I am a social demographer who studies race, ethnicity, and family structure, the family's effect on children, and the history of the family. I am interested in mate selection as a social as well as a personal process. I am currently working on How Couples Meet and Stay Together, a longitudinal study of social life in the US, funded by the National Science Foundation. The first wave of the study was fielded in 2009. My first paper from this project, "Searching for a Mate: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary" was published in the August 2012 issue of the American Sociological Review. The How Couples Meet and Stay Together project has revolutionized our understanding of such topics as how couples meet, the role of technology and the role of family in personal relations, why couples stay together, and whether same-sex married couples stay together as long as heterosexual married couples do.