according to the united states census bureau, july book sales fell to 707 million, compared to 745 million in july of 2013. it's the 40th anniversary of robert care row's best seller "the power broker." the book about robert moses took seven years, three pushers and two editors before making it into print. >> stay up to date on breaking news about the publishing world by liking us on facebook at facebook.com/book tv. or visit ore webs ask click on news about books. >> marianne cooper, a sociologist at stanford university. with a report on the american family. joined by cheryl sandberg in this one-hour conversation.

>> thank you so much. i am superexcited to be here. i will do the official opening. so, welcome, everyone to this meeting. you can find "inform" automobile. i'm excited to be here. i lived the castro over a decade ago and it's exciting to be back home. and the last time i was here was a few months ago for the mother's day singing rendition of "frozen." and there were hundreds of little girls and boys that marched across the stages in costume and it was really special. this is a different -- equally but more important type of evening, but it's exciting to be back in the castro. i have the great pleasure of introducing a phenomenal woman

and great friend, marianne cooper. marianne is a stanford socialist who works at the institute for gender research, and i first go to know her when she wrote an aural called "the other f-word." any guesses what the word was? female is a good guess. others? feminism. and the article was about women in college, who were taking a feminist studies class but didn't want anyone to call them a feminist, and marianne brought such a sense of humor to the topic and also seriousness with which the issue was raised. then when i was looking for a partner to do the research for "lean in" i met and interviewed marianne, and then had the experience of spending an entire year working together. marian is a special combination of someone who is deeply, deeply, fantastic academic who understands research,

understands methodology, understands what makes research valid and what doesn't. but also has this incredible desire to make the world a better place to make the world more equal for women and make the world more equal for people who don't have the same economic opportunities that they deserve, and that is the passion that comes out in this book. she is also an amazing person and has been a great friend to me, and a great friend to people in this audience. join me in welcoming marianne cooper. [applause] >> we're here tonight to talk about "cut adrift: families in insecure times." the new book just out. talk beside families coping in insecure times and is actually a very swim intimate look at the challenges facing modern families. our goal is to have this

conversation. i real ask marian questions qued you can ask marian questions and hopefully leave with a better funding how to understand economic insecurity that occurs in many different ways and what we can do as a society, and as a community to address it. i'll start at the very beginning. marianne, you're interested in so many things, interested in economic insecurity,ow are interested in the sociological underpinnings of what makes people tick. you're very interested in feminism and gender. and this is remarkable book. as you know, i read it on vacation with my husband, where he thought maybe i would not be reading a book, but i had the galley and couldn't put it down. it was amazing. what led you to write this book at this time? >> i wrote it because a major part of the story of what is happening in our society was missing. so for the past few decades, we know inequality has been on the

rise and security has been on the rise. we now have a hollowed out middle class. families are losing jobs, losing homes. that story is mostly told through statistics. so academics work -- look at tax records and job reports, and what they've concluded it that right now, we have almost unprecedented levels of inequality and insecurity, by some measures things haven't been this bad since the great depression. and that's a pretty dramatic conclusion. but i felt like the dramatic punch wasn't coming across in these statistical tables and charts that so meticulously documented, and so i felt like somebody needed to go and talk to people about how they're coping with this. underneath these hard numbers are people who live out these trends in their everyday lives. so we know more of them are experiencing insecurity, nor of them are on their own to cope

with it but we nope how they're coping and we don't understand how the growing divide between the haves and have notes in our society, changes the way we manage and experience security and insecurity. so, let's start there. as you say, there have been long standing trends which are leading towards economic insecurity, and further income disparity, and i think income insecurity for many families and that is all happening and then 2008 happens and a recession happens. let's start by talking about the overall economic trends. what is happening in the u.s. economy? how did the 2002 recession -- 2008 recession affect us? >> it's a big story. there are lots of books and articles about it. three of the most important things that happened for families is the decline of middle income jobs, what we call a ship in risk, which i can explain, and then growing inequality.

