Miller Amanda Jayne - Cohabitation nation: gender, class, and the remaking of relationships

Many individuals and organizations made our collaboration possible, and we would like to express our thanks to them. Our greatest debt is to the Columbus couples who shared their relationship stories with us, opening up their lives and describing in such rich detail their joys, frustrations, and dreams for the future. We also want to acknowledge the assistance of Sarah Favinger, our third interviewer, who helped make this endeavor possible when one of us had other obligations. Finally, both Sharon Sassler and Amanda Miller were beneficiaries of various awards from The Ohio State University, from the Seed Grant that provided start-up money for this project, to several research fellowships that supported Amanda during the interview, transcribing, and analysis phases.

We are also grateful to Naomi Schneider for pushing us gently along, understanding when being too popular was beyond our limits, and her helpful suggestions. During the course of writing, Suzanne Nichols also provided very helpful suggestions and encouragement. We also owe a debt of gratitude to Paula England for her extremely cogent and careful reading of our initial draft.

We both are indebted to mentors, colleagues, and students, who helped make the research process meaningful and rich.

I would like to acknowledge Fran and Calvin Goldscheider, who have long served as role models in life, as well as in academia. Despite having numerous students, Fran was an exemplary advisor and dissertation chair, always generous with helpful comments, gently directing me toward new studies to enrich my work and never complaining that I had difficulty mastering when to use possessive apostrophes. Her work continues to influence my research in ways large and small, as well as how I approach teaching. Calvin, my masters thesis advisor, challenged me to think comparatively when I first arrived at Brown University, provided me with a rigorous background in my second area of interest, race and ethnicity, and pushed me to improve my arguments and written work. I look forward to many more years of intellectual and personal engagement with them. My colleagues from graduate school days at Brown, especially Ann Biddlecom, have long provided nourishment of all kinds as we pursue our various professional paths, and I cherish our gatherings at various meetings.

Several people played important encouraging roles when I initially embarked on this qualitative project. First, I would like to thank the cohabitors I interviewed in New York City when I began this project in 2000, several of whom still keep in touch with updates on their relationships, moves, careers, and families. Verta Taylor, who at the time was a professor at Ohio State, gave me the soundest of advice as I mulled whether to embark on qualitative research, including her admonition not to give up my day job and put aside quantitative work. Pamela Stone at Hunter College has been a constant source of wise counsel and guidance over the years, initially as my department chair and subsequently as someone who shared tips and strategies for morphing into a qualitative researcher, and advice on how to pick the best editor. Wendy Manning played a key role in encouraging me to just go for it and embark on a project that would ask flesh and blood people questions about how their relationships began and progressed. She continues to be the first source for new developments in cohabitation and other evolving relationship forms. Various cohabitation scholars, particularly Kara Joyner and Susan Brown and others at Bowling Green State Universitys Center for Family and Demographic Research and at the U.S. Census Bureau have also provided feedback and support for various components of this book. Jennifer Holland and Helga de Valk provided a welcoming environment in The Hague during the drafting of the earliest version of this book, as did many others at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute.

Of course, an academic life is enriched by collaboration with smart, funny collaborators, and I have been blessed with many of these. Among those I am most indebted to for providing the best advice, picking up slack when I dropped the ball, celebrating successes, and making me laugh when I needed it are Kristi Williams, Jennifer Glass, and Yael Levitte. I have also been fortunate to work with an amazing group of former students and current collaborators, including Fenaba Addo, Katherine Michelmore, and Dela Kusi-Appouh. My colleagues at Cornell have also provided encouragement and support; I am particularly thankful to be in the same department as Kelly Musick, Laura Tach, Rachel Dunifon, Matt Hall, Maureen Waller, and Chris Wildeman, and for supportive campus demographers like Lindy Williams.

The opportunity to work with creative and talented graduate students is among the best perks of being a professor. I was particularly fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Amanda Miller from the very beginning of her graduate school days at Ohio State. Without her hard work, willingness to invest so much sweat equity in a project initiated by a junior faculty with not much of an established track record, insight into the processes we were exploring, and amazing sense of balance and humor, we would never have completed this project. I have truly enjoyed our journey together, through several states (and countries) and schools as well as ranks. I look forward to working with and learning from her on many future projects.