Stephanie Coontz Quotes

In the 1970s, family history wasn't yet thought of a serious field for study. I was terrified of being laughed at by other historians. I called my book 'The Social Origins of Private Life.' It should have been 'As Pompous as You Want to Be.' Every sentence was academic jargon, and if I said X, I qualified it with Y.

- Stephanie Coontz

Giving married women an independent legal existence did not destroy heterosexual marriage. And allowing husbands and wives to construct their marriages around reciprocal duties and negotiated roles - where a wife can choose to be the main breadwinner and a husband can stay home with the children - was an immense boon to many couples.

- Stephanie Coontz

Contrary to the fears of some pundits, the ascent of women does not portend the end of men. It offers a new beginning for both. But women's progress by itself is not a panacea for America's inequities.

- Stephanie Coontz

Historically, it has required a combination of favorable employment trends and active government intervention to lower the percentage of people in poverty and raise living standards for the working middle class.

- Stephanie Coontz

Americans are right to believe the American Dream is fading. But that dream only became a possibility for white men as a result of the labor struggles and reforms of the New Deal, and it began to extend to minorities and women only after the civil rights and women's movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

- Stephanie Coontz

Throughout history, people with few educational or economic resources and little bargaining power have often looked to authoritarian, ruthless people to stand up for them.

- Stephanie Coontz

The real gender inequality in marriage stems from the tendency to regard women as the default parent, the one who, in the absence of family-friendly work policies, is expected to adjust her paid work to shoulder the brunt of domestic responsibilities.

- Stephanie Coontz

When you can't change what's bothering you, one typical response is to convince yourself that it doesn't actually bother you.

- Stephanie Coontz

Whatever their relative valuation of the single and married states, most societies in history made sharp distinctions between those who married and those who remained single: They were seen as mutually exclusive ways of life, with different legal rights and social obligations.

- Stephanie Coontz

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

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 more possibilities for independence.

- Stephanie Coontz

Unemployment, low wages, and poverty discourage family formation and erode family stability, making it less likely that individuals will marry in the first place and more likely that their marriages will dissolve.

- Stephanie Coontz

Averages are useful because many traits, behaviors, and outcomes are distributed in a bell-shaped curve, with most results clustered around the middle and a much smaller group of outliers at the high and low ends.

- Stephanie Coontz

Marriage can provide a bounty of emotional, practical, and financial support. But finding the right mate is no substitute for having friends and other interests.

- Stephanie Coontz

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 by the census as living in 'non-family households.' They resent the fact that their family responsibilities literally don't 'count,' either for society or for their employers.

- Stephanie Coontz

Presidents Reagan and the first George Bush never used the vile language of some Trump supporters, but both blamed scarce resources and decaying communities on 'welfare queens' and black criminals like Willie Horton.

- Stephanie Coontz

A primary motivation for introducing no-fault divorce was, in fact, to reduce perjury in the legal system.

- Stephanie Coontz

Being a feminist is not about how successful, talented, and assertive you are in your own life. It's about whether you support the struggle to overcome the limiting gendered stereotypes and barriers that force so many women to restrict their aspirations as workers, to fulfill their aspirations as parents, and force so many men to do the opposite.

- Stephanie Coontz

We must recognize that there are healthy as well as unhealthy ways to be single or to be divorced, just as there are healthy and unhealthy ways to be married.

- Stephanie Coontz

If the ascent of women has been much exaggerated, so has the descent of men.

- Stephanie Coontz

We need to push for work-family practices and policies that allow individuals to customize their work lives according to their changing individual preferences and family obligations, not just their traditional gender roles.

- Stephanie Coontz

Liberal politicians, in celebrating the benefits of modernization, free trade, diverse families, and the rise of more women and minorities into political and economic prominence, have often glossed over the pain of white blue-collar communities.

- Stephanie Coontz

When we assume that 'normal' people need 'time to heal,' or discourage individuals from making any decisions until a year or more after a loss, as some grief counselors do, we may be giving inappropriate advice. Such advice can cause people who feel ready to move on to wonder if they are hardhearted.

