Howard M. Bahr (born 1938) received a bachelor's degree in sociology with a minor in psychology from Brigham Young University in 1962. He received his M.A. in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1964, followed by his Ph.D. in sociology in 1965. Following a full-time research appointment at Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research, where he studied urban homelessness, he joined the sociology faculty at Washington State University in 1968. He became a professor of sociology at Brigham Young University in 1973, retiring in 2014. His research includes studies of urban problems, ethnicity, family relations, social theory, religion, and social change. He was among the researchers, who, in the 1970s, replicated Robert and Helen Lynd’s Middletown studies. Following that, for over a decade he participated in a multi-national study of social trends in advanced industrial societies. His work with wife and fellow BYU professor Kathleen Bahr includes family theory and research among Navajo and Apache families, and they jointly authored Toward More Family-Centered Family Sciences: Love, Sacrifice, and Transcendence (2009). His continuing interest in the sociology of Latter-day Saints is manifest in his final books, Saints Observed and Four Classic Mormon Village Studies (2014). Bahr is also known for his book, Skid Row: An Introduction to Disaffiliation.

Kathleen Slaugh Bahr was born in 1943. She completed a bachelor's degree in Home Economics Education and an MS in household economics and management at Utah State University, and a PhD in human ecology at Michigan State University. Her teaching and research have taken her to Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, and various American Indian reservations. Her research interests include a life-long study of the effects of family work upon individuals and families, and the study of family cultures of everyday living, including grandparenting, family ritual, work relations, family ecology, values, love, sacrifice, and family transcendence. She co-authored the book Family Science (1992), and worked with her husband, Howard Bahr, in research on family theory and Navajo and Apache families, jointly authoring Toward More Family-Centered Family Sciences: Love, Sacrifice, and Transcendence (2009). Kathleen has published in Journal of Marriage and Family, Family Relations, Social Forces, and other professional journals. Her primary acquaintance with family work came from growing up as eldest daughter in a family of 13 children.