RUBIN, Lillian B(reslow) 1924-

PERSONAL: Born January 13, 1924, in Philadelphia, PA; daughter of Sol and Rae (Vinin) Breslow; married Seymour Katz, March 6, 1943 (divorced); married Henry M. Rubin (a writer), March 4, 1962; children: Marcy. Education: University of California, Berkeley, B.A. (with great distinction), 1967, M.A., 1968, Ph.D., 1971; postdoctoral study, 1971-72. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES: Home and office—823 Craft Ave., El Cerrito, CA 94530. Agent—Rhoda Weyr, William Morris Agency, 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Cowell Memorial Hospital, University of California, Berkeley, CA, research sociologist, 1971-72; Wright Institute, Berkeley, professor of sociology and psychology, 1972-76; licensed marriage, family, and child counselor in private practice, 1972—; writer, 1972—. Senior research associate, Institute for Scientific Analysis, 1972—; consultant to National Center for the Prevention and Control of Rape, 1976-77; senior research associate, Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of California, Berkeley, 1977—; distinguished professor of sociology, Queens College, City University of New York. Lecturer at Mills College, 1973; visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley, 1979.

MEMBER: American Sociological Association, Society for the Study of Social Problems, Sociologists for Women in Society, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, National Council on Family Relations, California Association of Marriage and Family Counselors, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: National Institute of Mental Health grants, 1974-76, 1976-79, and 1979-82; Copeland fellow, Amherst College, 1977.

WRITINGS:

Busing and Backlash: White against White in a California School District, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1972.

Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Family, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1976.

Women of a Certain Age: The Midlife Search for Self, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1979.

Intimate Strangers: Men and Women Together, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1983.

Just Friends: The Role of Friendship in Our Lives, Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1985.

Quiet Rage: Bernie Goetz in a Time of Madness, Farrar, Straus, (New York, NY), 1986.

Erotic Wars: What Happened to the Sexual Revolution?, Farrar, Straus, (New York, NY), 1990.

Families on the Fault Line: America's Working Class Speaks about the Family, the Economy, Race, and Ethnicity, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1994.

The Transcendent Child: Tales of Triumph over the Past, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1996.

Tangled Lives: Daughters, Mothers, and the Crucible of Aging, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 2000.

The Man with the Beautiful Voice: And More Stories from the Other Side of the Couch, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 2003.

Contributor to books, including The Integration of American Schools, edited by Norene Harris and others, Allyn & Bacon, 1975; Family in Transition, edited by Arlene S. Skolnick and Jerome H. Skolnick, second edition, Little, Brown, 1977; Women's Sexuality, edited by Martha Kirkpatrick, Plenum, 1979; and Primary Prevention of Psychopathology, Volume 4: Promoting Competence and Coping during Adulthood, edited by Lynne A. Bond and James C. Rosen, University Press of New England, 1979. Contributor of numerous papers to professional journals.

SIDELIGHTS: Lillian B. Rubin is a social psychologist and writer who embarked on her career in mid-life. Rubin's books offer perspectives on such modern sociological issues as the integration of public schools, the plight of the blue-collar worker, and the often strained relations between men and women. In her works, the author draws upon in-depth interviews to reach conclusions not only about individuals but also about American society at large. Ms. magazine reviewer Barbara Garson noted that Rubin's books are often "sophisticated and moving expressions of sadness, loneliness, and anger." The critic continued, "Rubin's footnotes show that she is very well grounded in the method and literature of the social sciences. It is with high courage that she departs from her training and takes the risk, particularly great for a woman, of being labeled 'unscientific.' She does so in order to present a fuller—almost novelistic—picture of the world she knows from her own background." In the Village Voice, Wendy Kaminer maintained that Rubin's books depart from standard self-help treatises because they are more thoughtful and scholarly, with less resort to easy answers and advice. Rubin, concluded the reviewer, "has a talent for talking about relationships and psychoanalytic theories without resorting to psychobabble."

Rubin once told CA: "All my works reflect my own life." She was born in Philadelphia and was brought up in a one-parent, working-class family. She herself married young and followed so-called traditional paths for a woman until the mid-1960s, when she became active in political and social causes. She was just under forty when she entered the University of California at Berkeley as a candidate for a bachelor's degree. By the time she turned fifty, Rubin had earned a Ph.D. in sociology, was a licensed marriage and family counselor, and was a research associate at the Institute for Scientific Analysis in San Francisco.

