Marriage, a History

by Stephanie Coontz

  6 For this and the next paragraph, see Tamar Lewin, “More Mothers of Babies Under 1 Are Staying Home,” New York Times, October 19, 2001; Stephanie Armour, “More Moms Make Kids Their Career of Choice,” USA Today, March 12, 2002; Census Press Release CB03-166, October 23, 2003.

  7 Lisa Belkin, “The Opt-Out Revolution,” New York Times Magazine, October 26, 2003; Claudia Wallis, “The Case for Staying Home,” Time (March 22, 2004), p. 51.

  8 In the 1980s, juvenile crime rates and teen pregnancies rose hand in hand with the number of single-parent families, leading many commentators to fear that changing family forms were creating a generation of “superpredators.” But although the number of single-parent homes continued to rise in the 1990s, teen violence and teen birthrates plummeted after 1992. By the end of the century the violent crime rate among teenagers had reached its lowest level in more than twenty years, and the teen birthrate was at an all time historic low. “Juvenile Homicides Decline,” New York Times, December 15, 2000; Lina Guzman et al., “How Children Are Doing: The Mismatch Between Public Perception and Statistical Reality,” Child Trends Research Brief, Publication 2003-12 (July 2003); Stephanie Ventura et al., “Estimate Pregnancy Rates for the United States, 1990-2000” (New York: Alan Guttmacher Institute, June 14, 2004).

  9 Jeff Madrick, “Still a Gender Wage Gap,” New York Times, June 10, 2004; Teresa Carson, “Lesbian Moms a Growing U.S. Phenomenon,” Reuters News Service, May 25, 2004.

  10 Fertility of American Women, June 2002 (U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, October 2003); Stephanie Armour, “Some Moms Quit as Offices Scrap Family-Friendliness,” USA Today, May 4, 2004.

  11 Paula England, Carmen Garcia-Beaulieu, and Mary Rose, “Women’s Employment Among Blacks, Whites, and Three Groups of Latinas,” Gender & Society 18 (2004).

  12 Kathleen Gerson, “Moral Dilemmas, Moral Strategies, and the Transformation of Gender: Lessons for Two Generations of Work and Family Change,” Gender & Society 16 (2002), pp. 17-18.

  13 Donald Hernandez, America’s Children: Resources from Family, Government and the Economy (New York: Russell Sage, 1993).

  14 David Leonhardt, “Wage Gap Between Men and Women Closes to Narrowest,” New York Times, February 17, 2003.

  15 Arleen Leibowitz and Jacob Klerman, “Explaining Changes in Married Mothers’ Employment over Time,” Demography 32 (1995).

  16 Families and Work Institute, 2002 National Study of the Changing Workforce (New York: 2002); Ellen Galinsky et al., Feeling Overworked: When Work Becomes Too Much (New York: Families and Work Institute, 2001).

  17 Amy Goldstein, “When Wives Bring Home More Bacon,” Washington Post National Weekly Edition, March 6, 2000; Peg Tyre and Daniel McGinn, “She Works, He Doesn’t,” Newsweek (May 12, 2003); Jason Fields, “Children’s Living Arrangements and Characteristics, March 2002,” Current Population Reports P20-547 (June 2002); Henry Bellows, “Domestic Dads,” Tacoma News Tribune, June 24, 2004.

  18 Louise Lamphere, Patricia Zavella, and Felipe Gonzales, with Peter Evans, Sunbelt Working Mothers: Reconciling Family and Factory (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993); Tamar Lewin, “More Women Earn Half Their Household Income,” New York Times, May 11, 1995; Francine Deutsch, “Halving It All,” in Naomi Gerstel, Dan Clawson, and Robert Zussman, Families at Work: Expanding the Boundaries (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002), p. 127.

  19 Phillip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, American Couples: Money, Work, Sex (New York: William Morrow, 1983); Richard Gelles, Contemporary Families: A Sociological View (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1995), p. 344.

  20 Andrew Cherlin, “By the Numbers,” New York Times Magazine, April 5, 1998; L. Johnston, J. Bachman, and P. O’Malley, “Monitoring the Future: Questionnaire Responses from the Nation’s High School Seniors” (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, 1998).

  21 Thomas Bradbury, “Understanding and Altering the Longitudinal Course of Marriage,” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (November 2004).

  22 John Rowe and Robert Kahn, Successful Aging (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992); Susan Cohen, “Generation Next,” Washington Post Magazine, June 1, 1997; Casper and Bianchi, Continuity and Change; Teresa Cooney and Kathleen Dunne, “Intimate Relationships in Later Life: Current Realities, Future Prospects,” Journal of Family Issues, 22 (2001); Phillips, Putting Asunder (see chap. 9, n. 17).

