Department of Sociology

Averil Y. Clarke (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 2002) is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Yale University. There she does research and teaches courses in race and ethnicity and marriage and the family. She is completing a book manuscript entitled, Child Sacrifice: The Social Infertility of College-Educated Black Women. The book describes the findings from her study of why these women have fewer children than less educated blacks and than white and Hispanic women with a college education. It uses data from interviews with black women and analyses of national data comparing the sexual and reproductive behavior of black, white, and Hispanic women to argue that college educated black women have few opportunities to marry and that they resist nonmarital childbearing because of a cultural meaning system that interprets and negatively evaluates black women’s sexuality and the reproductive activity of poor women. Clarke is also beginning a new research project exploring the AIDS/HIV risk and preventative behaviors of religious individuals as well as religious organizations’ beliefs, programming, and education activities in the areas of sexuality and sexual health.