A Short Biography on Lillian Rubin

On January 13th, 1924, Lillian B. Rubin was born in Philadelphia Pennsylvania to Sol and Rae Breslow.. She grew up with one brother. Her father died was she was only 5 years of age, leaving her mother, whom had come from Eastern Europe to America to provide for her children alone. At a young age, she moved to New York City. It was here that her mother began working in the garment industry. From a young age, she as well as her brother held jobs to help the family make ends meet. Her mother also impressed upon the need for her to find a good husband; one that would take care of her, and ensure a good future. Rubin did not understand why her mother would insist she do this, rather than her go to college. Rubin figured her mother had learned from the loss of her own husband that her daughter should grow up to become educated and independent. Her mother insisted that her brother go to college. Rubin struggled with the inequality between she and her brother. Throughout her childhood, she felt like an outcast. Her struggles then were not due to gender, but her poverty status. Her family moved frequently, and she often felt as though she did not fit in.

By the age of 15 in 1939, Rubin graduated from high school, when she then was promoted to a job as a secretary. She continued to do office work, until her mother’s life long dream had been granted. She was married at the age of 19 to a man of the middle-class by the name of Seymour Katz, whose career had just begun. This was the starting point of her political involvement. Her father in law was a European Marxist. She soon too saw the world through a Marxist and socialist lens.

Rubin had one daughter from this marriage. She spent some of her time becoming politically active, as well as raiding her daughter. By 1951, she moved to Los Angeles. Here she continued to raise her daughter as well as become more politically active. Her marriage ended in 1960. Two years after her first marriage ended, she was married again to Henry Rubin. She then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area of California. She enjoyed the thought of leaving her political involvement behind. After she had her family well set up, she soon felt the urge to do something with her life. Her daughter was busy growing up, school, and friends; while her husband was busy with his career. Rubin soon became curious as to how she would spend her days.

Her first aspirations for a career of her own began from her desires to become a lawyer. During her activism in Los Angeles, she had seen some in action and wished to become one. She deliberated over a span of many months, consulting her husband and friends. She was hesitant because in order for her to become a lawyer, she would have to be accepted into UC Berkley, as well as attend school with people only a few years older than her daughter. Relentlessly, she applied and awaited a response from the University. She was soon accepted at the age of 31.

In January of 1963, she began her first freshman year of college. This would be the first time in 25 years that she would have an in class education. She had to relearn skills she was rusty on, as well as gain new ones along the way. She was off to a rough start and earned Cs and Ds in her freshman English class. She felt discouraged but returned to college for a second year. She would soon learn that subjects in the class were certainly not the same as out of the class.

In 1964, a new movement began at UC Berkley. The campus was flooded with students who were holding a police car captive. This was the start of the free speech movement, and it would soon infect many college campuses around the country. With this movement growing, she felt as though she could be both a student as well as an activist, a role she had thought she would have to give up as a student. Her life as an academic, as well as an activist was finally unraveling.

As her college career progressed, so did her career path. Her desire changed from wanting to become a lawyer, to eventually earning her Ph. D. in sociology understand. She was encouraged to take some graduate classes as an undergraduate. She struggled through some of them, as the lingo was foreign and difficult to understand. She graduated with her BA at the age of 43. She would soon start her graduate work at Berkley. The ratio of men to women as significantly large, but not large enough to create the problems that women faced in a year from her entrance. The women’s liberation movement would come a year later. By the end of writing her dissertation, Rubin wanted to be trained in clinical psychology to further her understanding. She did not expect to be using her clinical training for the purpose in which it was meant, but soon she became a psychotherapist and a sociologist. In 1971, at the age of 47, Rubin received her Ph. D. She has an interesting perspective, as she may look at issues from a sociological as well as a psychological perspective.

Since receiving her Ph. D. Rubin has published a total of eleven books, many essays, and articles. She is currently working on yet another book entitled The Golden Years? You Gotta Be Kidding. She dedicated numerous hours of every week to her practice of psychotherapy until recently. She also remained as an activist for quiet some time post achieving her Ph. D. Rubin has also found a new passion for painting. She works in her studio on her art. She is currently 83 years old, as continues to work diligently as it is her passion, residing in the San Francisco area. She is often asked if she regrets not starting her career earlier in her life. She proudly says that, she “ was the product of her time and place”. Dr. Rubin certainly does have an array of accomplishments from being a successful mother, to a renowned writer and doctor.