- Stephanie Coontz

Trump made his fortune manipulating tax laws and stiffing small businessmen, creating a few well-paying jobs along the way. Vulnerable people looking to master 'the art of the deal' learned the hard way that Trump held all the cards.

- Stephanie Coontz

It no longer makes sense to see singlehood and marriage as two distinct and stable social categories that should be accorded different legal rights and social esteem.

- Stephanie Coontz

If we want to revive and achieve the American Dream, we need to change a situation in which the people whose hard work makes this country run cannot earn a living wage, while bankers, speculators, and corporate elites - the real 'takers' in today's society - skim off far more than their fair share.

- Stephanie Coontz

Valentine's Day is a perfect time to reject the idea that the ideal man is taller, richer, more knowledgeable, more renowned, or more powerful.

- Stephanie Coontz

Deciding together to have a child and sharing in child-rearing do not immunize a marriage. Indeed, collaborative couples can face other problems. They often embark on such an intense style of parenting that they end up paying less attention to each other.

- Stephanie Coontz

It is ironic that so many politicians claim to defend traditional Christian values of 'faith and family.' In fact, a radical antifamily ideology permeates Christ's teaching, and the early Christian tradition often set faith and family against each other.

- Stephanie Coontz

In personal life, the warm glow of nostalgia amplifies good memories and minimizes bad ones about experiences and relationships, encouraging us to revisit and renew our ties with friends and family. It always involves a little harmless self-deception, like forgetting the pain of childbirth.

- Stephanie Coontz

Using the existence of a marriage license to determine when the state should protect interpersonal relationships is increasingly impractical.

- Stephanie Coontz

Hyper-parenting has many pitfalls. Overprotected and overpraised children may develop an inflated sense of entitlement.

- Stephanie Coontz

Many alternatives to traditional marriage have emerged. People feel free to shop around, experimenting with several living arrangements in succession. And when people do marry, they have different expectations and goals.

- Stephanie Coontz

Feminism insists on women's right to make choices - about whether to marry, whether to have children, whether to combine work and family or to focus on one over the other. It also urges men and women to share the joys and burdens of family life and calls on society to place a higher priority on supporting caregiving work.

- Stephanie Coontz

Marriage is no longer the only place where people make major life transitions and decisions, enter into commitments, or incur obligations.

- Stephanie Coontz

Contrary to myth, 'The Feminine Mystique' and feminism did not represent the beginning of the decline of the stay-at-home mother but a turning point that led to much stronger legal rights and 'working conditions' for her.

- Stephanie Coontz

Couples need time alone to renew their relationship. They also need to sustain supportive networks of friends and family.

- Stephanie Coontz

When liberals dismiss all Trump supporters as racists, this only fuels their anger.

- Stephanie Coontz

There's nothing wrong with celebrating the good things in our past. But memories, like witnesses, do not always tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We need to cross-examine them, recognizing and accepting the inconsistencies and gaps in those that make us proud and happy as well as those that cause us pain.

- Stephanie Coontz

I've had the kind of complex life I write about. I was a single mother for 12 years. I'd been engaged. The wedding fell through. I then discovered I was pregnant and opted to have the child on my own. I was a professor. I was in my mid-30s. I could manage it financially.

- Stephanie Coontz

The growing diversity of family life comes with new possibilities as well as new challenges.

- Stephanie Coontz

As Americans lose the wider face-to-face ties that build social trust, they become more dependent on romantic relationships for intimacy and deep communication and more vulnerable to isolation if a relationship breaks down.

- Stephanie Coontz

For a century, women have binged on romance novels that encouraged them to associate intimidation with infatuation; it's no wonder that this emotional hangover still lingers.

- Stephanie Coontz

The closer we get to achieving equality of opportunity between the sexes, the more clearly we can see that the next major obstacle to improving the well-being of most men and women is the growing socioeconomic inequality within each sex.

- Stephanie Coontz

One thing standing in the way of further progress for many men is the same obstacle that held women back for so long: overinvestment in their gender identity instead of their individual personhood.

