Faculty

Dr. Harriette Pipes McAdoo is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology.  She was formerly in the Department of Family and Child Ecology, Michigan State University. She received the B.A. and M.A. from Michigan State University, the Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and she has done postdoctoral study at Harvard University. She formerly taught at Howard University in the School of Social Work, where she was Acting Dean for two years. She was Visiting Lecturer at Smith College for three summers, and was a Visiting Professor at the University of Washington, and the University of Minnesota. She has served as National Advisor to President Carter on the White House Conference on Families and was President, in 1994, of the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). She was a recipient of the Ernest Burgess Award in 2004, the highest honor given by NCFR. Dr. McAdoo was the first person honored by NCFR with the Marie Peters Award for Outstanding Scholarship, Leadership, and Service in the Area of Ethnic Minority families.   She was Director of the Groves Conference on Marriage and the Family, and has been a member of the Governing Council and Publication Committee of the Society for the Research in Child Development (SRCD). She was the recipient of the Helms Award from Columbia University Teachers College. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Children, Youth, and Families at MSU. She has published widely on racial identity and self-esteem in young children; Black social mobility patterns; Black middle class families; coping strategies of single mothers; parental coping strategies of learning disabled children; family and careers of professional Kenyan women; and AIDS and pregnancy in Zimbabwean women. She currently is studying diabetes in older Black women and HIV/AIDS in Ghana.  She is an acclaimed public speaker and has spoken on many campuses and professional meetings. She has edited Family Ethnicity: Strength in Diversity (2nd ed.) and Black Families (4th ed.) She is co-editor of Services to Young Families: Program Review and Policy Recommendations, and Black Children: Social Educational and Parental Environments. She is coauthor of Women and Children: Alone and In Poverty. Her husband was Dr. John Lewis McAdoo. They have four children and five grand-sons.

442 Berkey Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1111
(517) 432-3321
mcadoo@msu.edu