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This paper is drawn from a chapter in my recently completed dissertation which explores the lived experience of inequality by examining how two processes, the rise in income and wealth inequality and the privatization of risk, shape the lives of fifty families from across the socioeconomic spectrum in Silicon Valley. Through over 100 in-depth interviews and ethnographic research, my study finds that in an ever more stratified society, wherein families are increasingly expected to manage their own risk, security is emerging as a more salient basis of social class division. My study documents how families across the socioeconomic spectrum respond to the macroeconomic story that surrounds them by tracing the various types of security projects the families pursue in coping with that story. This particular chapter examines how some families relied on their churches as well as their spirituality to manage and address their security needs and anxieties. While many research participants in my study, regardless of class background, were religious, the interviews in which religion and faith came up most frequently when discussing issues of security were those with participants who have experienced immense economic difficulty and who have confronted hardship on a more consistent basis. This finding leads me to argue that in matters related to security projects, religion plays a more central role for those at the lower end of the class ladder. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work and family scholars have yet to thoroughly address an emerging issue in the field, which is that increasingly in the new economy, families from different social classes and groups have differential access to and experiences of security. This paper, based on interviews with fifty families from the top to the bottom of the social structure in Silicon Valley, and ethnographic research with a subset of these families, explores this phenomenon of the "inequality of security." My analysis finds that upper-income families are largely buffeted from risk by virtue of high incomes, in-demand skills, dense social networks, stable benefits, and the possession of distinct cultural capacities often required to succeed in the "risk society." In contrast, middle and lower-income families are more often exposed to risk because of comparatively lower earnings, less in-demand skills, less stable benefits, and different cultural practices. As a result, "the inequality of security" has profound implications for work and family life since families are unevenly and unequally positioned to see, plan for, experience and withstand, security, insecurity and risk. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]