Stephanie Coontz

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”