At the meeting in Philadelphia and through a member survey, we solicited recommended sessions for the annual meeting next year in New York City. Thanks to the members listed below for volunteering to organize our sessions. We will be holding three research paper sessions, with one session in cooperation with the Population Section. We will also have the Roundtables, followed by the Business Meeting. Paper submissions will be accepted starting November 1, 2018 until January 9, 2019.

Our next big task is organizing our reception.  We will be holding it jointly with the Population Section. If you would like to work on this event, please contact me to discuss (sharon.sassler@cornell.edu).
 
Research paper sessions, with organizers for each:
 
Variation in Sexual & Romantic Relationships by Socioeconomic Status
Sarah Halpern-Meekin, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Description: Marital delay, relationship dissolution and churning, and high divorce rates have extended the amount of time adults spend outside of formal marriage. Individuals can select from a veritable smorgasbord of romantic options, including casual, short-term sexual relationships, dating as an end toward finding a long-term partner, cohabitation or living-apart-together, and/or marriage. But intimate relationships can vary in important ways by socioeconomic status, shaped by the financial resources, environments, cultural norms, etc., within which partnering occurs. This session welcomes papers that examine variation and consistencies in sexual and romantic relationships across socioeconomic status.

Caregiving & Intergenerational Relationships
Matthew Wienshenker, Fordham University
Description:  How families provide care to their various members is often complex.  Researchers are increasingly expanding their lens to encompass family caregivers of both genders, grandparent care, and care relationships among siblings and distant and created kin.  Family strategies are as different as shift work, scaling back work hours, and outsourcing household tasks.  Institutional approaches involve various forms of leave, the entitlements to which vary by employer and by state.  This session welcomes papers which utilize social science research on the caregiving side of contemporary family life.
 
Reproduction of Families & Inequality
Christie Sennott, Purdue University
Description:  Reproduction and family life are intimately intertwined in contexts across the globe and often work together in ways that perpetuate existing inequality. This session will explore the relationship between inequality and issues surrounding the reproduction of families, including: decision-making, fertility preferences and intentions, ambivalence, the timing of childbearing, and interactions between partners. The session also invites papers that examine inequality and contextual variation in reproductive processes, such as by relationship or marital status, at the country level, or across the life course. We welcome papers that employ a variety of methods and theoretical perspectives.
 
Social Inequality in Family Formation
(Jointly organized with the Population Section)
Jessica Su, SUNY-Buffalo
Description:  Just as there is no single understanding of what constitutes a family, there is increasing heterogeneity in how families are formed in contemporary society. Much recent research draws on the diverging destinies perspective to examine variation in family processes.  This panel welcomes papers that consider the consequences of social inequality – whether by race/ethnicity, social class, nativity, sexual orientation, or other dimensions – for family formation. 
 
Roundtables
Teresa Swartz, University of Minnesota
 
Please be in touch if you have suggestions about mentoring, activities to do in New York, or are interested in chairing round tables.  Thanks!

Sincerely,
Sharon Sassler
Family Section Chair

Thanks to the diligent efforts of our dedicated committee members, we have arrived at the list of ASA Family Section award winners. I know that each of these committees worked hard to seriously evaluate many possible winners, and so thank you to them – and to everyone who took the time to submit their work, or the work of their colleagues, for consideration.

The awards will be celebrated at the Family Section reception (held jointly with the Population Section), at the ASA meetings in Philadelphia, Sunday August 12th (7:30-9:30pm, Tir Na Nog Irish Bar & Grill, 1600 Arch St, http://tirnanogphilly.com/.)

Congratulations!

Yours,
Philip Cohen
ASA Family Section Chair
 
​The Family Section Distinguished Career Award
Daniel T. Lichter, Cornell University​

William J. Goode Book Award
Winner: Sharon Sassler, Cornell University; and Amanda Miller, University of Indianapolis. Cohabitation Nation: Gender, Class, and the Remaking of Relationships. University of California Press, 2017.

Honorable mention: Leslie K. Wang, University of Massachusetts Boston. Outsourced Children: Orphanage Care and Adoption in Globalizing China. Stanford University Press, 2016.
 
Article of the Year Award
Winners: Daniel Schneider, University of California; and Orestes P. Hastings, Colorado State University. "Income Inequality and Household Labor." Social Forces 96(2):481–506, December 2017.
 
Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award
Brielle Bryan, Harvard University. "Paternal Incarceration and Adolescent Social Network Disadvantage." Demography 54(4):1477–1501, August 2017

Dear ASA Family Section members,

The results are in and I am delighted to announce the newly elected members of our leadership team. These people will start their terms at the ASA meeting this summer.

Also, the Bylaws amendment passed.

Thank you to all the candidates, and to all the members for participating in the section, and in the election. You all are the reason we have such a vibrant section.

See you in Philadelphia!

Yours,
Philip Cohen
ASA Family Section Chair

Election results:

Chair-Elect (1-year term begins in 2018):
Kelly Raley, University of Texas-Austin

Secretary/Treasurer (3-year term begins in 2018):
Sarah Damaske, Pennsylvania State University

Council Member (3-year term begins in 2018):
Jessica Halliday Hardie, Hunter College, CUNY
Fenaba Addo, University of Wisconsin-Madison  

Council Member, Student (2-year term begins in 2018):
Kara Takasaki, University of Texas-Austin

Dear Family Section members,

Let’s begin this kick-off message with a heartfelt congratulations, and thank you, to the Megan Sweeney for her leadership this last year, and for putting together an extremely successful slate of sessions and activities at the Annual Meetings in Montreal. Thanks are also due to our Secretary Treasurer, Jenifer Bratter (who, thankfully is staying on another year in that role). Megan and Jenifer have done all I could hope for and expect to make my entry into the position as your section Chair as smooth as possible.

