Quotes from Stephanie Coontz

Valentine's Day is a perfect time to reject the idea that the ideal man is taller, richer, more knowledgeable, more renowned, or more powerful.

Especially around Valentine's Day, it's easy to find advice about sustaining a successful marriage, with suggestions for 'date nights' and romantic dinners for two. But as we spend more and more of our lives outside marriage, it's equally important to cultivate the skills of successful singlehood.

Usually, Valentine's Day comes and goes with just a day or two of news media attention to courtship and marriage.

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.

Putting women's traditional needs at the center of social planning is not reverse sexism. It's the best way to reverse the increasing economic vulnerability of men and women alike.

The idea that academics should remain ''above the fray'' only gives ideologues license to misuse our work.

Americans are right to believe the American Dream is fading. But that dream only became a possibility for white men as a result of the labor struggles and reforms of the New Deal, and it began to extend to minorities and women only after the civil rights and women's movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

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

Cooking ought to be, quite literally, child's play. And every child ought to have access to the game. Just don't tell them it's healthy.

Donald Trump has tapped into a deep vein of racism, nativism, and misogyny.

Historically, mass demonstrations have worked best at shifting public opinion and pressuring the powers-that-be when organizers highlighted one concrete demand: 'Bring Our Boys Home from Vietnam'; 'End Segregation Now'; 'Support Women's Right to Choose.'

Indeed, the spread of 'virtual' communities on the Internet speaks to a deep hunger to reach out to others.

Second marriages can and do create 'real' families.