Articles

Next week a new parental leave policy goes into effect in the UK, extending the length of leave for up to 50 weeks after the birth or adoption of a baby, with 39 of the 50 weeks subsidised. After the first two weeks, a mother in a two-earner family can transfer all or some of the remaining weeks to the father, allowing her to go back to work earlier and him to stay home longer than in the past.

At the Council on Contemporary Families, we are fond of saying that the right research question in today's world is not “What kind of family do we wish people were living in?” but “What do we know about how to help every family identify and build upon its potential strengths and minimize its characteristic vulnerabilities?” In my 75th anniversary address to the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) (Coontz, 2013), I celebrated the commitment to scientific inquiry and debate that has…

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, teacher and author of The Way We Never Were and Marriage, A History, is director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families. In this interview with Omega, she speaks about the evolution of marriage and changing gender roles.Omega: You say marriage has changed more in the past 30 years than in the past 3,000 years. You've said that the very traits that make marriage in our contemporary society more rewarding have also made it less stable. How so?

Over the past 40 years, the geography of family life has been destabilized by two powerful forces pulling in opposite directions and occasionally scraping against each other, much like tectonic plates. One is the striking progress toward equality between men and women. The other is the equally striking growth of socioeconomic inequality and insecurity.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, which initially outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin - but not on the basis of gender. The word "sex" was added to the act as a last-minute amendment by a senator who opposed racial integration and may have hoped to thereby kill the bill entirely. Even after the law passed, few people expected the prohibition of gender discrimination to be enforced by the Equal Employment…