so, it used to be there is an economy based on manufacturing and now it's based on services. 80% of jobs are in the service sector now, and in comparison to manufacturing jobs, service sector jobs are -- they pay less and they come with fewer benefits, and they're much more insecure. and then layered on top of this is that workers no longer have the leverage they once did to collectively bargain for better wages and better working conditions, and that's because unions are on a steep decline. so, after world war ii, and into the 1950s, bad third of employed people were represented by unions and we have reached a any historical low, which is that only 11% of workers are represented by unions. and that also has another effect, which is it's not just that workers can't collectively bargain to get a better deal. it's that this eroded a moral

commitment to fair pay. so used to be, even if you weren't in a union, unions set the wage, and other employers respected that, and that increased the wage for a lot of other people who weren't in unions. so we got a double whammy here, and then the other thing that occurred is what is called the shift in risk, and there's really been a rewriting of the social contract between employers and employees that used to be based on mutual loyalties and mutual detection. so that means that employers gave people good wages and good benefits and in return people worked really hard and used their talent to help build the company. what has happened is that increasingly risk has been offloaded by governments and corporations on to individuals and their families. so if you think about the movement from pensions to 401k. just to share risk with us, now we're on our own to save our own money for retirement and any

scent miscalculations we make. so all of these things have gotten to us a point where the types of jobs that created a thriving middle class in this country are harder to find and harder to hold on to. so it's definitely tougher than it used to be. and families are really experiencing that. the question is, how tough? and that really depends on where you sit in real estate to all -- in relation to all this in the shift in risk and then you have this rise in income and wealth in inequality, and there's highly educated and skilled workers who are doing really way and have good jobs so i these trends play out for different families in different ways. >> our interviewed over 50 families over long periods of time, and what you'll find if you read the book is that the information is detailed and it's intimate. you are not just able to describe how these families are living and what are their situations, but in really deep detail how they feel. why they feel how they feel, which i know as a sociologist

you taught me through the "leap-in process" the underunderlying reason. how did you get 50 families to invite you this deep lie into their lives? >> because i wanted to understand this more personal, emotional side of this, did interviews, and ethnographs, and i want bed interview them about obstacles, and then i followed a smaller group of families flipped a very in-depth way. >> really followed them around. >> really followed them around. like they went here, you went here. >> yes. >> they -- >> i ate dinner with them. i was in the car when we picked up the kids. went to the soccer games. i really got to know them. the hardest part is recruiting the families, and because

specifically it's always hard for people to be in your research. if someone asks you, please say yes because it's really hard. >> then you could have marian in your car when you pick up your kids. >> what was extra hard is that i needed to know what income level someone was in, and in normal personal suspicion action you don't walk up to a stranger and say, how much too you earn? i had to figure out another way of doing this, and i struggled with that for a long time, and then i matter laurie del gad go, who was a cashier at a big box store when i was procrastinating start flowing jeck, and she seemed nice me and solved a problem, because i knew how much she probably made. and i asked to interview her, and i interviewed her, and then she invited know her son's all-star little league tournament game. anoint know how much you know about little league but i learned may more than i ever wanted to know. >> they're really long games. >> they're really long games.

it's really long. sometimes they're not so bad when they lose, because that means you can go home. the parents are dying for something to talk about. >> yes, they are. interesting place. someone should study it. sit neglect stands with her -- this is an all-star team from the working class community that her family lived in. her son was on the team and trying to get a lay of the land, and a kid hits a foul ball and goes into the parking lot where the opposing team's cars are, and laura says, i hope our car doesn't get hit. those are fans fancy cars, and i noticed there were mercedes and bmw and suvs, and i asked where the other people came from, she said it was from one of the most affluent communities in silicon valley, and i realized that was on the baseball field before me was a minute tour version of the story i was -- miniature version of the story i was trying to

tell. i drove home with laura, and she has this aging, beaten up minivan and there's a crack in the window, and i thought to myself, what is it like in one of those nice suvs driving home with one of the opposing team's families. i realize ised the would about a great way to recruit family is. i could tell from the town they were from, what the likely income and wealth level of that family was. so i said, spent the next few weeks going to silicon valley games, sitting in stands, so i come here to a baseball game for a kid and you see someone sitting there, it mite be a standard researcher, not another parent. >> just say yes. >> and i got turned down a few times but a lot of people said yes, and that formed the core of the families that i ended up working with. but from there i started interviewing families, again, 50 families, diverse set of families, from rich to poor, and then once i started figuring out

what the themes were, which i thought were emerging, picked families who were representative of these trends to do in-depth field report to of. this is i when i followed them around and hung out with them. so establishing rapport is an art and science. there are lot of books to read as a social scientist to understand how to establish rapport, but it really starts with genuinely caring about what people have to say. and so i got to know the families really well, and they got to know me. technically they only signed up for me to spend 30 hours with them. i spent a lot more time than that with them and i've been in contact with them since the research began. you know you're in when the kids start swearing in front of you, when a husband rolls his eyes at his wife in front of you. that's you know when you're getting back stage. thought at first people were on their best behavior, but over time they let their guard down.

