Dustin Lange worked his way up the ranks of at a property management company in Newark, Ohio without a college degree. His income as a vice president at the company put him in the top quartile for earnings nationally.

But when he got laid off at age 34, he was left in the lurch. Lange found his high school diploma was no longer enough to get an equivalent job in the real estate industry. And throughout the economy, the jobs promising a middle income wage and a employment growth now require at least some post-secondary education.

So Lange has had to retool and recalibrate his lifestyle. He moved out of his big house in a well-groomed development on the other side of town and he’s gone back to school to become a nurse.

View the interactive feature about Dustin Lange and job market trends.

Senator Barack Obama ventured into Hillary-land to pitch his social security fix to retirees in Columbus, Ohio.

Jaime is femme and Laura is butch.

Laura does most of the traditional “man” stuff. She’s the one who takes out the garbage and mows the lawn behind their home in Oakland. Jaime does most of the cooking and frequently goes on baking binges.

But it’s Jaime who’s the primary breadwinner. She’s the program coordinator of a women’s health center in Walnut Creek where she’s being groomed to take over for her boss. And now that they’ve decided to have their first baby, it’s Laura who’s pregnant

The feminist and gay rights movements of their mother’s generation allows them to pick and choose what aspects of the nuclear family and which feminist teachings they want to adhere to.

“We play with tradition. We buck tradition. The two of us have done it with this understanding of what’s come before us. And so in the ways that we choose to be traditional, in the ways that we choose to use feminism to choose what our mother’s were fighting against, is because we now have that choice,” Laura.

This photo essay documents the choices Jaime and Laura have made.

The project was shot with black and white film between February and April, 2008.