Honky Dalton Conley

Introduction

Dalton Clark Conley (born 1969) is an American sociologist. He is a professor at Princeton University and has several books, including a memoir and a sociology textbook.

Education

Conley attended Stuyvesant High School. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a BA in humanities and from Columbia University with an MPA in public policy and a PhD in sociology. He also holds an MS and PhD in biology (genomics) from NYU.[1]

Career

Conley is best known for his contributions to understanding how health and socioeconomic status are transmitted across generations.[2] His first book, Being Black, Living in the Red (1999), focuses on the role of family wealth in perpetuating class advantages and racial inequalities in the post-civil rights era.[3]

His second book, the memoir Honky (2000), examines Conley's childhood growing up White in an inner-city neighborhood of housing projects in New York City.[4][5]

Conley has studied the role of health in the status-attainment process. An article, "Is Biology Destiny: Birth Weight and Life Chances" (with Neil G. Bennett, American Sociological Review, 1999), and his third book, The Starting Gate: Birth Weight and Life Chances (with Kate Strully and Neil G. Bennett, 2003), addressed the importance of birth weight and prenatal health to later socioeconomic outcomes.[6] Conley's next book, The Pecking Order, which followed in 2004, argued for the importance of within-family factors in determining sibling differences in socioeconomic success.[7]

In 2008, Conley published the introductory sociology textbook You May Ask Yourself, which is set to be reissued in its eigth edition in late 2026.[8]

His subsequent book, Elsewhere, U.S.A., published in 2009, describes changes in American work–life attitudes and social ethics in the information economy.[9] In 2014, he published the satirical book Parentology: Everything You Wanted to Know About the Science of Raising Children but Were Too Exhausted to Ask, using his own parenting decisions as examples.[10][11]

In 2017, Conley published The Genome Factor, co-authored with Jason Fletcher. This book discusses the nature versus nurture debate and the influence of genes on social life.[12]

In 2025, he published The Social Genome: The New Science of Nature and Nurture.[13]

Conley is the Henry Putnam University Professor of Sociology at Princeton University.[14]

Recognition
  • CAREER Award, National Science Foundation (2001).[15]
  • Alan T. Waterman Award, National Science Foundation (2005).[16]
  • Elected to the Council on Foreign Relations (2007).[17]
  • Guggenheim Fellow (2011).[18]
  • Otis Dudley Duncan Award, American Sociological Association (2018).[19]
Personal life

Conley is married to the Bosnian-American astrophysicist Tea Temim, with whom he has a child. He also has two children from a previous marriage, to Natalie Jeremijenko.[20][21][22]

Works
  • Being Black, Living in the Red. University of California Press. 1999. ISBN 978-0-520-21673-0.
  • Honky. University of California Press. 2000. ISBN 0-520-21586-9.
  • The Starting Gate. University of California Press. 2003. ISBN 978-0-520-23955-5.
  • The Pecking Order. Random House. 2004. ISBN 978-0-375-71381-1.
  • You May Ask Yourself. W. W. Norton & Company. 2008. ISBN 978-0-393-12020-2.
  • Elsewhere, U.S.A. Random House. 2009. ISBN 978-0-375-42290-4.
  • Parentology. Simon & Schuster. 2014. ISBN 978-1-476-71266-6.
  • The Genome Factor. Princeton University Press. 2017. ISBN 978-0-691-16474-8., with Jason Fletcher
  • The Social Genome. W. W. Norton & Company. 2025. ISBN 978-1324092636.
References
  1. ^ "Princeton University Sociology Faculty". Archived from the original on July 1, 2016.
  2. ^ "Dalton Conley – Princeton University Faculty Bio". 2016. Archived from the original on August 16, 2016.
  3. ^ Conley, Dalton (1999). Being Black, Living in the Red. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520261303.
  4. ^ Conley, Dalton (2000). Honky. University of California Press. ISBN 0520215869.
  5. ^ "A life less ordinary". theguardian.com. April 5, 2001. Retrieved April 24, 2026.
  6. ^ Conley, Dalton (2003). The Starting Gate: Birth Weight and Life Chances. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520239555.
  7. ^ Conley, Dalton (2004). The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why. Pantheon. ISBN 0375421742.
  8. ^ "You May Ask Yourself". wwnorton.com. Retrieved April 24, 2026.
  9. ^ Conley, Dalton (2009). Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety. Pantheon. ISBN 978-0375422904.
  10. ^ Conley, Dalton (2014). Parentology: Everything You Wanted to Know About the Science of Raising Children but Were Too Exhausted to Ask. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1476712659.
  11. ^ "Parent Like a Mad Scientist". Time. 2014.
  12. ^ Conley, Dalton; Fletcher, Jason (January 24, 2017). The Genome Factor – Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691164748.
  13. ^ "The Social Genome". wwnorton.com. Retrieved April 24, 2026.
  14. ^ "Dalton Conley". Princeton University.
  15. ^ "NSF Announces CAREER Awardees".
  16. ^ "News from the NSF".
  17. ^ "CFR Membership Roster".
  18. ^ "Guggenheim Fellows".
  19. ^ "Population Section Award Recipients".
  20. ^ "Dalton Conley: Biography". New York University. Archived from the original on August 16, 2011. Retrieved October 26, 2012.
  21. ^ Bahrampour, Tara (September 25, 2003). "A Boy Named Yo, Etc.; Name Changes, Both Practical and Fanciful, Are on the Rise". The New York Times. Retrieved September 4, 2012.
  22. ^ Conley, Dalton (June 10, 2010). "Raising E and Yo..." Psychology Today. Retrieved August 19, 2016.
External links
  • Media related to Dalton Conley at Wikimedia Commons

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