>> so, you went to these -- from these 50 families, and you were looking for what kind of financial issues they were having and the impact they have. let's start. i know there was a full range of families. what kind of financial issues were these families facing? >> well, all of the 66 i had been reading about came to life, which is why i wanted to do it. so, soaring debt, bankruptcies, foreclosures, all these kinds of things i saw play out. so, with laura delgado, for example, her family is dealing with massive debt, and what their issue was -- she worked as a cashier when i met her but she was in the hid middle of separating with her husband and her husband dealt with long are term unemployment. but they're a case study of the shifting risks. ten years before i met her, her husband worked for a company that didn't offer health insurance so they went without

it, and sadly the worst happened, which is that she had a seizure while she was driving her car and hit a parked car, and fortunately no one else was hurt but she suffered sever veer internallishes and was in intensative care, when she got out of the hospital she was $50,000 in debt for the medical ill bills. and for a family that was just getting by to begin with, this was too much for them to bear. and in the become it plays out with, just the beginning of a series of economic hits. then i saw families dealing with declines in pay. so, in the book i talk about a family, gina, a college graduate, working as an account manager for a technology company, but the technology company started to falter, and they instituted paycut of furlough after paycutment and i saw her in the wake of this really trying to figure out how identify the bills weeing rung up debt on her credit card. she actually illustrates

something that is also important, which is that insecurity is moving up the class ladder, and it's actually moving into -- among people we expect to have secure life. like college graduates. the data shows by 2001, when a college graduate lost their jobs, their earnings often went down by as much as 23% in their next job. so, i saw her on the front lines of that. the then there was the affluent families. not the statistics i was seeing. they have much more secure jobs, not dealing with pay decreases. but the were still worried. think about just hold in your mind this is the -- laura delgado, and then tina, and then kate casper, she and her husband have mbas, their income is $450,000, and i'm talking about college and she is like, oh, we don't have enough savings set aside for college yet. i'm like, how how much do you

have? $140,000. and i was like, okay so tell me about that. and really the issue was, she felt like it was part of her parental obligation she and her husband send their kids to college and pay for it. and she could have said, go to a community college. she could have said you guys pay for it for yourself, but she felt like this was her responsibility. and so night why she felt behind. i began to see that even for people who have a lot of resources, there's a lot of anxiety going on. so, really what i found is that families have to do what i call security work or worry work, to fill this gap between what they earn and what they need. families have always done security work. just daily economic life. but there's a historical context to the kind of security work that we have to do, and right now, in this era, this task of managing insecurity has become,

i would say, harder and more unpredict able -- inunpredictable. >> going from laura delgado to the family that is earning a lot, what were the types of insecurities these families were facing and what were the strategies they were using to deal with them. >> part of that is that people respond to insecurity, both practically and emotionally. this is the real contribution of my book, i think. so as this job is creating security has been transferred on to all of us and our families, people across different social classes, not only do different things. so, affluent families make contributions to their 401ks, and people like laura go without health insurance. they also rely on different emotional coping mechanisms to get by. this is a part of the story that took me a long time to figure out what i was hearing, and i

was out one day, doing something called exercise, before i had children, a long time ago, and i heard this story that really helped clarify or crystallize what it was i was struggling with. a story of a national named timothy beauers. 62 years old and had been laid off from his job, a driver for a drug manufacturers and after three years of barely getting by, he came up with a plan to get by until he was old enough to receive his full social security benefits. so he went down to a local bank and he handed a teller a stickup note for $80, and then he turned at the money over to the secure guard and waited for the police arrive and arrest him. and at his trial, he told the judge that a three year sentence at a minimum security prison would, quote, suit him frighten, because upon his release from prison he would be old enough to

receive his full social security benefits. "the new york times" describes him as an honest to goodness visionary in the realm of retirement planning. but his lawyers actually saw what he did differently and his lawyer said, after struggling to find a job with benefits he finally said to hell with it. so, at his hearing, which is near his 63rd birthday, the judge behind handed the him down the sentence and said it's a sad day when someone thinks this is your only alternative, and she gave him a birthday present, exactly what he want, here to-year jail term at a manipulate security pin prison, and i stood on the side of the road for a while and i was like, how does someone come to feel that going to jail this perfect birthday gift. how is it that he could work on his emotions enough or that his situation was so bad that this became an idea where he was like, i'm going to do it.

