch and the American Dream-Presidential Address 20101
The ESS was called to act during the fall of 2009. We faced a critical test: to stand beside the housekeepers at the hotel where we were supposed to hold the 2010 conference or to ignore their plight. I use the case study of breaking a contract with the Hyatt Hotel in order to locate the Hyatt layoffs in a broader context. This case is meant to illuminate two related issues. (1) The Hyatt Hotel used a traditional strategy of labor substitution in…
Sociologists in a Global Age: Biographical Perspectives
Talking About "Doing" Family
The Contemporary Myth of Choice
Paying Forward and Paying Back
Twenty years after the conclusion of a fieldwork study, a member of the family that once served as my informant came to live with me. This reflexive account of Ari's stay in our home juxtaposes his socialist kibbutz life with that of my own hypercommodified individualistic urban life. His experiences of working in the illegal economy raise questions about my own hiring practices. In short, we confront ourselves through our respondents' cultural v…
The Father as an Idea: A Challenge to Kinship Boundaries by Single Mothers
In separating parenthood from partnership, women have created new family forms in which men may be involved but not as traditional fathers. Through in-depth interviews with single middle-class women, I compare families created with anonymous donors to those created with known donors. In the former cases, mothers craft imagined fathers as their children become 'looking glasses' into the men they will probably never meet. These children must rely o…
Care and Kinship: An Introduction
Women's Untold Stories: Breaking Silence, Talking Back, and Voicing Complexity
CONTENTS Breaking Silence The Only Black Woman Walking the Face of the Earth Who Cannot Have a Baby Kind of Neanderthal or Perfectly Normal: Giving Birth at Home (De)constructing Alternative Realities: Image, Ambiguity, and Allegiance in a Mother's Response to the Disclosure of Incest Life on the Home Front: Housewives' Experience of World War II Expanding the Internment Narrative: Multiple Layers of Japanese American Women's Experiences Crossbor…
Separate But Simultaneous Interviewing of Husbands and Wives: Making Sense of Their Stories
This article argues that separate interviews with spouses can provide valuable insights on marital decision making. The notion that one partner can speak for both needs to be abandoned. However, in the process of including unrepresented family voices, making sense of multiple accounts becomes problematic. Multiple accounts of marriage are told when a researcher interviews husbands and wives on the process of decision making. Some differences in s…
Making Family under a Shiftwork Schedule: Air Force Security Guards and Their Wives
Through 90 in-depth interviews with 44 rotating shiftworkers and their spouses, this study examines how couples adjust their routines in order to interact as a family unit. We suggest that their views of marital roles are a critical force shaping their practices of daily family life. Wives, even when employed, are responsible for coordinating the individual schedules of family members to match that of the shift-working husband. Wives pay a price …
Behavior patterns and sexual identity of bisexual males
Bisexuality may be measured in terms of bisexual behavior or bisexual self‐identity. The relationship between the two is poorly understood. Data from a 1982 survey of readers of Playboy magazine are used to examine the identity and behavior of 6,982 men who acknowledged adult sexual experiences with both men and women. Of these, 29 percent described themselves as bisexual, 2 percent as homosexual, and 69 percent as heterosexual in identification.…
When Paid Work Invades the Family: Single Mothers in the Covid-19 Pandemic
The Novel COVID-19 pandemic has dissolved the spatial distinction between production/workplace and reproduction/home. With essential services like childcare and public schools either shut down or dramatically curtailed, families have been stretched to the breaking point. Nowhere is the stress greater than among single mothers. This paper presents the results of a survey of single mothers who live alone with their children and single mothers who l…
A Typology of Approaches to Child Care: The Centerpiece of Organizing Family Life For Dual-Earner Couples
Analyzing data from a qualitative study of 95 dual-earner couples, this article seeks to understand the critical factors that explain couples' choice of day care arrangements. The different approaches couples implement to care for their children while they earn income are (a) the 'mothering' approach, (b) the parenting approach, and (c) the market approach. Changing sentiments about mothering and its centrality to decisions about how couples orga…
Only one pair of hands: Ways that single mothers stretch work and family resources
Based on in-depth interviews with 50 women in the eastern part of Massachusetts in the United States between the ages of 22 and 50 who have chosen to be single mothers, this article presents a typology demonstrating the factors leading to, and consequences of, differing combinations of economic and social support for childrearing marshaled by the mothers. Ensuring middle class lives for their children is a central goal for the mothers. This goal …
The Father as an Idea: A Challenge to Kinship Boundaries by Single Mothers
In separating parenthood from partnership, women have created new family forms in which men may be involved but not as traditional fathers. Through in-depth interviews with single middle-class women, I compare families created with anonymous donors to those created with known donors. In the former cases, mothers craft imagined fathers as their children become 'looking glasses' into the men they will probably never meet. These children must rely o…