  23 Joshua Goldstein, “The Leveling of Divorce in the United States,” Demography 36 (1999); Norval Glenn, “Feedback: A Reconsideration of the Effect of No-Fault Divorce,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 59 (1997); Ira Ellman, “Divorce Rates, Marriage Rates, and the Problematic Persistence of Traditional Marital Roles,” Family Law Quarterly 34 (2000). For a dissenting view, see Margaret Brinig and F. H. Buckley, “No-Fault Laws and at-Fault People,” International Review of Law and Economics 18 (1998).

  24 Frank Furstenberg, Unplanned Pregnancy: The Social Consequences of Teenage Childbearing (New York: Free Press, 1976). See also Frank Furstenberg, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, and S. Philip Morgan, Adolescent Mothers in Later Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

  25 Gabrielle Raley, “No Good Choices,” in Stephanie Coontz, Maya Parson, and Gabrielle Raley, eds., American Families: A Multicultural Reader (New York: Routledge, 1999); Ted Huston and Heidi Malz, “The Case for (Promoting) Marriage: The Devil Is in the Details,” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (November 2004).

  26 Lawrence Wu and Barbara Wolfe, “Introduction,” in Wu and Wolfe, eds., Out of Wedlock: Causes and Consequences of Nonmarital Fertility (New York: Russell Sage, 2001).

  27 Larry Muhammad, “Adopting Solo,” Louisville Courier-Journal, March 30, 2003; Joy Thompson, “Wanted: Single, Female Mom?,” USA Today, April 9, 2004.

  28 Larry Bumpass and Hsien-Hen Lu, “Cohabitation: How the Families of U.S. Children Are Changing,” Focus 21 (2000); personal communication, Andrew J. Cherlin, Johns Hopkins University, July 30, 2003.

  29 Risman and Schwartz, “Gender Politics.”

  30 Nina Bernstein, “In a Culture of Sex, More Teenagers Are Striving for Restraint,” New York Times, March 7, 2004.

  31 For the cohabitation behaviors and values discussed in the next paragraphs, see Kathleen Kiernan, “Cohabitation in Western Europe,” in Booth and Crouter, eds., Just Living Together; Celine Le Bourdais and Evelyne Lapierre-Adamcyk, “Changes in Conjugal Life in Canada,” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (2004); Seltzer “Cohabitation”; Smock and Gupta, “Cohabitation in Contemporary North America,” in Booth and Crouter, Just Living Together; Kathleen Kiernan, “The Rise of Cohabitation and Childbearing Outside Marriage in Western Europe,” International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 15 (2001); Seltzer, “Cohabitation and Family Change,” in Coleman and Ganong, Handbook of Contemporary Families; William Axinn and Arland Thornton, “The Relationship Between Cohabitation and Divorce,” Demography 29 (1992); Casper and Bianchi, Continuity and Change; John Haskey, “Demographic Aspects of Cohabitation in Great Britain,” International Journal of Law, Policy, and the Family 15 (2001); Pamela Smock, “Cohabitation in the United States,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000); Claude Martin and Irene Thery, “The Pacs and Marriage and Cohabitation in France,” International Journal of Law, Public Policy and the Family 15 (April 2001); David Coleman and Tarani Chandola, “Britain’s Place in Europe’s Population,” in Susan McRae, ed., Changing Britain: Families and Households in the 1990s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

  32 For this and the following paragraphs, see David Von Drehle and Alan Cooperman, “A Fast-Moving Movement,” Washington Post National Weekly Edition, March 15-21, 2004; “Quebec Court Declares Same-Sex Marriage Legal,” The Olympian, March 20, 2004; Typh Tucker, “Out-of State Travelers Boost Same-Sex Marriage Crowds,” The Olympian, March 20, 2004; “Gay? NO Marriage License Here: Straight? Ditto,” New York Times, March 27, 2004; Karen Breslau and Brad Stone, “Outlaw Vows,” Newsweek (March 1, 2004).

  33 Evelyn Nieves, �
�Family Values Groups and Gay Marriage,” Washington Post, August 17, 2003; James Dobson, Focus on the Family Newsletter, September 2003; James Dobson, Focus on the Family Newsletter, April 2004.

  34 Stanley Kurtz, “The Road to Polyamory,” Weekly Standard (August 4-11, 2003).

  35 Eric Widmer, Judith Treas, and Robert Newcomb, “Attitudes Toward Nonmarital Sex in 24 Countries,” Journal of Sex Research 35 (1998); John Fetto, “Gay Friendly?” American Demographics (May 2002).

