The Center will sponsor research on middle-class, Midwestern families, using an innovative blend of techniques, including daily observation, informal conversations, formal interviews and survey research. One is that it has the potential to increase our understanding of a striking social and cultural transformation happening right in front of our eyes. New childcare issues. Our obligations to aging parents. New workplace strategies for accommodating the family.
Statistics make it more than a personal issue.
The percentage of married women in the workforce who have children under age 6 in their households increased from 11 percent in 1948 to 63 percent in 1996. The percentage of children spending time in day care centers increased dramatically over part of that period, too, from 6 percent in 1965 to 30 percent today. Like many anthropologists, Fricke has spent most of his academic career far from home. He studied the changing lives of families in an obscure Nepalese village, and now he will study the changing lives of families in an obscure town in North Dakota, just went of his own birthplace. North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.