Our Story

Data spanning a century. The beginnings of a book, nearly half a century ago. Collaboration over a decade.

It started after Glen completed the now-classic book Children of the Great Depression in the early 1970s, christening the field of life course studies.

That book focused on young people in a cohort of Oakland children born in 1920-21. They were found to be less disadvantaged in the Depression than a younger cohort of Berkeley children born in 1928-29. Both studies were conducted at UC-Berkeley’s Institute of Human Development. The children were followed across their lives.

This work revealed a rich archive on the lives of the parents of the Berkeley children, born between 1885 and 1905 – the “1900 generation” as we refer to them in Living on the Edge.

Faced with rapid social change even before marriage, members of the 1900 generation made their way through the tumultuous decades of the Depression, World War II and the booming prosperity of the postwar era, to old age toward the close of the twentieth century.

Forty years had passed since Glen imagined the project. The time had come to make good on the promise of the idea and the possibilities of the archive.

Glen masterminded our team, which would be perfectly complementary and intergenerational. Rick is a senior figure in human development, aging, and life course studies and brought first-hand knowledge of the Institute and archives. Lisa, a colleague of Glen’s at North Carolina, is an expert in family and gender and brought a strong reputation for mixed methods.

The rest is history.

As we studied how the 1900 generation adapted to a century of revolutionary change, their lives have been a source of comfort and inspiration in today’s unsettled times. We hope you will learn as much from them as we have.

Rick, Glen, & Lisa

(Map: San Francisco & vicinity, California, 1915, U.S. Geological Survey.)