this is a really good way to go. he was talking himself into something because this is the reality he had to cope with. and that let know understand that families are really coping with insecurity not just by what they do but also by what they feel and how they're manage their feelings within all this. so, we're actually kind of doing security, we're doing it with our head and our hearts. >> talk about some of the specific security work. so, from the delgados to the wealthier families, the specific ways of sharing -- share with us the specific ways of why they felt insecure. what they felt insecure about. one of the most interesting things i found in the book is reference points matter a lot. you and i talk about is in a lot for men. a lot of what happens in the work force is reference points. people have expectations of what gender can be, and therefore

they put those on and those create assumptions that women fight very hard against, men are trapped in those as well. there's a lot in your book about reference points and expectations. can you talk about those from the different families? >> yes. so, to start with, though, from talking with families, i realized we're all weighed down by something very similar, the anxiety generated by hard times. so, from technology executives to domestic workers, everyone feels insecure. they're just feeling it and dealing with it differently. what i found among affluent families they want more and more and more, and in response to all this insecurity that's the way they're responding, and middle class and working class families are trying to get themselves to be okay with less. so, i talked to paul motte, and despite having assets that were over a million dollars he said he didn't feel financially secure. he said i know i'm in the top one percent i don't feel rich.

i came out of my interview like -- you know, and then on the other hand, you have laura delgado, who in many ways -- she cashier in the middle of the separation with her husband 50, thousand in debt, who in many ways is less worried than paul motte. and that's because, unlike paul, she has actually stopped hoping for more. she has kind of scaled back her definition of security. really just the basics. food, shelter, and clothing. and she also filters out the bad news by only focusing on the positive. she would say to her kids, don't whine and complain. don't throw yourself a pity party. focus on the positive and move forward. one time she said to me, having

nothing isn't always a bad thing. i was like, really? so, what i realized is that -- this is kind of a common thing i was finding among struggling middle class and working class families, is that they were trying to make the insecurity they faced more tolerable. so, i -- one time laura couldn't keep up with paying the electricity bill so the heat was turned off, and she said to me, it's okay, it's like we're camping. so she took what really is a symbol of insecurity, the lack of heat, and repackaged it as a symbol of security, like family bonding. so, affluent families lose the opposite direction. which is instead of trying to accommodate themselves to greater insecurity, they were going to build an economic firewall that protected their

family. that's where you get this wanting more and more and more. and they were particularly concerned about their children. i don't know how many time is heard that. india and china are on the rise and our kids no longer have a competitive advantage, just being from the united states. they -- to address this one father said i took my son with me on a business trip to china so he could see our our people in asia work so their kids could see what was coming other. family took their daughters on a tour of a call center? india to understand the forces of globalization, and they said to them if you don't have a skill set that is unique or new jersey set that is unique, your job is going to end up in another country. which is probably terrifying to hear when you're ten. right? so, these families -- i hope i'm conveying it but a lot of

anxiety. among the wealthiest family is talked to, they needed a net worth north of so millionbefore they felt really fortunately secure, and so all of this is to say that the dividing lines among us are not just economic. they're also emotional. in terms of how we're defining security. >> one of the thing yours book brings out is there a lot of coping mechanism and she sociology behind how people experience this, which is actually exacerbating inequality that starts the circle. so it's a self-reinforcing cycle that there's increasing income disparity. there's increasing economic insecurity actually wherever you are in the economic spectrum, and then there are behaviors which come out of that that which reinforce the trend which create more insecurity and more disparity. thank you explain how that works? >> it's like we know inequality is growing and most of us think it's bad. so why are we complicit in it?

think from the research i realize, because we're all just head down. focused on our own situation. that leads to responses like laura's, where she kind of talks herself through this anxiety. and in doing that she is actually compensating for the very inequality that createdded the hardship she has to endure. and so she is talking herself through this. working on her feelings, and what this ends up doing is preventing her from taking a critical stance towards the system that she is in. and instead of saying i can't believe i don't have health care and sass a result of that, i'm $50,000 in debt. she blames herself and it's like, i think i should just try to save more. so, you have that response on one hand and then on the other hand you have paul motte, who is not satisfied with what he has. and he is pushing for more because he wants to insulate his children from this, wants to position them against a word he sees as increasingly insecure.

so laura pulling one way and paul pulling another. so they're exacerbating the problem. so in response to all this insecurity, what is happening is that the rich don't think they have enough, and they're striving for more, and everybody else realizes they can't do much about their situation, so they're lowering their expectations and trying to get through. so we actually make inequality worse. then because we're all kind of busy treading water in our -- by coping in our own separate ponds we actually fail to come together with the collective world to stop this. >> one thing -- there are were great examples in your book about the role religion plays, and i think one of the central these siss of your book is -- theses of your book is there isn't a safety net there used to be. there isn't a safety net provide bid collective bargaining or provided by long-term employers, and our fathers generation, people went to work for one company, and they often stayed that whole -- their whole lives.

