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

Stephanie Coontz

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" 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

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

Stephanie Coontz

" Rising inequality has changed family dynamics for all socioeconomic groups. "

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

" Social changes always involve trade-offs. "

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

" 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

" 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

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

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

" 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 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

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

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

" 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

" 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

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

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

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

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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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