At the meeting we also said our thank-yous to outgoing Council members Kevin Michael Roy and Sarah Damaske, and welcomed new members Robert Crosnoe and Kei Nomaguchi. Welcome also to Sharon Sassler, the new Chair-Elect.

In the category of personnel changes, I also extend my sincere appreciation to Gwen Zugarek, from Bowling Green State University, who has done great work as the Communications Director in addition to serving on the Council. This job is vital to our work, and we’ve been extremely fortunate to work with her. Gwen is stepping down now, and I’m delighted to announce that Joanna Pepin, from the University of Maryland, will take over that role. (You can send announcements for the list to Joanna now, at ASAFamilySection@gmail.com.)

New business

Section business and meeting roles. The next order of business for the fall, as always, is to staff up the Section committees, session organizers and chairs. We solicited volunteers at the Business Meeting in Montreal, but before I move to fill these slots I want to make sure everyone has a chance to speak up if you would like to get involved – please do! For this year Joanna has prepared an online sign-up form, which I encourage you to fill out, available at: VOLUNTEER FORM. When we get our session allocation and volunteers lined up, I will work on the slate of positions. Thank you all for your contributions, past and future.

Meeting reception. The 2018 ASA Annual Meeting will be in Philadelphia, August 11-14. High on our list of priorities is arranging an excellent venue for our section reception. This year we hope to collaborate once again with the Population Section. If you have ideas for suitable locations in Philadelphia, or would like to work on the reception, please let us know.

Award policies. At the Council meeting in August we decided to add language to our paper award policies encouraging people to make public their award submissions, though SocArXiv or another non-profit repository. This is an opportunity to disseminate our best work earlier in the research process, and signal our commitment to open access scholarship. Individuals who use SocArXiv to submit their papers for awards will be eligible for a travel award. Look for details in the award nomination announcement.

ASA engagement. The association has a new initiative to increase public engagement with the sections, and asked us to name a Public Engagement Liaison to be available for communicating with media or other interested parties during the year. The Council decided for this year that the Chair would serve in that role, but if it becomes a more involved job we can consider making that a separate position in future years.

Conclusion

I’m excited to start my year as your Chair, and look forward to working with you all over the year and at the meeting in Philadelphia. Please make sure to renew your Section membership (and encourage your colleagues and students to do the same); membership is how we vote for the importance of Sociology of the Family within our association. Feel free to get in touch with me if you have ideas or issues about the section (or anything else!) to discuss: pnc@umd.edu.

Philip N. Cohen
-----

[Volunteer URL if link is broken: https://goo.gl/forms/xPNx1X7aBdykuzgB3]

 The ASA Family Section Distinguished Career Award.
This award recognizes the collective body of a person’s work as it relates to the sociology of the family (not a single publication). Award winners may be selected on the basis of distinguished contributions to either research or service. Service to the field includes developments (such as data sets or analytic techniques) that have had a substantial impact on family research. Please send letters of nomination and the nominee’s CV to Judith Levine (jalevine@temple.edu) no later than March 31, 2017 (extended from March 13, 2017).

The ASA Family Section William J. Goode Book Award.
This award is for a book published on the family in 2015 or 2016. Self-nominations are appropriate. Textbooks and edited volumes are not eligible. Please also arrange for the book’s publisher to send a copy of the book directly to all members of the committee. The deadline to receive the letter of nomination is January 31, 2017. The books may arrive shortly thereafter. Please send a letter of nomination to Wendy Manning (wmannin@bgsu.edu).

• Wendy Manning (Committee Chair), Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403
• Kristin Turney, Department of Sociology, University of California-Irvine, 3151 Social Science Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697-5100
• Julia McQuillan, 709 Oldfather Hall,  Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588-0324
• Andrew Cherlin, Department of Sociology, Mergenthaler Hall, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218
• Susan Stewart, Department of Sociology, 102 East Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011
• Sangyoub Park, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Henderson, Room 218, 1700 SW College Ave. Topeka, KS 66621

 
The ASA Family Section Article of the Year Award.
This award recognizes a journal article that has made a significant contribution to the field of family sociology. The award committee will accept nominations for articles published in 2014, 2015, or 2016. Nominations may be made by the author or others. To nominate an article, please send a letter of nomination (not to exceed one page) that details the contribution of the article to the field of family sociology, as well as an electronic copy of the article, to the chair of the award committee, Kevin Roy (kroy@umd.edu). The deadline for nominations is March 13, 2017. 

The ASA Family Section Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award.
Graduate students are invited to submit an article-length paper on the family. The paper should represent a finished product rather than a proposal for future work. The submission can be based on a course paper, a recently published journal article, a manuscript under review at a journal, or a conference presentation. Co-authored papers are acceptable if all authors are students, although the prize will be shared. The paper must have been written when the author was enrolled in a graduate program. The paper may not exceed 30 pages or 11,000 words. Please send an electronic copy of the paper by March 13, 2017 to Megan Sweeney (msweeney@soc.ucla.edu).

Here are the Family Section's sessions this year. Submit by January 11, 2017, 3pm EST​!

1. Reproduction/Parenthood and Families
2. Families, Health, and Well-Being
3. Family Relationships across the Life Course
4. Family, Work, and Gender
5. New Data and Research Approaches for Studying Families 
6. Race, Ethnicity, Social Class, and Families
7. Section on Sociology of the Family Refereed Roundtables

Check out our conference page for more details about the ASA2017 conference.