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Lemo Rockwood (1896 - 1982), best known at Cornell for
her popular yet controversial
marriage course, was an authority on child development and
family relationships. After graduating from the University of
Nebraska in 1919, she received her M.S. from Teachers College,
Columbia University in 1926. From 1925 to 1929, she worked in
the emerging academic field of child welfare at the Lewis Institute
in Chicago (now the Illinois Institute of Technology). In 1929,
under a fellowship financed by the Laura S. Rockefeller Foundation
to stimulate scientific research in child development, she came
to Cornell University for doctoral studies.
After receiving her Cornell Ph.D. in 1931, Rockwood left Ithaca
for Washington, D. C., where she became a field worker in child
development and parent education for the American Home Economics
Association. In l935, with experience in the field, Rockwood
returned to Cornell as the family life extension specialist.
Two years later, she became a member of the resident teaching
staff at Cornell and established courses in family relationships,
personality development and marriage. Rockwood was the author
of several books, all of which were used nationally in extension
work: Living Together in the Family (1935), Teaching
Family Relationships in the High School (1935), and
Youth, Marriage and Parenthood (1945), a systematic study
of the attitudes of several hundred Cornell juniors and seniors
on sex education, pre-marital behavior, expectations of the
marriage partner, working wives and family size.
Professor Rockwood was a member of numerous honor societies
including Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Omicron Nu and Pi Lambda
Theta. She also was involved with professional societies such
as the American Home Economics Association, the American Sociological
Society, the Society for Research in Child Development, the
National Conference of Family Relations, the National Conference
of Parent Education, the Progressive Education Association,
and the American Association of University Women. Upon her retirement
in 1958, she and her husband returned to Nebraska, where she
remained until her death on December 16, 1982.
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