doesn't happen frequently anymore. and there isn't the government safety net that past generations had. and so as a result, that safety northwest is not there and people look elsewhere. one of the most, i think, optimistic things in the book is the role religion plays. that the communities that some religions are enabled to facilitate to really be that safety net for people. >> there are a lot of religious families, from top to bottom, that i talked to, but the ones that really for security focus on religion were working class and poor families that were in real economic trouble. and they turned to their churches for social support. food and shelter and clothing. but they also relied on their faith for what i would say is psychological comfort. so, their beliefs that god provides, that god has a plan for them. god reward third faithful with

material blessings provided a lot of comfort in what are really difficult circumstances. so this story is told through the salal family, an immigrant family from samoa, and the mother, who worked as a domestic worker, would often say to my, i don't know how i'd make it without the church. and the church gave them diapers for their kids, and several times when they were short on rent the church provided some money. and she would always say, the lord has a plan for me. when she would get really, really stressed out she would pray the lord would find a way for her, and so when that happens, like when a friend of hers brought some food during a week that was really tight, and they didn't have enough money to buy food, some interpret that as god looking out for them. what is interesting is i never had someone at the top say, my 41k went up by 20% last year, god is really blessing me. so, god works in different ways for different people. [laughter]

and it was a remarkable thing to see this church community really rallying behind the family. but this actually gets wrack to the point about the shift in risk, which is that welfare provision has increasingly gone outsourced from the federal government, out to the states and then out to faith-based organizations. the evidence is inconsistent whether or not this is actually the best approach. but the problem that i think this creates is that often times, as safety nets have been rolled up, churches are the only place for people to turn. which creates a context for people might feel like they need to say things or believe things they don't necessarily believe, and i don't think this should be the only place where families can turn. these support systems we need create new institutions that address these new realities, so that this isn't the only haven

in a heartless world. what was interesting about the havens -- you told the story through the family, the immigrant family, where that -- they were both the givers and receivers of the safety net from each other. there were periods and opinions in time i where they needed extra money for represent, basic needs they otherwise other could have lost their home and the church provided that. then one of the thing that kept them from saving and building up a safety northwest is that, in the times when they that a little extra they would give back to their community. >> yes. >> there was a pretty strong sense of those people not being alone, which i found a very optimistic, and it's a perfect segway because we're a country of immigrants, you know. all of our families, every single one of us at some point in time our family is immigranted here and we came here for better lives, and that is the american dream. the american dream is you leave wherever you come from, come here, work hard, get an education, and the next generation is better off than yours. that was the american dream of

this family, the american dream of my great-grandparents who came here, and all of us. what is happening? what is happening to the american dream? >> i think it's just a dream. so, the american dream has long been equated with moving up the ladder and owning a home. so for that to happen people have to think those goals are attainable. what i found was that people had let go of their dreams because something outside of their control, like a layoff or an uninsured medical emergency, had come along and blown it for them. in that context, having a long-term goal is not only pointless, it's painful. you're literally setting yourself up for disappointment. so i think people are, instead of looking out and thinking about their dreams, they're head down, protecting themselves, in

this environment. people used to think that working hard would translate into moving up. that's really fallen by the way side. we're starting to see interesting changes in surveys about the american dream. so, people are much more focused now on holding on to what they have than they are with moving up. and other surveys are finding that the desire to own a home has been replaced by a desire to be debt-free. and a desire for financial stability. and all of this makes sense. they're perfectly rational responses to the historical moment. but an insecure society has a huge personal and societal cost. it really limits people's ability to dream. i think that's the moment we're in. >> so, obviously economic growth, and an economy that is growing, and an inclusive way is one answer. what are some of thens answers?

what should businesses be doing, individuals be doing? how do we -- if the american dream has become just a dream and i don't think that's a place any of us want to live -- how do we restart, reinvigorate the american dream? make it more american and less dream? >> i think the deal with the fact we're falling apart we have to pull together. and part of doing that is realizing that it does not have to be this way. and so when people experience insecurity, they often experience it like a personal failure. like they've done something wrong. the reality is that they didn't do anything wrong. policy has failed them. and policy ushered in the age of insecurity and policy will be the only thing to get us out. this is a conversation about morals and values. and i think we have to have some standard in our country, like if you work full time you should

