Rethinking Families: A Slow Journey

It is an honor for me to join with colleagues who are thinking about the value and facets of slow sociology. I agree that there is far too much pressure to push paper off one’s desk—to write grants and to produce ever more publications rather than slowing down “to reap the creative fruits of intellectual crop rotation,” as Judith Stacey (2007, 96) wrote in a book I coedited on public sociology. These pressures are mounting, as job markets constrict and universities become more dependent on external support (whether from federal institutes, private foundations, or wealthy donors). Such pressures intensify