  36 Cathy Grossman, “Is the Recent Backlash Against Homosexuality Just a ‘Blip’?,” USA Today, July 31, 2003; Adam Goodheart, “Change of Heart,” AARP Magazine (May and June, 2004), p. 44; John Ritter, “Gay-Marriage Backers Seize Opportunity,” USA Today, March 22, 2004; Dennis Cauchon, “Civil Unions Gain Support,” USA Today, March 10, 2004.

  37 Bonnie Powell, “Former Law Dean Examines Same-Sex Marriage,” University of California News Center, February 27, 2003; Joan Laird, “Lesbian and Gay Families,” in Froma Walsh, ed., Normal Family Processes: Growing Diversity and Complexity (New York: Guilford, 2003); Karen Peterson, “Adoption Groups Opening Doors to Gays,” USA Today, November 4, 2003; Marilyn Elias, “Psychologists to Endorse Gay Marriage,” USA Today, July 29, 2004.

  38 Peter Laslett, Karla Oosterveen, and Richard M. Smith, Bastardy and Its Comparative History (London: Edward Arnold, 1980); Jean Rodin, The Way We Lived Then (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 2000); U.S. Census Bureau Public Information Office, CB02-CN173, December 17, 2002.

  39 Michelle Conlin, “Unmarried America,” BusinessWeek (October 20, 2003).

  40 Anton Kuijsten, “Changing Family Patterns in Europe,” European Journal of Population 12 (1996), pp. 140-41.

  41 Ulrich Beck and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and its Social and Political Consequences (London: Sage, 2002).

  42 Kuijsten, “Changing Family Patterns in Europe”; Katja Boh et al., Changing Patterns of European Family Life: A Comparative Analysis of 14 European Countries (New York: Routledge, 1989).

  43 McRae, “Introduction,” in McCrae, ed., Changing Britain; Franz-Xavier Kaufmann et al., eds., Family Life and Family Policies in Europe (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1997) vol. 1; Britta Hoem, “Sweden,” in Blossfeld, ed., New Role of Women.

  44 How long that tide can be contained in any direction is an open question. The number of unmarried parents in Japan grew by 85 percent in the last five years of the 1990s, albeit from a very low starting point, and the divorce rate, especially for older people, has also risen significantly. In Ireland, a bastion of sexual conservatism until the 1980s, one-third of all children are now born out of wedlock. Constanza Tobio, “Marriage, Cohabitation and the Residential Independence of Young People in Spain,” International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 15 (2001); James Ponzetti, ed., International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2003), p. 966; Gisela Bock, Women in European History (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Publishers, 2001); Paola Ronfani, “Children, Law and Social Policy in Italy,” International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 15 (2001); Rosanna Trifiletti, “Women’s Labor Market Participation and the Reconciliation of Work and Family Life in Italy,” in Laura den Dulk, Anneke van Doorne-Huiskes, and Joop Schippers, eds., Work-Family Arrangements in Europe (Amsterdam: Thela-Thesis, 1999); “The Rise of Cohabitation and Childbearing Outside Marriage in Western Europe,” International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 15 (2001); “Sex Taboos on the Way Out, Poll Shows,” Irish Independent, January, 2001; Dirk Van de Kaa et al., eds., European Population: Unity in Diversity (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999). On family changes in Japan, see Yamada Masahiro, The Japanese Family in Transition (Tokyo: Foreign Press Center, 1998); Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda, eds., Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future (New York: Feminist Press, 1995); Michael Zielenziger, “Shifting Family Values: Fewer Births, Marriages Threaten Japan’s Future,” New York Times, March 13, 2003; John Raymo, “Premarital Living Arrangements and the Transition to First Marriage in Japan,” Journal of Marriage and Family 65 (2003); Noriko Iawai, “Divorce in Japan,” in Robin Miller, ed., With This Ring: Divorce, Intimacy, and Cohabitation from a Multicultural Perspective (Stamford, Conn.: JAI Press, 2001); Peter Goodman and Akiko Kashiwagi, “In Japan, Housewives No More,” Washington Post National Weekly Edition, November 4-10, 2002; Mari Osawa, “Twelve Million Full-time Housewives,” in Zunz, Schoppa, and Hiwatari, Social Contracts Under Stress; Hiromi Ono, “Women’s Economic Standing, Marriage Timing, and Cross-National Contexts of Gender,” Journal of Marriage and Family 65 (2003); Karen Mason, Noriko Tsuya, and Manja Choe, The Changing Family in Comparative Perspective: Asia and the United States (Honolulu: East-West Center, 1998); Sonni Efron, “Me, Find a Husband?,” Los Angeles Times, June 26, 2001; Howard French, “As Japan’s Women Move Up, Many Are Moving Out,” New York Times, March 25, 2003; Keiko Tatsuta, “More Women Daring to Be Unmarried Mothers,” Japan Today, December 29, 2001. My thanks to Liza Rognas, faculty reference librarian at The Evergreen State College, for help finding statistics on falling Japanese birthrates.