Sources:
1. Hochschild, Arlie R. Women and the Power to Change. University of Nevada P, 1994.
229-247.

2. "Lillian B. Rubin." 19 Oct. 2005. 15 Feb. 2007 .

3. Rubin, Lillian. E-Mail interview. 26 Feb. 2007.

The way Lillian Rubin became an Academic

The destiny of Lillian Rubin was not to become an academic. Her mother believed that she would work until she found a husband that would take her, while she bore children and maintained the family. Her mother, along with the rest of societal constraints believed that post high school education was for men. Rubin worked for wages that would go toward her brothers education and not her own. From her first marriage, her father in law, a self-taught man who was involved with politics and sociology became her first influence. She often listened to what he had to say, and became particularly interested.

During the 50’s she was inspired by lawyers who, despite their loss in handsome salaries and dignity from their profession, defended victims from “the witch hunt of the McCarthy era” (Hoschild 1975, p. 232). She viewed these lawyers as heroes who defended those who society had excluded. These dreams lead her to applying to UC Berkeley, and at the age of 39 she became a college freshman in hopes of becoming a lawyer someday.

Here at Berkeley she met Kenneth Bock who was her first professor who encouraged Rubin to look into taking graduate classes while she was an undergraduate student. She notes this encounter as an experience that “would soon change the direction of my life” (Hochschild 1975, p. 234).

Her first graduate course was in Phil Selznick’s sociology of law. She often felt discouraged in the course. Her final exam for the course was a blue book essay. Impressed with her exam, he suggested the notion of having it published. Rubin never thought of her work to be this high of a caliber. Months later, her paper was published in a University of Michigan Journal titled Poverty and Human Resources Abstracts.

She worked as Hal Wilensky’s research assistant for a total of two years. She learned a great deal of insight from this position mainly on social structure and institutions.

Sheldon Wolin and Jack Schaar who were professors of political science at Berkeley helped her understanding of American political theory, from what went beyond her learning outside of the classroom.

By 1977, Rubin was a research sociologist for UC Berkely in the Institute for the Study of Social Change. Rubin has taught at many institutions across the country applying her academia. Rubin has overcome the barriers placed on her by her mother, and achieved her own personal academic goals. Rubin believes that the timing of her work has influence upon her success. She believes she was at the brink of the break through of feminism, and that her work was becoming published at during a time that allowed such things to be possible. She believes that the second wave of feminism allowed her work to shine, and they helped to break down the social barriers for women. She believes that there were many intelligent women before her, but social constrains did not allow the success of their work.

Sources:
1. Hochschild, Arlie R. Women and the Power to Change. University of Nevada P, 1994.
229-247

2. Rubin, Lillian. E-Mail interview. 29 Feb. 2007

Lillian Rubin's Teaching

Lillian Rubin has worked as a professor of many subjects, including class, gender, race, family, and methods. Most of her work as a professor has been at the University of California Berkeley, until recently when she retired from this type of work.

Rubin was a research sociologist for UC Berkeley. She was also a professor of Interpretive Sociology at UC Berkeley. She has been a visiting professor at Queens College, CUNY, and The University of Utrecht in Holland, The Wright Institute, Mills College, The University of Southern California, Michigan State University, The University of Indiana, and Sonoma State University. She was also a Research Sociologist at the Institute for Scientific Analysis in San Francisco. She was a visiting Scholar at the University of Oklahoma, Norman in 1993, as well as a Scholar in Residence at the University of Wisconsin.

For most of her professional career, she has pursued other things besides that of strictly academia. Rubin has found academic institutions hinder progress and conduces specialization. She believes that specialization hinders creativity and stretching of the mind. She is confused by the idea of professors being rewerded for specializing, or “getting to know more and more about less and less.” Most of her focus has been on writing, and her clinical practice.

Rubin believes that the teaching of subjects cannot avoid the intergration of other subjects. The teaching of all subjects in her view, must “include the various aspects of life in a society”. She explains that she does not just “tack” on a feminist view of something, but is a part of her worldview and should not be and cannot be viewed in separate terms.