not live in poverty, period. [applause] >> if i can wade, wasn't an example in your book but it's pertinentment if you serve our country in uniform you shouldn't live in poverty. >> no. >> if you are a teacher in our schools, if you are someone who is providing emergency services and risking your life to fight fires, police, these people who are doing these jobs, which are so important to all of us, again, you go back to the people in uniform, living below the poverty line, not able to support their families, it's unamerican. >> one thing we should not tolerate. it's unamerican, and so is the idea that if someone gets in a car accident, that after that they should be under so much medical debt that it destroys them financially. that doesn't just fake them. that affects their kids. so i think we need to return to

the values that led to policies that created a middle class in our country. just to be very clear, we have only had one time in our society where we have had a thriving middle class. just once. and so it was programs that were based on these values that we are much better off when we stand together. we are much better off when we provide security to one another in both good times and bad. standing alone doesn't get anyone anywhere. so, those are the kinds of policies we need to return to, and it's a laundry list you kind of hear. we need living wages. we need affordable child care, we need affordable health care, affordable college education, and people say it's too expensive to have all those things. i we tell you it's too expensive not to. and to add to the list, education. equal education no matter where you're from in this country you should be able to if you go do school and you should be able to

go to could and learn and read and write good a way that prepares you to have these things. as a society i think we have -- we are turning our back too quickly and too often and losing ourself in the weeds in an owed indication debate and not staying focused on neighboring we know as society an enormous percentage of our children do not get what would be a standard education almost anywhere necessary the world, and it's something we need fix. >> wore throwing away our natural resources. essentially what we're doing. i also season we have such inequality among schools -- one of the reasons families are in so much debt is they're take only these big mortgages. people take on big mortgages for a few reasons. one of the main ones is for families to get into a good school district. they're literally mortgaging they're financially's future to get their did -- they know how important its. if we had better schools across

the board, we would reduce that desire, and it's understandable desire. really puts families on he n edge. i'll ask one more question and then we'll turn to the oddins go keep them to be questions and keep them short we have a chance for a lot of of people to participate. we're both very passionate about inequality and opportunity, and we're very passionate about women, and one thing that runs clear in this book, which runs clear in all the research we did for "lean in" is that women are increasingly important in bread winning in their families. women still bear an enormous percentage of the homework, housework and child care no matter what they're doing in terms of the work force. and so women are really facing an unbelievable -- unbelievably large part of this pressure. >> especially for middle class and working class families. for these types of families,

dealing with insecure is common place. all these families are dealing with layoffs or declines in pay. and when i would interviews the families, i get these his version and her version. >> that doesn't happen in anyone else's house here, right? there's only one version. >> or like my family, his version, her version, and the sociological version. >> right. >> so i -- jennifer was dealing with pay going down, scrambling to dealing with it. interviewed her and she was very stressed out and she was talking about how it was one of the worst times in her live. -- in her life and led to her having insomnia. so the day i interviewed her she had been awake since 3:00 a.m. that morning, and so then i went to interview her husband, sam, and i expected him to kind of have that same reaction, and he was pretty light-hearted.

it's hard but we just didn't go out to dinner and just cut back here and there. skim like, this is really interesting. then i kept finding the same pattern. and so the wife would say, i really wish you would worry more, and the husband would say, she's so good at doing it, she should do it. the worrying. the worrying. and the managing of the household finances and all that. so i came to see is in these families, the women played the role of what i called the designated worry 'er. the designated worriyer -- maybe not even designatessed. >> the husbands are like, you're so awesome, you do it. so, they function as the security guard for their family. and the issue is that, as you said, women are doing the first shifts, going to work, doing more offer the second shift-child care and house care, and i realize they're doing more offer what i call the insecurity

shift. the nights of worrying. and because -- this is the time of work that is becoming more common in families, as families increasingly experience destabilizing events, more offer them are having homes where they have to react and grapple with this. what this is linked to is actually the im -- improving situation of educated women and the declining situation of less outside indicated men. the women were married to men who only had a high school degree and not a college degree. so they outashe their husbands and/or had more education. so as insecurity movers up in the class ladder, when insecurity strikes it's a woman who is best position to deal with it and this created a lot of stress and conflict in these marriages. other research is finding this as well. it is women who figure out when to file for bankruptcy, it's women who deal with foreclosure notices. it's women who negotiate with bill collectors, and they're

dealing with the stress and depression related to it. heard a lot of women say, i'm on antidepressants. i'm drinking too much. or in gina's case, she wasn't sleeping at night, and late sher was diagnosissed with clinical depression. this is as you say, the direction our families are head in the. real problem for women. >> we're going to turn now to the audience participation. reminder, this program is present bid the commonwealth clubs. i'm cheryl sandberg and we're here with marian cooper. your question. >> hi, marianne, great to be here. my names rocksan. my question is about thinking about practical solutions for the financial insecurity especially that the middle class and lower class face. i was wondering about your opinion of the sharing economy,

