Article Co-Authored by Sociologists With Ties to UC Riverside
By Pauline Moc, Student Intern of CHASS College Computing

Michele Adams

Scott Coltrane

For its March 2007 Featured Article, Family Process (www.familyprocess.org) presented an article co-authored by sociologists with ties to UC Riverside: Michele Adams and Scott Coltrane.

Their article, Framing Divorce Reform: Media, Morality, and the Politics of Family, explores the history of divorce reform and how American society has changed from making divorce “better” to making marriages “healthier”. The “Healthy Marriage Initiative,” introduced by the Bush administration, proposes to spend $1.5 billion dollars over a period of five years on programs geared toward strengthening marriages, such as marriage education, premarital counseling, and reducing marriage license fees.

Despite all of society’s attempts to extinguish divorce, almost one half of all marriages will continue to end that way. Although it is a grim reality, according to the article, “divorce is here to stay.”

Michele Adams started her undergraduate studies at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois and received both her M.A. and Ph.D. from UC Riverside. Adams’ work focuses on families, gender, and culture, and her research has been published in a number of scholarly journals: Family Law Quarterly, Journal of Family Issues, Family Relations, Sex Roles, Journal of Vocational Behavior, and American Behavioral Science Review. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Scott Coltrane began his undergraduate studies at Yale University and received his M.A.  and Ph.D. at UC Santa Cruz. Coltrane’s work focuses on families, gender, and social inequality, and his research has been published in a number of scholarly journals: American Journal of Sociology, Social Problems, Sociological Perspectives, Gender and Society, and Masculinities. He is also author of Family Man: Fatherhood, House Work, and Gender Equity and Sociology of Marriage and the Family: Gender Love and Property and editor of Families and Society. He is currently a professor of sociology and an Associate Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at UC Riverside.