UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 10, Page 8
November 2, 1995
Traveling professor shares research across the globe

     The International Year of the Family was truly international for
Tamara Hareven, Unidel Professor of Family Studies. She crossed the
Atlantic 10 times and the Pacific twice during her sabbatical year.
     The globe-trotting professor, who was on the visiting faculty at
the Sorbonne (University of Paris I) and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes
en Sciences Sociales in Paris and a visiting fellow at Harvard
University, conducted research and participated in conferences related
to the family family history and to the life course and aging in
Europe, Japan and Israel.
      In January 1994, she was invited to give a lecture on families
and research at a UNESCO symposium in Paris. In May 1994, she
presented a paper on "Historical Changes in Fatherhood," at Tilburg
University, and she presented a keynote address in June on "The Family
and the Life Course in Historical Perspective" at the International
Society for the Study of Behavioral Development meeting in Amsterdam,
both in The Netherlands.
     In May, she was an invited speaker at the international
conference on "The Family on the Threshold of the 21st Century" in
Jerusalem. In September, she gave a public lecture in Vienna, at the
invitation of the Mayor's Cultural Affairs Division, on "The Family
and Social Change in Comparative Perspective." Other lectures took her
to Sweden, Norway, Italy, Germany and Japan.
     "My research has been on the effects of industrialization and
social change on families in the United States and Western Europe.
There has been a myth about the golden age in the past about the
existence of ideal three-generational families that lived together,
and where elderly members were cared for in the 'bosom' of the family.
In actuality, the assistance from adult children to aged parents was
usually negotiated, such as an exchange of land or inheritance for
care," Hareven said.
     "As the survival to adulthood and longevity increase
dramatically, there are greater opportunities for continuity in the
family's existence and a greater overlap among the generations. These
great potentials have not been sufficiently realized, and the family
is facing increasing dilemmas in providing support for aged relatives.
The family is not capable today of carrying this responsibility
without adequate societal and governmental supports.
     "There is a real structure lag between peoples' needs that were
brought about by major social changes and between public responses to
address those needs," Hareven said.
     "Another area of emphasis in family studies today is the changing
role of fathers in the family and society. As mothers have
increasingly joined the work force, fathers have become more involved
in child-care responsibilities. This has happened, however, more
commonly in middle class families. Further research is needed to
determine how extensive this involvement is."
     At the National Research Council's conference on "Changing
Fatherhood," which Hareven helped organize in 1993, the issues
involving teenage fathers also were addressed. "In Cleveland, for
example, local community and church leaders have developed a program
helping young fathers to acknowledge and assume responsibility for
their children," she said.
     In keeping with her on-going study of families, Hareven has
launched a new journal entitled History of the Family: An
International Quarterly, which will start publication in 1996. This
year she also serves as president of the Social Science History
Association.
     One of Hareven's long-term research projects has been a study of
silk-weaving families in Kyoto, Japan, and her book, The Silk Weavers
of Kyoto: Family and Work in a Changing Traditional Industry, will
soon be published.
     This past year, she was able to conduct a similar study of former
silk-weaving families in Lyon, France, and will compare them with the
families in Kyoto. As in Japan, silk weaving was a cottage industry in
France which has almost disappeared, although a few weavers and
manufacturers are left. Hareven is studying the changes in the family
and work patterns of the silk weavers and how they cope with
unemployment as the industry has died over the past century.
     Recipient of the Radcliffe Graduate Career Medal in 1992 and
elected as a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America in 1994,
Hareven is the author of Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American
Factory City and Family Time and Industrial Time.
     A new volume of essays which Hareven has edited, entitled Aging
and Generational Relations over the Life Course, will be published by
de Gruyter Publishers this year. These essays were originally
presented at a conference that Hareven organized at the University of
Delaware in 1991 with funding from the National Instittue on Aging.
                                                   -Sue Swyers Moncure