Donor-Shared Siblings or Genetic Strangers: New Families, Clans, and the Internet
Donor-shared sibling families have recently emerged. Families who conceived using the same anonymous donor are locating one another through websites designed to match children with their biogenetic half-siblings. Based on a survey of 587 parents with donor-conceived children, we discovered that a growing number of unrelated parents whose children are genetically related are organizing into durable groups. These groups mainly exist on the Internet…
Donor conceived offspring conceive of the donor: The relevance of age, awareness, and family form
Qualitative Sociology as Everyday Life
PART ONE: PUBLIC PLACES Not Even a Day in the Life - Candace West The Nursing Home - Lillian B Rubin Essaying the Personal - Sherryl Kleinman Making Sociological Stories Stick Enough Already! The Pervasiveness of Warnings in Everyday Life - Shulamit Reinharz Earn as You Learn - Clinton R Sanders Connections between Doing Qualitative Work and Living Daily Life Real Life Sexual Harassment - Christine L Williams PART TWO: FAMILY SPACES A Conversatio…
Working to Place Family at the Center of Life: Dual-Earner and Single-Parent Strategies
There are two basic types of work-family strategies: workplace-based strategies and family-centered strategies. In the past, attention has been placed mostly on work policies. This article focuses on members of dual-earner and single-parent families who have actively placed family at the center of their lives. The strategies they adopt depend upon their position in the labor market as well as marital status. Some dual-earner families jointly calc…
Who Pays for Dates? Following Versus Challenging Gender Norms
Chivalry dictates that on a "date," the man pays, whereas egalitarian ideals suggest that gender should not determine who pays. We examined the extent to which people embrace or reject these competing notions. Unmarried heterosexual participants ( N = 17,607) reported their behaviors and attitudes regarding who does and who should pay for dates on a survey posted on NBCNews.com . Although most men (74%) and women (83%) report that both members of…
Childcare Choice and Constraints in the United States: Social Class, Race and the Influence of Family Views
One of the most pervasive aspects of the Cultural war (Hunter 1991; Wolfe 1993) over family life in the 1990s and next century is over the raising of children. Daycare versus within the family for children under school age is one highly contested aspect of this battle. Because of ideological conflicts, especially over family forms and family norms (Hartmann and Spalter-Roth 1994),and because of the history and politics of attempted family policy,…
Fieldwork in Elite Settings: Introduction
Sociologists in a Global Age: Biographical Perspectives
Guarding Against Boredom: Security Specialists in the U.S. Air Force
Whereas sociologists have attended to the boredom of work created by repetitive task structure in industry, less attention has been given to boring work in which workers spend endless hours "doing nothing with nothing to show for it." This study of security specialists in the U.S. Air Force provides an in-depth examination of the nature of boredom and workers' response to it in a setting characterized by contingent work, that is, a setting in whi…
Donor Sibling Networks as a Vehicle for Expanding Kinship: A Replication and Extension
This article replicates an earlier study of mothers who had used the same sperm donor to conceive their children and connected through the Internet. The original study finds that these groups interact mainly on the Internet; donor siblings are latent affiliations that could answer questions about the paternal side. This new study of 2,217 parents and 419 offspring offers a comparison of the manner in which these relationships develop, finding tha…
Gendering gametes: The unequal contributions of sperm and egg donors
Care and Kinship: An Introduction
Reassembling Motherhood: Procreation and Care in a Globalized World
Talking About "Doing" Family
The Contemporary Myth of Choice
Single Mothers as Bricoleurs: Crafting Embryos and Kin
Single mothers by choice who delay having a child without a partner can choose to conceive with donor sperm and eggs. When they do, however, they face twin paradoxes: (a) advances in assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) make it easier to have a child but harder to make an unquestioned claim to being a mother in light of a conventional genetic narrative; and (b) children who come from the same batch of donor embryos have more in common with e…
Dual-Career Couples and the American Dream: Self-Sufficiency and Achievement
The Soviet social system and its transformation during the post-Stalin period have exerted a tremendous impact on the Soviet family and related institutions. Trends in the Soviet Union across the last three decades have affected the Soviet family in different ways--some of these trends, like the decay of socialism and the rise in privatization, havelcd to the strengthening of the family, while other trends, such as the demoralization of Soviet so…
Howard S. Becker: A Portrait of an Intellectual's Sociological Imagination
Family in the Kibbutz: A Review of Authority Relations and Women's Status
No abstract available for this article
Studies of Israeli Society, Vol. 2: The Sociology of the Kibbutz
Commuter Marriage: A Study of Work and Family
More Equal than Others: Women and Men in Dual-Career Marriages
By placing the dual-career marriage in its economic and social context, More Equal Than Others goes beyond the media image of dual-career couples as self-sufficient units and compels the reader to confront the dilemmas and possibilities of modern marriages.
Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood
A Balancing Act: Women and the Work They Do
More Equal than Others: Women and Men in Dual-Career Marriages
More Equal Than Others: Women and Men in Dual-Career Marriages
Howard S. Becker: A Portrait of an Intellectual's Sociological Imagination
Making Family under a Shiftwork Schedule: Air Force Security Guards and Their Wives
Through 90 in-depth interviews with 44 rotating shiftworkers and their spouses, this study examines how couples adjust their routines in order to interact as a family unit. We suggest that their views of marital roles are a critical force shaping their practices of daily family life. Wives, even when employed, are responsible for coordinating the individual schedules of family members to match that of the shift-working husband. Wives pay a price …
Guarding Against Boredom: Security Specialists in the U.S. Air Force
Whereas sociologists have attended to the boredom of work created by repetitive task structure in industry, less attention has been given to boring work in which workers spend endless hours "doing nothing with nothing to show for it." This study of security specialists in the U.S. Air Force provides an in-depth examination of the nature of boredom and workers' response to it in a setting characterized by contingent work, that is, a setting in whi…
The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home.Arlie Hochschild , Anne Machung
Dual-Career Couples and the American Dream: Self-Sufficiency and Achievement
The Soviet social system and its transformation during the post-Stalin period have exerted a tremendous impact on the Soviet family and related institutions. Trends in the Soviet Union across the last three decades have affected the Soviet family in different ways--some of these trends, like the decay of socialism and the rise in privatization, havelcd to the strengthening of the family, while other trends, such as the demoralization of Soviet so…
Behavior patterns and sexual identity of bisexual males
Bisexuality may be measured in terms of bisexual behavior or bisexual self‐identity. The relationship between the two is poorly understood. Data from a 1982 survey of readers of Playboy magazine are used to examine the identity and behavior of 6,982 men who acknowledged adult sexual experiences with both men and women. Of these, 29 percent described themselves as bisexual, 2 percent as homosexual, and 69 percent as heterosexual in identification.…
Ex-Spouses and New Spouses: A Study of Relationships
Fieldwork in Elite Settings: Introduction
Studying Elites Using Qualitative Methods
The very nature of elites makes them difficult for social researchers to study. This volume provides valuable insights into how researchers can successfully gain access to elite settings. Using their actual experiences, the contributors provide constructive advice as well as cautionary tales about how they learned to manoeuvre and become accepted in worlds otherwise closed to them
Separate But Simultaneous Interviewing of Husbands and Wives: Making Sense of Their Stories
This article argues that separate interviews with spouses can provide valuable insights on marital decision making. The notion that one partner can speak for both needs to be abandoned. However, in the process of including unrepresented family voices, making sense of multiple accounts becomes problematic. Multiple accounts of marriage are told when a researcher interviews husbands and wives on the process of decision making. Some differences in s…
Gentility, Gender, and Political Protest: The Barbara Bush Controversy at Wellesley College
Using 452 letters sent in 1990 to Wellesley College over a student petition objecting to the choice of Barbara Bush as the graduation speaker, this article explores how an attempt to expand the boundaries of elite women's political behavior created a cultural and symbolic battle that centered upon the content of education, women's 'manners' and civility, and their implications for elite women's participation in the broader Hobbesian social contra…
Paradoxes of Gender.Judith Lorber
Childcare Choice and Constraints in the United States: Social Class, Race and the Influence of Family Views
One of the most pervasive aspects of the Cultural war (Hunter 1991; Wolfe 1993) over family life in the 1990s and next century is over the raising of children. Daycare versus within the family for children under school age is one highly contested aspect of this battle. Because of ideological conflicts, especially over family forms and family norms (Hartmann and Spalter-Roth 1994),and because of the history and politics of attempted family policy,…
Guarding Against Women: Responses of Military Men and Their Wives to Gender Integration
Based on in-depth interview questions with security guards and their wives in the U.S. Air Force, this article looks at attitudes toward women's integration into a male career field prior to the occurrence. For men, the impending integration of women into this work setting poses two challenges: one threatens the solidarity of the work culture where the influx of outsiders would dilute, if not eradicate, the trust and camaraderie that helps the me…
A Typology of Approaches to Child Care: The Centerpiece of Organizing Family Life For Dual-Earner Couples
Analyzing data from a qualitative study of 95 dual-earner couples, this article seeks to understand the critical factors that explain couples' choice of day care arrangements. The different approaches couples implement to care for their children while they earn income are (a) the 'mothering' approach, (b) the parenting approach, and (c) the market approach. Changing sentiments about mothering and its centrality to decisions about how couples orga…
Only one pair of hands: Ways that single mothers stretch work and family resources
Based on in-depth interviews with 50 women in the eastern part of Massachusetts in the United States between the ages of 22 and 50 who have chosen to be single mothers, this article presents a typology demonstrating the factors leading to, and consequences of, differing combinations of economic and social support for childrearing marshaled by the mothers. Ensuring middle class lives for their children is a central goal for the mothers. This goal …
Working to Place Family at the Center of Life: Dual-Earner and Single-Parent Strategies
There are two basic types of work-family strategies: workplace-based strategies and family-centered strategies. In the past, attention has been placed mostly on work policies. This article focuses on members of dual-earner and single-parent families who have actively placed family at the center of their lives. The strategies they adopt depend upon their position in the labor market as well as marital status. Some dual-earner families jointly calc…
Sociology (47 works) · Psychology (37 works) · Social Psychology (22 works) · Political science (19 works) · Gender Studies (18 works) · Developmental psychology (17 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Work-Family Balance Challenges (12 works) · Biology (11 works) · Law (11 works)