uber, people can use theirs existing resources to help supplement their income, and sometimes actually real. >> substantially with uber-and lift, they can make quite a lot of money. i wonder if you think that could be a solution that will actually have an effect or if it's not that -- not enough. >> i think it's having a positive effect. i was just talking with an uber-driver in new york city me and talked about how much earnings increased. really substantially. like by thousands of dollars each month and it was changing life. so this mid-le might be on to something. the problem is that the issues that families are grappling with, it's not one thing. it's everything together. because if -- doesn't matter if he is earning more money if he doesn't have halve insuringan if he getness a car accident. might have a little more savings but it's not going to be the $50,000 he needs. so, that's what we need be

thinking about, is whap what kind of solids foundation that we can give families to create economic security. because that foundation is what is going to lead to economic opportunity. >> thank you. >> speak offering the gender imbalance in the work force, noticed a lot of retribution from trying to speak ute about it. what can remover the stigma of coming out of this, especially as a teenager. >> i've never been worried about it. [applause] >> i think you -- how would i say this -- you need to be on the right side of history, and when you realize had feminism actually is, i think everyone should call themselves a feminist. >> its goes to the point that one of the main points of the book, which is so beautifully written and so well-documented

and researched, insecurity is affecting all of us, no one is escaping. we're very few people are escaping these insecure times and it's creating the problems we seek to solve in the ways marianne explained. the insecurity is keeping people who could be understanding and feeling more giving to other groups, they're feeling nervous so they're building financial moats around them and other people are giving up their hopes and dreams. it's the same thing with gender inequal. marianne and i talk about the tyranny of low expectations. that we think it's a big issue when women took over the senate, women -- sorry -- women won 20% of the seats in the senate and headlines said, women take over the senate. they're like, no, no, 20%, not a takeover. if men -- [laughter] [applause] >> let's reverse that.

if men won 20% of the states in the takeover, someone write the led hundred for me. men taking over the senate? so expectations are so big here, and we should expect that we are feminists, member and women, because it's -- men and women because it's better for all of us. to marianne's point on economic insecurity, all of us providing more safety it in for everyone is beneficial for the whole society. all of us, men and women, coming together on gender inequal is better for everyone. the answer is, i'm a feminist and you should be, too. because it's better for you. >> thank you. >> my name is peter, and miss cooper, you talk about family security. as a vietnam era veteran, 35 years ago i learned about a federal bill in the congress that would have challenging you between 18 and 19, mails and

females to consider doing some kind of community service or military service or unpaid volunteerism through a one year dialogue with friends and family and basic feetback. since 9/11, my sociological paradox is i have over 2,000 photos with speakers like you and only one percent provides feedback. 99 percent of them remain silent. seems to be the only way is from the sociological method way to create a webs that challenges feedback from these experts. is that something that stanford or you might be considering provide something feedback on towards creating? >> sure. yes. bring it on. >> thank you. >> hi, marianne, thank you so much for the terrific and insayingful research.

you talked about the importance of a us standing closer together and wholeheartedly agree. if how optimistic you are we will be standing close together and why in 30 years time, and why. >> i'm another are optimistic because inequal is something people are starting to talk about more, and i really believe that the first step is like we head to mitt we have a problem. and now we need to create our 12 step plan to get through it. so i think it's -- i'm optimistic because i think we realize we have a problem. and i think even business leaders are starting to realize, if we don't have strong middle class we can't sell stuff. and that's bad news for a consumer-driven economy. so, i mean, i'm a sociologist. so we're a depressing lot. i don't ever get super optimistic about things -- >> sometimes you can get her

there sometimes she does. >> have i ever sent you something optimistic? i doubt it. >> sometimes. no. >> no, no. >> wait. you get optimistic about understanding. so when you get most optimistic i when there's a problem that people aren't understanding or aren't understanding the root of, because you believe, and i think you taught me, that if you can understand the root of something you, you can change it. >> yes, die believe that. >> i'm as optimistic as a sociologist can be. >> thank you. >> hi. my name is julie. i'm a rising psych at the university of chicago. one point you discussed was a raising cost of colleges which is a hot button issue amongst my generation. there was recently an article in "the new york times" about this, how colleges are still very much an erain na for the- -- arena for the elite because theirs expensive. the cost of colleging is rising

