American families of every economic level struggle with balancing work and child rearing, Prof. Karen Hansen (SOC) told a predominantly female audience of about 50 on Wednesday. To pull it off, many utilize resources outside their immediate family, she said.Those were the findings she published in her March 2005 book, Not-so-Nuclear Families: Class, Gender, and Networks of Care, which she discussed at this year's first Meet the Author event.

"There is a labor shortage in households as more men and women work full-time," Hansen said. "They scramble to find networks of care, as the hours of the school day do not equal those of a work day."

Through extensive interviews, Hansen concluded that families rely heavily on friends and relatives to help raise their school-age children. She interviewed four families that spread the socioeconomic spectrum.

"Nationwide data shows families rely on kin and friends more than day-care, babysitters, etc., she said. "That goes unrecognized."

Hansen interviewed a working-class single mother forced to move each time she finds a new job. The mother depends on the support she receives from her extended relatives, who follow her and her son wherever they go, Hansen reported.

In addition, she explained that while society expects mothers to juggle their careers with their families, fathers also make sacrifices in their work for the family.

The experience of one upper-class family, Hansen said, shows that full-time working parents share the stress of balancing raising their children with their careers.

In one interview, Hansen observed the DeVaul parents, both lawyers, scrambling to find a babysitter for their son. Because they each had court appearances to make and no one in their network of care was available, Mr. DeVaul ultimately decided to miss work to stay with their son.

Hansen proposed that schools and workplaces do a better job to accommodate the schedules of busy parents.

Following the talk, Hansen took questions from the audience. Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe, also the Fred C. Hecht professor in economics, asked about the limits Hansen found in her qualitative research method. She responded that using personal interviews to study relationships may not be representative of the entire population.

Hansen has taught sociology and women's studies at Brandeis since 1989. She received the Dean of Arts and Sciences Mentoring Award this year, a $1,000 prize for excellence in advising graduate students.

She is also the author of Families in the U.S.: Kinship and Domestic Politics (1998), A Very Social Time: Crafting Community in Antebellum New England (1994) and Women, Class, and the Feminist Imagination: A Socialist-Feminist Reader (1990).

The series, coordinated by the Office of Communications, will run through November.