Sources:
Rubin, Lillian. E-Mail interview. 29 Feb. 2007

Lillian Rubin's Activism

Lillian Rubin’s life has revolved a great deal around activism. Before beginning her academic conquest in her late thirties, she led an active life. All of her activism does not pertain solely to the feminist movement, although she has done her fair share in this area.

During the fifties, she was an activist against McCarthy’s attack on civil liberties. While in Los Angeles, she became an organizer for a women’s pioneering organization. She also became involved in civil rights movements and in the helping of electing the fist district black congressman in the state of California. During the early sixties she also managed the campaigns of congressional candidates.

While doing her graduate study at Berkeley, Lillian was involved with many movements. A few of these movements included the Third World Strike, Free Speech Movement, the anti-war movement, the People’s Park, Kent State, Women’s liberation movement , and the bombing of Cambodia.

One of her most memorable moments of activism was when she was protesting in 1967 along side 68 women and 100 men in front of the Oakland Induction Center. They were protesting against the men who had just been drafted. The police soon began to whisk the protestors away to the local jailhouse. She was soon locked into a cell until the next morning when she pleaded no contest. She was then sentenced to three weeks of jail time in Santa Rita.

Lillian is grateful for the feminist movement and the women who have come before her time. She believes it shows collective action and what can be accomplished when women work together. A collective voice made it possible to tear down the barricades for the academy as well as the publishing market for women and what they had to say. The feminist movement has taught her, “how much gender, not poverty, actually determined the direction of my life” (Hochschild 1975, p. 241).

Through her activism, she has tested the theories from the classroom and applied them to the life outside of acamedics. She has also had realizations from such experiences that required her to evaluate old perspectives and develop new ideas.
She is now most involved in the anti-war and environmental awareness movements.


Sources: 1. Hochschild, Arlie R. Women and the Power to Change. University of Nevada P, 1994. 229-247

2. Rubin, Lillian. E-Mail interview. 26 Feb. 2007.

Lillian Rubin's Research

Lillian Rubin has had various influences as far as research is concerned. Foremost, Erving Goffman and Herbert Blumer (the father of Symbolic Interactionism) have been the key players in her research method. Through reading Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (the founders of Ground Sociology), she understood how to conduct the work, along side with a few of her own ideas.

Her dissertation covered a community in Northern California and how it was affected by and how it was distraught due to a court-ordered school integration plan.
Since her dissertation, she has published eleven books and many articles and essays in various medias. Her writing covers subjects from struggles in school districts to class inequalities.

Her first book was Busing and Backlash: White against White in a California School District. This book covers the problems the Richmond Unified School District faced in 1968 when it decided to desegregate it schools but and required integrated busing for the children. She studied why whites were opposed to such ideas.

A following book was Women of a Certain Age: the Midlife Search for Self. For this book she interviews 160 women between 35 and 54 years of age. This book is noted for its encouragement of middle-aged women to become active in a world that they may have something to add to.

Quiet Rage: Bernie Goetz in a Time of Madness is Rubin’s study of a New York subway shooting in which four black teens were killed. She studied his motives, as well as the lives of those that were killed.

She wrote a book entitled Erotic Wars: What Happened to the Sexual Revolution? This book covers the freedom and constraints about sexuality.

Her book entitled Families on the Fault Line: America’s Working Class Speaks about the Family, and Economy, Race, and Ethnicity, examines how economic changes from the time she wrote her second book almost twenty years before have had negative influences on the working class. She covers issues of race and gender and how they have played a role.

The Transcendent Child: Tales of Triumph over the Past covers how people who come from dysfunctional families are able to overcome the difficulties of such constrains. She uses case studies for her research. What she presents is counter to what is socially expected.

Rubin also wrote Tangled Lives: Daughters, Mothers, and the Crucible of Aging. She covers the death of her mother, as well as her own concerns about getting older. It is noted to be one of her more personal books.

Her most recent work is The Man with the Beautiful Voice: And More Stories from the Other Side of the Couch. This book covers her experience as a psychotherapist and her perspective of many of the issues she faced as the professional.

A Deeper Look into a few Specific Works:
Intimate Strangers: Men and Women Together covers the growing relationship between men and women and their differences as they grow older. Published in 1984, this is one of Rubin’s most famous books. She studies 150 couples with her knowledge and experience as a clinical psychologists and reveals the roles of gender in relationships, as well as in the home life. She focuses on the difficulty that men and women face as they attempt to change their traditional roles with each other. She explains that although both men and women try hard to transcent, only stereotypes and socialization process are too hard to defeat. Because of this difficulty, society encourages women to remain in the dependent state, while husbands enter the work force. She studies why society shapes us in this manner, and why the social constructions almost lend us a helping hand in this arrangement.

