Freya Sonenstein
Johns Hopkins University
Freya Lund Sonenstein directs the Center for Adolescent Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at Johns Hopkins University, where she is a Professor in the Department of Population and Family Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She has conducted research on men’s sexual behavior and family roles for over 20 years within a broader family and children’s policy research agenda. Sonenstein was a member of the steering committee which guided the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics’ Nurturing Fatherhood initiative from its outset, and she coauthored one of the chapters in its final report on “Male Fertility and Family Formation.”
Sonenstein has designed and conducted several major national studies related to men’s fertility and fathering behavior. She directs the National Survey of Adolescent Males, a survey funded by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development to study fertility behavior and reproductive health among a national sample of young men ages 15 to 19. This study, which she developed with Joseph Pleck, is following young men who were first interviewed in 1988 to assess their transition into adult and family roles. The NSAM research team has produced more than 90 articles and reports about young men’s sexual and reproductive behavior. A new qualitative component of the NSAM project has interviewed selected respondents about the influences on their pathways to the formation of durable romantic relationships. Sonenstein has worked closely with the National Center for Health Statistics to prepare the questionnaire for the new male component of the National Survey of Family Growth that will provide new national data about men’s family formation experiences. Sonenstein is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for the Add Health Survey and for the Children of the NLSY Survey. She was the principal investigator of the Survey of Absent Parents, and she directed the National Survey of Paternity Establishment.
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