Maureen Perry-Jenkins has received the 2022 Alexis J. Walker Award for Lifetime Achievement in Feminist Family Studies from the National Council on Family Relations. Dr. Perry-Jenkins is a professor and current chair of the department of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Professor Perry-Jenkins’ research focuses on the ways in which socio-cultural factors such as race, gender, and social class shape work-family processes and are related to the quality of family relationships and the well-being of parents and their children. She is the author of Work Matters: How Parents’ Jobs Shape Children’s Well-Being (Princeton University Press, 2022). The book proposes ways to reimagine low-wage work to sustain families and their children’s development. Using over 20 years of longitudinal data, Dr. Perry-Jenkins demonstrates how low-wage jobs, for better and for worse, affect parents’ well-being and children’s long-term development.
Dr. Perry-Jenkins joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts in 1995 after teaching at the University of Illinois. She was promoted to associate professor in 1998 and to full professor in 2007.
A graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Perry-Jenkins holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in human development and family studies from Pennsylvania State University.