Stephanie Coontz

Stephanie Coontz (born August 31, 1944) is an historian, author, and faculty member at The Evergreen State College. She teaches history and family studies and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which she chaired from 2001-2004. Coontz has authored and co-edited several books about the history of the family and marriage. Her work has been translated into French, Spanish, Greek, German, and Japanese.

Education and early career

Coontz received a BA degree in American History in 1966 from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a member of the campus political party SLATE. In 1970 she received an MA degree in European History from the University of Washington. Before turning to full-time teaching in 1975, Coontz had spent much of the previous decade as a Seattle-area leader of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which then considered itself a Trotskyist organization. By the late 1970s, however, Coontz had parted company with the SWP. She is listed as an advisory editor of Against the Current, a bimonthly theoretical journal of the Marxist-Socialist organization Solidarity.

Academic career

In addition to her current teaching position at Evergreen, Coontz has also taught at Kobe University in Japan and the University of Hawaii at Hilo. She is a former Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She won the Washington Governor's Writers Award in 1989 for her book The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families. In 1995 she received the Dale Richmond Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics for her "outstanding contributions to the field of child development." She received the 2001-02 "Friend of the Family" award from the Illinois Council on Family Relations. In 2004, she received the first-ever "Visionary Leadership" Award from the Council on Contemporary Families.

Coontz conducts research on how American families have gotten more diverse and egalitarian, but also smaller and more isolated. She argues that the dynamics of the "traditional" American family have been changing; there are many more homosexual families and immigrant families appearing in America. Coontz has also produced work intended to debunk romanticized notions about the history of American families. In particular her book The Way We Never Were argues that the family in the 1950s was far more prone to divorce, teen pregnancy, and infidelity than is commonly believed.

Coontz has appeared on national television and radio programs and her work has been featured in newspapers and magazines, as well as in many academic and professional journals. She has testified about her research before the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families in Washington, DC, and addressed audiences across America, Europe, and Japan.

Books

• Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York: Basic Books, 1992. ISBN 0-465-09097-4.
• Coontz, Stephanie. The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America's Changing Families. Basic Books, 1998. ISBN 0-465-09092-3.
• Coontz, Stephanie., ed. American Families; A Multicultural Reader. London: Routledge, 1999. ISBN 0-415-91574-0.
• Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. New York: Viking Press, 2005. ISBN 0-670-03407-X.

Recent essays

• Taking Marriage Private. New York Times, November 26, 2007.
• Too Close for Comfort. New York Times, November 7, 2006.
• A Pop Quiz on Marriage. New York Times, February 19, 2006.
• Why Marriage Today Takes More Love and Work - From Both Partners The Christian Science Monitor, une 28, 2005.
• Our Kids Are Not Doomed Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2005.
• For Better, For Worse: Marriage Means Something Different Now. The Washington Post, May 1, 2005.
• "Greater Good Magazine: The Family Revolution", Greater Good Science Center, Fall 2007 Issue.

External links

• Stephanie Coontz's personal website
• Antonella Gambotto-Burke on Stephanie Coontz
• The Heterosexual Revolution (July 5, 2005 New York Times Op-Ed on how traditional marriage, with its long history, was upended by heterosexuals)
• Mother Jones Interview (May/June 1998)