Rubin's first book, Busing and Backlash: White against White in a California School District, was published in 1972. The work details the difficulties experienced by the Richmond Unified School District when a busing policy was proposed in 1968. In the Progressive David E. Gillespie wrote, "Ms. Rubin set out in two and a half years of research to learn why the whites of the Richmond Unified School District in the San Francisco Bay area acted as they did in 1968 to 1971 on the busing issue. A finding larger than the real trauma over busing soon began to emerge." Rubin's work was praised for its empathy toward those whites opposed to busing, even though she favored the practice herself. Gillespie concluded, "This is a book that for the most part will hold the interest of all Americans concerned more than casually with the unification of our people in something other than name."

In her next book the author turned to another pressing national problem: the discontent of the working class. Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Family is based on fifty lengthy interviews, this time with white, working-class couples with an emphasis on the particular strains and conflicts in their lives. Although some critics have faulted Rubin for the selectivity of her sample, many agree that the work illuminates some distinct problems associated with a blue-collar lifestyle. "Rubin does well in documenting the current desperate state of family life for many Americans," claimed Kathleen McCourt in the American Journal of Sociology, noting that "Rubin has added significantly to literature on the family and the working class." Society contributor Gerald Handel deemed Worlds of Pain "both clearly drawn and heartfelt, the work of an observer who has also been a participant. There are many keenly noted details and perceptive comments." The critic added, "It says something for the power and accuracy of qualitative methods that this study conducted by a woman of working-class origins confirms so many findings of earlier studies conducted by researchers—men and women—of middle-class background."

One of Rubin's best-known books is Women of a Certain Age: The Midlife Search for Self. Once again the author bases her study on in-depth interviews with 160 women aged thirty-five to fifty-four, women who have faced a variety of daunting transitions in middle age. Progressive correspondent Ann Morrissett Davidon wrote that the book "is lean and the message clear: Women must and will find their own identities." Davidon noted, however, that Women of a Certain Age is not "one more exhortation of the 'me decade' urging women to grab for themselves, indulge themselves, pamper themselves. It is rather an encouragement for midlife women to do the hard work of overcoming their fears and anger, to emerge into a world that needs their skills and strengths too long confined exclusively to the home or in self-effacing 'volunteerism.'" Contemporary Sociology contributor Rose Laub Coser likewise observed that Rubin "writes with fervor and gives us a gripping story. She understands her respondents not only because she has the ability to uncover what is latent but because she feels free to call on her own experiences to help her understand her material."

Rubin often confronts social issues from a personal, psychological perspective. In Quiet Rage: Bernie Goetz in a Time of Madness, she explores the motives that led the infamous "subway vigilante" to shoot four black teenagers in New York, NY. Rubin wanted to know what fueled his rage and paranoia, and uncovered a very unhappy childhood during which his father was convicted as a child molester. She also explores the lives of the four boys he shot. In a review for the Los Angeles Times, Joseph McNamara said that Rubin creates "a highly speculative history of Goetz, complete with more psychoanalytical theories than readers should have to bear," but he also credited her with confronting the issue of racism and the need to address the marginalization of black youths. In Newsday, reviewer Patrick Owens called the book "brief and readable," as well as "classically, quintessentially, archetypically, hopelessly liberal. It concludes somberly … that nothing is ever anybody's fault and that everything is always everybody's fault."

Just Friends: The Role of Friendship in Our Lives documents the difficulties encountered by close friends in a society that tends to consign friendship to an ancillary role. Rubin shows that friendships lack the definition and commitment of family relationships, despite their key role in adult lives. Writing in QualitativeSociology David Jacobson described the book as a "superficial interpretation" of a neglected subject, while in a review for Journal of Marriage and the Family, Harriet Miller remarked that it is "an insightful and empirical exploration of the role that friends … play in our adult lives." Psychology Today critic David Heller found the "anecdotal material is accessible and the analysis convincing," concluding that "Rubin is the right person to have written this overview. The territory she has traversed in her prior writings provides her with considerable insight into human relationships."

In Erotic Wars: What Happened to the Sexual Revolution? Rubin documents American sexuality in an aging but "liberated" population. In a study of teen and adult heterosexuals that used interviews and questionnaires, she finds that early sexual freedom is common among young men and women, but that later in life men show a bias against sexually experienced women. Older subjects want committed, loving relationships but struggle with sexual boredom. In the Washington Post, Webster Schott's response to the book was that "as science Erotic Wars is soft and loose. The feeling, however, seems exactly right." Gayle Green commented in Nation that the issue of gender suggested by the title is not properly addressed; she concluded: "Rubin's study raises fascinating questions—about the relation of sex to power, the erratic movements of change, the discrepancies between real and rhetorical change—but they are questions requiring more care and subtlety than she brings to them." The "intellectual layperson" is the best audience for the book, according to Barbara J. Risman in Contemporary Sociology. Noting that a "richer analysis was promised," Risman said that the descriptive portions are the strongest parts of the work.