Another well known book written by Rubin is Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Family. This book covered the struggles of working class. It features many interviews of middle class families. It is praised as adding new information about the middle class and people’s difficulty for success as blue collared workers. There have been two editions, the first of which was released in 1976. For this book, she conducted research on 50 couples of the white working class, and 25 white couples from the professional middle-class. She studies many of the aspects of the couples such as background, the start of their marriage, gender roles, their sexual relatiopnship, children factors, and their leisure activities. She studies the relationship between economic life, and family life. This book remains relevant because it is one of the few that has studied the working-class, and not only the middle-class. It is highly recommended to those who are interested in the working-class, gender, family and how they are related.

On the subject of friends, she wrote Just Friends: The Role of Friendship in Our Lives covers the involvement of friendship in the lives of adults, a subject that has been understudied by social scientists. It gives a deeper look into the lives of adults and the way friendships develop during adulthood. She interviewed 300 subjects from all creeds between the ages of 25 and 55 for the proper research for this book. She found that the friendships between women were based on intimacy, emotional support, and nuturance, while friendships between men were based upon common activities. She also studies the close ties of kinship and friendship and how they differ. It is an interesting book that offers a great deal of insight for topics that haven’t been broadly reasearched.

Rubin has written many sociologically/psychologically based books that have given way to new findings. She has reached many untouch ground, and uses a wide variety of sources when writing her books, to which it is not a big surprised that she is such a highly acclaimed author.

Sources:

1. Hanson, Sandra. "World of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Family by Lillian Rubin."
JSTOR. 1992. http://www.jstor.org/view/00222445/ap020120/02a00240/0?currentResult=00222445%2bap020120%%3Djtx%26jtxsi%3D1%26jcpsi%3D1%26artsi%3D1%26Query%3Dlillian%2Brubin%26wc%3Don.

2. "Intimate Strangers: Men and Women Together, by Lillian B. Ruin." JSTOR. 3 Apr.
2007 .

3. "Lillian B. Rubin." 19 Oct. 2005. 15 Feb. 2007

4. Miller, Harriet. "Just Friends by Lillian B. Rubin." JSTOR. 3 Apr. 2007.

Lillian Rubin's Accomplishments

Lillian Rubin has accomplished many notable things throughout her life. First and foremost she is most proud of the daughter that she has raised. Her daughter is equally successful and they share a close and intimate bond.

Outside of her accomplishments as a mother, she has had many academic accomplishments worth mentioning. While studying at Berkeley, she received her BA in sociology with “Great Distinction”. She received her PhD with an honorary degree. She has taught at various schools around the country and has been a visiting professor at many institutions as well. She has also received various grants in the areas of research for her distinguished work.

She served on the Editorial Advisory Boards for The International Journal of Family Therapy, Symbolic Interaction, and Quantitive Sociology.She is also an experienced clinical psychologist with her own practice, devoting many hours a week to this portion of her career. She is a licensed marriage, family, and child therapist.

Rubin has written many articles, as well as given numerous lectures across the country. She has written eleven books throughout her lifetime, many of which have received praise for being insightful and possessing fresh perspectives. She is highly recognized for her work in the fields of sociology as well as psychology.

Sources: Rubin, Lillian. E-Mail interview. 26 Feb. 2007

Some Interesting Facts about Lillian Rubin

Besides the academia and career, Lillian Rubin has some fun, random facts to mention:

1. More recently, Lillian has been working on her personal passion for painting. She took her first lesson in August of 2004. She believes that painting is about doing, and it is exactly what she is, well…doing. You can see her featured artwork on her website

2. She entered the NYC public school system with English as a second language

3. She currently has a show hanging in the gallery of the Bank of America building in Mills Valley, California

4. While attending UC Berkeley, she belonged to Phi Beta Kappa

5. She has been a lover of the music and arts since the 4th grade from which she recollects going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and having “music appreciation” time during class.

Sources:
Rubin, Lillian. E-Mail interview. 26 Feb. 2007.