Ralph LaRossa
Ph.D., New Hampshire, 1975
Professor
Family, Gender, Theory, Fatherhood, Culture and Cognition, Qualitative and Historical Methods
Email : rlarossa@gsu.edu
Room: 1055
Telephone Number : (404) 413-6507
Full Vita (PDF version)
Research and Teaching Interests
Ralph LaRossa joined the sociology department in 1975, after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire. Since then he has taught a variety of courses, to include: Qualitative Methods, Cognitive Sociology, Family Sociology, Birth and Parenthood, Family Violence, Writing for Publication, and Introductory Sociology. He is the director of the department's Family, Health, and Life Course program, and a member of the Gender and Sexuality program. He also is an affiliate faculty member in the college's Women's Studies Institute.
Dr. LaRossa is the author of Conflict and Power in Marriage: Expecting the First Child; Transition to Parenthood: How Infants Change Families (with Maureen Mulligan LaRossa); Becoming a Parent; and The Modernization of Fatherhood: A Social and Political History. He is also the editor of Family Case Studies: A Sociological Perspective, and a co-editor of the Sourcebook of Family Theories and Methods: A Contextual Approach (with Pauline Boss, William Doherty, Walter Schumm, and Suzanne Steinmetz). He has received grants from the National Science Foundation (principal investigator) and National Institutes of Health (co-investigator) in support of research on the social realities of fatherhood during the Machine Age (1918-1941) and on the experience of becoming a father in contemporary society. His most recent publications have focused on the history of fatherhood in post-World II America; the transition to parenthood; the social construction of the life course, the symbolic connection between fatherhood and baseball; the changing culture of fatherhood in comic strip families; the political economy of Father's Day and Mother's Day; the social transformation of childhood in the early twentieth century; and the theorizing process in qualitative research.
Dr. LaRossa is the founder of the Qualitative Family Research Network, sponsored by the National Council on Family Relations, and was the Chair of the NCFR Theory Construction and Research Methodology Workshop in 1985, and the NCFR Program Vice President in 1997. He currently serves as a Deputy Editor for the Journal of Marriage and Family.