When Rubin published Families on the Fault Line: America's Working Class Speaks about the Family, the Economy, Race, and Ethnicity almost twenty years after Worlds of Pain, she charted the negative impact of economic changes on working class families during that period. She shows how a myth of American class-lessness has made this group invisible and that working-class whites often blame their plight on nonwhites. While questioning whether the study's findings are generalizable, Mark Robert Rank commented in the Journal of Marriage and the Family that the book is "beautifully written and presented" as well as "consistently provocative." Writing in the Journal of American History, Lizabeth Cohen said that "Rubin deserves praise for her reminder that social and economic structure still matter crucially" and suggests that "Rubin's most insightful discussions concern the gender implications of economic dislocation." Contemporary Sociology's Pamela J. Smock praised this "superb and engaging book. It is a timely, nuanced, and provocative account…. Rubin is consistently able to convey the human dimension behind oft-cited numbers."

The Transcendent Child: Tales of Triumph over the Past is a collection of case studies that show how some people manage to overcome their dysfunctional families. The subjects include individuals that Rubin worked with in her psychotherapy practice. In Qualitative Sociology Peter K. Manning appraised the book as being "well balanced between trade and academic markets." A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that while the cases "run counter to psychological expectations … new light is cast upon those who refuse to be victims." And a critic writing for Adolescence credited Rubin with creating "a theory that enlarges and enriches our understanding of human development."

One of Rubin's most personal books is Tangled Lives: Daughters, Mothers, and the Crucible of Aging, which recounts the death of her ninety-four-year-old mother, their rocky relationship, and the author's own concerns about aging. Reviewer Mary Carroll called Tangled Lives a "profoundly personal" account in Booklist, while a Washington Post critic remarked that it is "honest but somewhat pedantic" and "both a personal history and a self-help guide." Library Journal critic Kay Brodie called it "highly readable and insightful" and of interest to those in similar circumstances as well as sociology students. It is an "elegiac memoir" concluded to a Publishers Weekly writer, who praised its "intimate, conversational style."

In the more recent The Man with the Beautiful Voice: And More Stories from the Other Side of the Couch, Rubin revealed the emotional pain and insecurity she has experienced as a psychotherapist. The book also explains her sometimes unorthodox methods, including giving hugs and holding hands. In Publishers Weekly a reviewer saw "an efficient and deliberate—though not dry—narrative style peppered with keen insight and good humor." A writer for Kirkus Reviews called the book "a good introduction for the curious."

Rubin once told CA: "I came to writing late in life, after I entered college as a freshman at age 39. My first paper, written for a freshman English course, earned me a C—a situation my perfectionist soul determined to remedy as quickly as possible. My early writing endeavors soon earned better grades, but remained a painful and difficult task until I found the courage to speak in a voice that was mine about issues that had some deep personal meaning to me. We all have protective ways of presenting self to the world—ways we long ago learned would bring the approbation we need. But to be artistically successful, a writer must dare to put out the true self and risk the judgments that will inevitably come. For any of us, there's probably nothing more difficult; for a writer, there's also nothing more rewarding."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Adolescence, winter, 1996, review of The Transcendent Child, p. 995.

American Journal of Sociology, November, 1977, Kathleen McCourt, review of Worlds of Pain.

Booklist, March 15, 1994, Mary Carroll, review of Families on the Fault Line, p. 1306; October 15, 2000, Mary Carroll, review of Tangled Lives, p. 395.

Christian Century, January 7, 1987, Roderick T. Leupp, review of Quiet Rage, p. 31.

Christian Science Monitor, April 21, 1994, Marilyn Gardner, review of Families on the Fault Line, p. 14.

Commonweal, November 30, 1984, Evelyn Eaton Whitehead, review of Intimate Strangers, p. 668.

Contemporary Sociology, May, 1981, Rose Laub Coser, review of Women of a Certain Age; September, 1991, Barbara J. Risman, review of Erotic Wars, pp. 790-791; March, 1995, Pamela J. Smock, review of Families on the Fault Line, pp. 187-188.

Etc.: A Review of General Semantics, spring, 1987, Robert Wanderer, review of Quiet Rage, p. 97.

50 Plus, January, 1980, Meg Whitcomb and Mark Reiter, review of Women of a Certain Age, p. 56.

Journal of American History, March, 1995, Lizabeth Cohen, review of Families on the Fault Line, pp. 1851-1852.