every year do you think college plays a role in the inequality between elites sending their children to these top schools and you mentioned you think a solution is feasible and you think that colleges will remain very much in the -- place for the elite? >> it is a key, central problem, in all of this. if you have a group of kids whose parents position them -- spend their entire lives positioning them to get in this schools and then pay for all of and it, then other kids who can't even pay their tuition at community colleges, this is exacerbating the problem and hurts us as a country. the rates of middle class students and working class students enroll and graduate frogging from college has again down, the exact opposite of what we want. this is a huge problem and a real complicated answer. one of the main things that created the middle class in our country is the g.i. bill, and

the g.i. bill not only paid for the education, also paid for money to support the dependents of the veterans. so we head -- that's what created the middle class. we mad millions of people going to college. so dismiss kind of program like that -- if some kind of program like that, innovates never different ways, maybe college can be less than four years, maybe we can have people have -- there's been a lot of discussion about trade schools and vocational tracts, things that provide people with the scope they need. definitely part of the story. >> thank you. >> hi. i have a question for missoundsberg. i was listening to npr and there was -- another round of applause. i mean, that's not optimistic,

what is -- i. that not optimistic, what is? >> true. >> it are you were recently talking about how when boys are bossy, they're considered leaders. >> they're not bossy. they're leaders. >> yes. but when girls are bossy, they're considered the foul b word. so, i mean, people say i'm a bossy person, so that's -- >> wait, wait, another around round of applause. [applause] >> and i was just curious, when you were breaking the barrier, were you ever looked down upon because of your gender? >> yes. marianne and i did all this research together and'll turn it over to her, but the opinion is that we have again different expectations and expectations so important, and when poise lead they're called leaders, when girls lead they're called bossy, and that is communicating we

don't want girls to lead and that's is cutting off opportunities the same way economic insecurity and inequality cuts off opportunity so do these really hard, really deeply felt gender stereotypes. the good news is that, again, with marianne's help and research, we can understand and it change it. and if there's anything we all could think is optimistic is someone who is twelve, getting up to this mic, after watching npr, who is being told not to choose bossy but that she has executive leadership skills, congratulations. >> thank you. [applause] >> i am a tech entrepreneur so go facebook. and i have a -- really want to dig into the observations you made, getting to see a wide cross spectrum of families and people. and so you made an observation that at the folks on the lower

end of the spectrum were a little more offer accepting and made the best of the situation and the folks at the upper end were paranoid and wanted more to buffer things. do you think that -- i know a few people that are on all ends of the spectrum as well, and the people that are more middle class are much more chill and happy and often pleasant to be around, and those that are climbing, have this productive paranoia, go, go, go, want to do everything at once. in your observation do you think there's a core personality trait that these folk has since they were five or do you think it's sort of a result of events or what do you think leads to all this? >> i don't think sociologists believe in personality. right? in the sense that what leads to outcomes. it's all structural. all the forces that come upon us.

and that we are actually creating -- we create ways of acting in our children. so, for example, i had gone to this middle school graduation in an affluent neighborhood in silicon valley, and they asked the children to create their future trajectory, and they were all on the wall at the graduation and i ran over and i was like -- my soal senses lit up. they had where they're going to high school, going to college, graduate school, what they're going to do good the their lives and then retire. they had a clear map of educational system in our country, at ten or 11 than most other americans do. so, it's because of the opportunities that those kids have and the role models they have and the things they're being asked to do in class, all of that shapes who you are as' person and what your traits are. in a world that you have control over, it's really easy to be a

go-getter. when you have all the resource and your parents can pay for your private school tuition, it's not that hard in a certain senses. so i don't believe that the personality traits are leading this families down different roads. i think it's the opportunities they have and the conditions and the choices that are presented to them. >> cool. thank you. >> you get our very last question. >> uh-oh. i hope you find me to be a good one. in trying to explain the rise in insecurity over the last 25, 30, 35 years, the increase in healthcare costs has been talked about a lot. but in my line of work -- i'm in supplemental eye outside indication service. parents spend a tremendous another of money on private

schooling or just moving to neighborhoods with better schools. so what i'd like to foe is, based on your research, how significant is -- has there been an increase in amount that -- money that parents spend on precollege education and how significant is it? my observation suggests it is. ...

data gives children an edge when they get to kindergarten. thank you and it was a great last question. [applause] and the informed tradition all speakers are asked, mary anne what is your 62nd idea to change the world? >> i think what would really change the world is if people came to see that their individual person out experiences are reflections of a much larger force. i think most of the time