New England Sociological Association

Working Hard To Make Ends Meet:
The Dynamics of Class, Gender and Marital Status

Margaret Nelson will draw on two separate studies to compare the survival strategies of married-couple families and single-mother families in a rural area.  She highlights the ways in which class, gender and marital status intersect to determine both the characteristics of these survival strategies and the degree which they enable families to make ends meet.

Dr. Nelson is the Hepburn Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies. She teaches courses in the fields of Women and Gender Studies, Sociology of Education, Medical Sociology, and Sociology of the Family. She has conducted research in the fields of Women and the Law, Childbirth, the History of Teaching, Family Strategies in Rural Areas, Care giving, and, most recently, Single Mothers. Professor Nelson has been a member of the Sociology/Anthropology Department at Middlebury College since 1975.