Joan Aldous

Aldous was graduated from Kansas State in 1948 and earned a master’s degree from the University of Texas the following year. She earned a doctoral degree in sociology from the University of Minnesota in 1963, joining its faculty the same year and remaining there until 1974, when she briefly joined the faculties of Tulane University and the University of Georgia before coming to Notre Dame in 1976. Aldous joined the Notre Dame sociology faculty as the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology, thus becoming the University’s first female holder of an endowed professorship at a time when there were few women on the faculty. From 1976 until her retirement in 2012, she taught, studied and wrote about family sociology, family policy, gender, work and families and intergenerational relationships.