Jennifer A. Reich

Short Biography

Jennifer A. Reich works on research that explores the intersections between the state and family. She is author of several articles and book chapters that examine reproductive decision-making, multi-racial families, families’ experiences in the child welfare system, experiences of service providers and evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, and qualitative methods. Her book Fixing Families: Parents, Power, and the Child Welfare System (2005 Routledge) was awarded the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award by the American Sociological Association section on Race, Gender, and Class and was a finalist for the C. Wright Mills award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems. This ethnography examines how parents and members of the child welfare system negotiate power and meaning and shows the importance of deference to the system and its requirements. She is currently Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Denver and was formerly a fellow at the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco. She received her PhD and MA from the University of California, Davis and earned a BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her current research focuses on how parents strategize their choices for their children's healthcare, particularly around childhood immunizations.