Throughout my career I have been motivated by C. Wright Mills’ challenge
to sociologists that we pursue the “intersection of biography and
history in social structure,” that is, the study of the biographical
factors that bring the person to positions in the social structure and
the set of historical factors that bring the positions to the person
(see Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959).
Consistent with Mills’ challenge, my interests include a wide range of
phenomena concerned with the connection of human development and social
change. I am probably best known for my work on the impacts of
demographic and historical processes on individual cognitive,
ideological and attitudinal development over the life span. One
study, which I worked on with Ron Cohen and Theodore Newcomb (Political
Attitudes Over the Life-Span: The Bennington Women After Fifty Years,
Wisconsin Press, 1991), focused on the lifelong development of attitudes
and political identities within the context of both social change and
development of the life course. I have also maintained a research
program on the study of the stability of human characteristics over the
life span and am currently working on a study of the antecedents and
consequences of cognitive functioning in middle and older age.
In addition to political socialization and life-span development, I have
studied changes in the family (particularly parental child-rearing
values and beliefs about sex-roles), educational institutions and
religion. The common focus of this research is the role of
environmental factors in shaping individual biographies over the life
span. A common element in much of this work is a focus on the
existence of the unique impacts of “generational” experiences on
attitudes, beliefs and behavior.
More
recently, in connection with my longstanding interest in social
stratification, I have engaged in the study of the socio-environmental
factors contributing to individual health and well being. My
approach emphasizes a life span developmental perspective (including
life cycle processes and life course events and transitions) on the
social origins of health disparities. My ongoing research in this
area focuses specifically on the contributions of social inequalities,
particularly those tied to family background, gender, race-ethnicity and
achieved socioeconomic status, to the prevalence and incidence of health
conditions in broad population-based samples, focusing particularly on
social inequalities and metabolic syndrome, diabetes and cardiovascular
disease in midlife and older age.