- Stephanie Coontz

Some people may long for an era when divorce was still hard to come by. The spread of no-fault divorce has reduced the bargaining power of whichever spouse is more interested in continuing the relationship. And the breakup of such marriages has caused pain for many families.

- Stephanie Coontz

Inequality was written into the creation of the American Republic when our Founding Fathers denied voting rights to women.

- Stephanie Coontz

Indeed, the spread of 'virtual' communities on the Internet speaks to a deep hunger to reach out to others.

- Stephanie Coontz

Sometimes, having a mom stay home is a big help. On the other hand, when a mother works outside the home, her husband generally does more child care and has higher parental knowledge about his childrens' friends, routines, and needs, cutting across the tendency for fathers to be second-string parents at home.

- Stephanie Coontz

Donald Trump has tapped into a deep vein of racism, nativism, and misogyny.

- Stephanie Coontz

Too often, tributes to the home-cooked meal assume every family has a schedule that gets everyone home by 5:30 P.M. And too many recipes treat cooking as a solitary pursuit that requires the cook - still most often Mom - to take time away from other family interactions and chores.

- Stephanie Coontz

Because we live so much of our adult lives as singles, it no longer makes sense to assume that marriage is the only way people will organize their obligations and commitments.

- Stephanie Coontz

There is no denying that we have made great progress toward gender equality.

- Stephanie Coontz

Turning back the inequality revolution may be difficult. But that would certainly help more families - at almost all income levels - than turning back the gender revolution.

- Stephanie Coontz

Feminism needs a political program because gender inequality has been fostered by political decisions.

- Stephanie Coontz

I am not arguing that women ought to 'settle.' I am arguing that we can now expect more of a mate than we could when we depended on men for our financial security, social status, and sense of accomplishment.

- Stephanie Coontz

Especially around Valentine's Day, it's easy to find advice about sustaining a successful marriage, with suggestions for 'date nights' and romantic dinners for two. But as we spend more and more of our lives outside marriage, it's equally important to cultivate the skills of successful singlehood.

- Stephanie Coontz

Usually, Valentine's Day comes and goes with just a day or two of news media attention to courtship and marriage.

- Stephanie Coontz

Graduating from high school is certainly a good idea, but it's no longer much protection against poverty.

- Stephanie Coontz

Marriage has been in a constant state of evolution since the dawn of the Stone Age. In the process, it has become more flexible - but also more optional.

- Stephanie Coontz

No single choice about how to organize work and family life is right or possible - for every family. And every choice has tradeoffs.

- Stephanie Coontz

Marriage is no longer the main way in which societies regulate sexuality and parenting or organize the division of labor between men and women.

- Stephanie Coontz

Cooking ought to be, quite literally, child's play. And every child ought to have access to the game. Just don't tell them it's healthy.

- Stephanie Coontz

During the 1960s, rising real wages for low-income and high-income workers, due in part to rapid economic growth and the spread of unionization, worked in tandem with expanding government support systems to improve Americans' well-being.

- Stephanie Coontz

Labeling people single parents, for example, when they may in fact be co-parenting - either with an unmarried other parent in the home or with an ex-spouse in a joint custody situation - stigmatizes their children as the products of 'single parenthood' and makes the uncounted parent invisible to society.

- Stephanie Coontz

For most of America's history, people typically aspired to acquire 'a competency' rather than great riches. A competency meant the ability to comfortably sustain a household without depending on others. 'Competence' also meant being capable and reliable. The American Dream was that people who worked hard and capably could support their families.

- Stephanie Coontz

Economically as well as emotionally, modern marriage has become like an affluent gated community. It has become harder for low-income Americans to enter and sustain.

- Stephanie Coontz

Nostalgia is a very human trait.

- Stephanie Coontz

In 1992, I critiqued the panic over growing family diversity. My skepticism about the doomsayers has since been proven correct.

- Stephanie Coontz

Parents who obsess about every detail of child-rearing and orchestrate their children's 'resumes' may run themselves ragged while their own personal identities and adult relationships wither for lack of care.

- Stephanie Coontz

Rising inequality has changed family dynamics for all socioeconomic groups.

- Stephanie Coontz

Over the ages, some societies have accorded far less value and respect to singles than to married individuals.