  45 Paul Wiseman, “In Taiwan, Not Much Ado over Gays Saying ‘I Do,’ ” USA Today, February 5, 2004.

  46 Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Changes Around the World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Estelle Freedman, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002).

  47 Kevin Kinsella, “Demographic Dimensions of Global Aging,” Journal of Family Issues 21 (2000); Ben Wattenberg, “It Will Be a Smaller World After All,” New York Times, March 8, 2003; “Growth Rate Slowing: Global Population in 2002 Tops 6.2 Billion,” Census Press Release CB04-48, March 22, 2004.

  48 Arland Thornton and Linda Young-DeMarco, “Four Decades of Trends in Attitudes Toward Family Issues in the United States,” Journal of Marriage and Family 63 (2001).

  49 Andrew Cherlin, “The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage,” Journal of Marriage and Family 66 (2004); Jane Millar and Andrea Warman, Family Obligations in Europe (London: Family Policy Studies Centre, 1996); Harry Willekens, “Is Contemporary Family Law Historically Unique?,” Journal of Family History 28 (2003); Irène Thery, Demarriage (Paris: Édition Odile Jacob, 1994); Nancy Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).

  Chapter 17. Uncharted Territory

  1 Clifford Adams, “Making Marriage Work,” Ladies’ Home Journal (June 1950), p. 26.

  2 Clifford Adams, “Making Marriage Work,” Ladies’ Home Journal (April 1951), p. 28.

  3 William Doherty, The Intentional Family: How to Build Family Ties in Our Modern World (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997).

  4 There are some outstanding exceptions, of course. Researchers and clinicians at the Council on Contemporary Families and the National Council on Family Relations recommend the following books particularly highly: John Gottman and Nan Silver, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (New York: Crown Publishers, 1999); Andrew Christensen and Neil Jacobson, Reconcilable Differences (New York: Guilford Press, 2000); William Doherty, Take Back Your Marriage (New York: Guilford Press, 2001). See also Neil Jacobson and Andrew Christensen, Acceptance and Change in Couples Therapy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998); John Gottman and Clifford Notarius, “Marital Research in the 20th Century and a Research Agenda for the 21st Century,” Family Process 41 (2002); Frank Fincham and Thomas Bradbury, The Psychology of Marriage (New York: Guilford Press, 1990).

  5 “Too Late for Prince Charming,” Newsweek (June 2, 1986), p. 55; Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children (New York: TalkMiramax Books, 2002).

  6 Barbara Lovenheim, Beating the Marriage Odds (New York: William Morrow, 1990), pp. 26-27; Art Levine, “Second Time Around: Realities of Remarriage,” U.S. News & World Report 108, (January 29, 1990); Felicity Barringer, “Chang
es in Family Patterns,” New York Times, June 7, 1991, p. A1; Robert Schoen and Nicola Standish, “The Retrenchment of Marriage,” Population and Development Review 27 (2001).

  7 Gary Becker, A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).

  8 Andrew Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992). Interestingly, however, cross-cultural studies show that the independence effect of greater female economic or political influence does not necessarily increase divorce when men and women share responsibility in the home and in the community. Instead, increases in women’s power are most likely to produce high divorce rates when there is strict task segregation by sex. Thus the increased specialization that developed with the rise of the male breadwinner marriage may actually have set the stage for the international surge in divorce once women began to earn their own income. See Lewellyn Hendrix and Willie Pearson, “Spousal Interdependence, Female Power and Divorce,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 26 (1995).

  9 For this and the next paragraph, see Rose Krieder and Jason Fields, “Number, Timing, and Duration of Marriage and Divorce: 1996,” Current Population Reports P70-80, February 2002, Table 9, p. 14; Joshua Goldstein and Catherine Kenney, “Marriage Delayed or Marriage Foregone?,” American Sociological Review 66 (2001); Garance Franke-Ruta, “Creating a Lie: Sylvia Ann Hewlett and the Myth of the Baby Bust,” American Prospect (July 1, 2002); Valerie Oppenheimer, “Women’s Employment and the Gains to Marriage,” Annual Review of Sociology 23 (1997); Hans-Peter Blossfeld, “Changes in the Process of Family Formation and Women’s Growing Economic Independence: A Comparison of Nine Countries,” in Hans-Peter Blossfeld, ed., The New Role of Women: Family Formation in Modern Societies (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995); Noriko Tsuya and Karen Mason, “Changing Gender Roles and Below Replacement Fertility in Japan,” in Mason and An-Magritt Jensen, eds., Gender and Family Change in Industrialized Countries (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1995).