Marriage is no longer the only place where people make major life transitions and decisions, enter into commitments, or incur obligations. — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
No single choice about how to organize work and family life is right or possible - for every family. And every choice… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
The growing diversity of family life comes with new possibilities as well as new challenges. — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
Using the existence of a marriage license to determine when the state should protect interpersonal relationships is increasingly impractical. — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
Being a feminist is not about how successful, talented, and assertive you are in your own life. It's about whether you support… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
If we want to revive and achieve the American Dream, we need to change a situation in which the people whose hard… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
Giving married women an independent legal existence did not destroy heterosexual marriage. And allowing husbands and wives to construct their marriages around… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
In the 1970s, family history wasn't yet thought of a serious field for study. I was terrified of being laughed at by… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
Whatever their relative valuation of the single and married states, most societies in history made sharp distinctions between those who married and… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
I've had the kind of complex life I write about. I was a single mother for 12 years. I'd been engaged. The… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
Feminism insists on women's right to make choices - about whether to marry, whether to have children, whether to combine work and… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
In personal life, the warm glow of nostalgia amplifies good memories and minimizes bad ones about experiences and relationships, encouraging us to… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
We urgently need a debate about the best ways of supporting families in modern America, without blinders that prevent us from seeing… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
Historically, it has required a combination of favorable employment trends and active government intervention to lower the percentage of people in poverty… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share Image
As an overly confident college freshman, the first time I received a below-average score on an exam was a needed wake-up call. — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish ora German girl scrubbing floors… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
A primary motivation for introducing no-fault divorce was, in fact, to reduce perjury in the legal system. — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
Graduating from high school is certainly a good idea, but it's no longer much protection against poverty. — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
Almost all scholarly research carries practical and political implications. Better that we should spell these out ourselves than leave that task to people with… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
Investing in living-wage jobs and reducing the inequities between local school districts would give young people more, not less, incentive to postpone childbearing and… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
Hyper-parenting has many pitfalls. Overprotected and overpraised children may develop an inflated sense of entitlement. — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
Social and economic policies constructed around the male breadwinner model have always disadvantaged women. — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
When I speak on work-family issues to audiences around the country, some of the biggest complaints I hear come from individuals who are described… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
Extended families have never been the norm in America; the highest figure for extended-family households ever recorded in Americanhistory is 20 percent. Contrary to… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
Unilateral divorce has decreased the bargaining power of the person who wants the marriage to last and has not engaged in behavior that meets… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
The closer we get to achieving equality of opportunity between the sexes, the more clearly we can see that the next major obstacle to… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
Families have always been in flux and often in crisis; they have never lived up to nostalgic notions about "the way things used tobe."… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
A significant minority of senior women I've interviewed say, 'Love the companionship, glad to live with him, but I spent my first marriage picking… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
Marriage can provide a bounty of emotional, practical, and financial support. But finding the right mate is no substitute for having friends and other… — Stephanie Coontz Copy Share