- Stephanie Coontz

The origins of modern marital instability lie largely in the triumph of what many people believe to be marriage's traditional role - providing love, intimacy, fidelity, and mutual fulfillment. The truth is that for centuries, marriage was stable precisely because it was not expected to provide such benefits.

- Stephanie Coontz

Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory economic and political institution.

- Stephanie Coontz

As a historian, I've spent much of my career warning people about the dangers of nostalgia.

- Stephanie Coontz

Why do people - gay or straight - need the state's permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn't, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents' agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.

- Stephanie Coontz

In my work as a historian and in my relationships as a friend, teacher, wife, and mother, I have come to think that the most useful way to understand the past and make it work for you is to look at the trade-offs and contradictions that, however deeply buried, can be uncovered in every memory, good or bad.

- Stephanie Coontz

Establishing a 'livable wage' floor would immediately reduce the gap in average pay between American women and men.

- Stephanie Coontz

Unilateral divorce has decreased the bargaining power of the person who wants the marriage to last and has not engaged in behavior that meets the legal definition of fault. On the other hand, it has increased the bargaining power of the person who is willing to leave.

- Stephanie Coontz

As soon as love became the driving force behind marriage, people began to demand the right to remain single if they had not found love or to divorce if they fell out of love.

- Stephanie Coontz

Our goal should be to develop work-life policies that enable people to put their gender values into practice. So let's stop arguing about the hard choices women make and help more women and men avoid such hard choices.

- Stephanie Coontz

To my mind, it is better to have regrets about the good aspects of your former marriage because you were able to work past some of your accumulated resentments than to have no regrets because you had to ratchet up the hostility to get out in the first place.

- Stephanie Coontz

In 1975, which was the height of the women's movement, I thought I'd write a book on women's history. But in searching for a topic, I realized that there were few places in history where men and women interacted. Finally, it hit me: 'Oh, look at the family. That's the one place.'

- Stephanie Coontz

The notion that marriage is an impediment to commitments to the larger community is a long-standing one - and one reason early Christians did not place the institution at the top of their moral hierarchy, complaining that married couples cared more about pleasing each other than doing the Lord's work.

- Stephanie Coontz

Putting women first would mean strengthening America's social safety net, because a higher proportion of single-mother families live in poverty here than in any other wealthy country.

- Stephanie Coontz

As time passes, the actual complexity of our history - even of our own personal experience - gets buried under the weight of the ideal image.

- Stephanie Coontz

Putting women's traditional needs at the center of social planning is not reverse sexism. It's the best way to reverse the increasing economic vulnerability of men and women alike.

- Stephanie Coontz

Historically, mass demonstrations have worked best at shifting public opinion and pressuring the powers-that-be when organizers highlighted one concrete demand: 'Bring Our Boys Home from Vietnam'; 'End Segregation Now'; 'Support Women's Right to Choose.'

- Stephanie Coontz

Marriage is generally based on more equality and deeper friendship than in the past, but even so, it is hard for it to compensate for the way that work has devoured time once spent cultivating friendships.

- Stephanie Coontz

Cohabitation itself doesn't cause ineffective parenting.

- Stephanie Coontz

Educated parents find more time to spend with their children by reducing time dedicated to home-based activities that involve little interaction with children.

- Stephanie Coontz

The place where we keep our clothes isn't always the only place where we keep our commitments.

- Stephanie Coontz

Second marriages can and do create 'real' families.

- Stephanie Coontz

Social and economic policies constructed around the male breadwinner model have always disadvantaged women.

- Stephanie Coontz

People feel better when their spouses have good friendships, over and above the effects of their own friendships.

- Stephanie Coontz

Social changes always involve trade-offs.

- Stephanie Coontz

It's always seductive to know where one stands in relation to the average.

- Stephanie Coontz

As a child, I was lucky enough to spend each summer with my grandmother.

- Stephanie Coontz

You can't judge a family's health by the form it's in at a given moment.

- Stephanie Coontz

Having more education is one of the biggest predictors of women having careers.

- Stephanie Coontz