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Stephanie Coontz teaches history at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and is the author of "Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage." September 7, 2005 At first glance, labor this year seems to have much to celebrate.

THE last week has been tough for opponents of same-sex marriage. First Canadian and then Spanish legislators voted to legalize the practice, prompting American social conservatives to renew their call for a constitutional amendment banning such marriages here. James Dobson of the evangelical group Focus on the Family has warned that without that ban, marriage as we have known it for 5,000 years will be overturned.

For hundreds of years, marital advice books have been written for women rather than men, because women were responsible for making a marriage work. And over all that time, their advice to women could be summed up in a single word: submit.

THE PROBLEM with modern marriage, according to conventional wisdom, is that today's couples don't make marriage their top priority and put their relationship above all else. As one of my students once wrote, "People nowadays don't respect the marriage vowels." Perhaps she meant IOU. But my research on the history of marriage convinces me that people now place a higher value on marriage than ever before in history. In fact, that's a big part of the problem.

Everyone knows that the intensification of work in the global economy and the erosion of the male-breadwinner family have created a crisis for parents organizing child care and couples trying to juggle work and married life. But what most people don't realize is that the male-breadwinner family was invented only 150 years ago, to solve an earlier crisis of work, marriage and family life. The current crisis is as broad as its predecessor, and its ultimate resolution no more predictable now than…

Since the last presidential election, "values" has been a buzzword for political pundits and talking heads. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have rushed to affirm their commitment to strong family values and the traditional value of marriage.