Stephanie Coontz
Stephanie Coontz is Professor Emerita at The Evergreen State College and the director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families. Her most recent book, For Better AND Worse: The Problematic Past and Uncertain Future of Marriage, is due out in 2024. Others include "A Strange Stirring": The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s (2011); the award-winning Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage (2005), which was cited the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage; The Way We Never Were (1992, revised and expanded 2016); and American Families: A Multicultural Reader (2008). Coontz has appeared on most national NPR programs and TV News shows, as well as "The Colbert Report," "Adam Ruins Everythng," Oprah," "The Today Show," and MSNBS. She frequently offers media training workshops for academics and students of history. She has written dozens of op-eds for the New York Times and CNN.
OAH Lectures by Stephanie Coontz
Today Americans spend less than half of their years between 18 and 55 as part of a married couple, down from 80 percent in the 1960s. And 41 percent of people 55 and older are unmarried. Marriage is not dead, but it is no longer the main place we make all our decisions and life transitions, or incur obligations to others. This lecture describes the role and dynamics of unmarried relationships and show how these social changes are changing all the "rules" of marriage itself.