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, fall, 1989, Thomas C. Castellano, review of Quiet Rage, pp. 866-876.

Journal of Marriage and the Family, February, 1987, Harriet Miller, review of Just Friends, p. 217; May, 1993, Sandra L. Hanson, review of Worlds of Pain, p. 513; February, 1995, Mark Robert Rank, review of Families on the Fault Line.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2003, review of The Man with the Beautiful Voice, p. 369.

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, September 27, 1994, Gail Stewart Hand, "For Many Working Parents, Time Replaces Money as a Source of Stress," p. 927K6489.

Library Journal, April 1, 1983, review of Intimate Strangers, p. 750; September 1, 1985, Susan B. Hagloch, review of Just Friends, p. 205; September 15, 1986, John Broderick, review of Quiet Rage, p. 77; August, 1990, Jeris Cassel, review of Erotic Wars, p. 127; February 15, 1994, Michael A. Lutes, review of Families on the Fault Line, p. 176; March 15, 1996, Pamela A. Matthews, review of The Transcendent Child, p. 88; October 1, 2000, Kay Brodie, review of Tangled Lives, p. 128.

Los Angeles Daily Journal, October 24, 1986, Walter Goodman, review of Quiet Rage, p. B14.

Los Angeles Times, June 8, 1983, Elizabeth Mehren, "Regardless of Age, Occupation, Marital Status or Sex, a Psychologist Finds Women Have More Friendships than Men," p. V1; July 31, 1983, Beth Wettergreen, review of Intimate Strangers, p. B4; September 22, 1985, William J. Drummond, review of What Are Friends For?, Section 6, p. 1, January 22, 1987, Joseph McNamara, review of Quiet Rage, p. 22.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 1, 2003, Susan Salter Reynolds, "Discoveries," p. 15.

Ms., November, 1977, Barbara Garson, review of Worlds of Pain, pp. 43-44; July, 1980, Suzanne Levine, review of Women of a Certain Age, p. 34.

Nation, April 29, 1991, Gayle Green, review of Erotic Wars, p. 562.

Newsday, October 5, 1986, Patrick Owens, "Analyzing the Subway Crime of Bernie Goetz," p. 20.

New York Review of Books, April 23, 1987, George P. Fletcher, review of Quiet Rage, p. 22.

New York Times, September 29, 1986, Walter Goodman, review of Quiet Rage, p. 31.

New York Times Book Review, April 19, 1981, review of Women of a Certain Age, p. 27; September 15, 1985, Mopsy Strange Kennedy, review of Just Friends, p. 35; October 19, 1986, Kirk Johnson, review of Quite Rage, p. 31.

Orlando Sentinel (Orlando, FL), December 9, 1986, Dick Polman, "A Tale of Rage: Why America Loves Goetz," p. E1.

PR Newswire, April 19, 1983, "Married Men Found to Be Dependent upon Spouse," p. A2.

Progressive, November, 1972, David E. Gillespie, review of Busing and Backlash; December, 1979, Ann Morrissett Davidon, review of Women of a Certain Age.

Psychology Today, November, 1985, David Heller, review of Just Friends, p. 84.

Publishers Weekly, July 12, 1985, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Just Friends, p. 42; August 22, 1986, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Quiet Rage, p. 87; August 24, 1990, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Erotic Wars, p. 49; February 7, 1994, review of Families on the Fault Line, p. 80; January 15, 1996, review of The Transcendent Child, p. 454; September 25, 2000, review of Tangled Lives, p. 101; March 24, 2003, review of The Man with the Beautiful Voice, p. 73.

Qualitative Sociology, winter, 1987, David Jacobson, review of Just Friends, p. 395; September, 1997, Peter K. Manning, review of The Transcendent Child, p. 419.

Society, September-October, 1977, Gerald Handel, review of Worlds of Pain.

Village Voice, November 5, 1985, Wendy Kaminer, review of Just Friends.

Vogue, September, 1985, Ann Arensberg, review of Just Friends, p. 504.

Washington Post, June 7, 1983, Pamela Kessler, "Couples: It All Depends on Who's Talking," p. C5; August 19, 1990, Webster Schott, review of Erotic Wars, p. X4; August 5, 2001, review of Tangled Lives, p. T10.

Washington Post Book World, September 1, 1985, Susan Wood, review of Just Friends, p. 4.

Whole Earth Review, summer, 1990, Corinne Cullen Hawkins, review of Intimate Strangers, p. 51.

Wilson Library Bulletin, November, 1985, Nancy Scholar, review of Just Friends, p. 67.*