For better and worse : the complicated past and challenging future of marriage / Stephanie Coontz ; afterword by Haley Swenson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Coontz, Stephanie, Author.

Contributor:

Swenson, Haley, writer of afterword.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marriage--History.

Marriage.

Genre:

Informational works.

Physical Description:

291 pages : illustration ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Complicated past and challenging future of marriage

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, [2026]

Summary:

"Twenty years ago, Stephanie Coontz asked of traditional marriage, "What tradition?" Now she returns to examine its contemporary state-what threatens its prevalence and what freedoms it can create for all people. Ninety percent of the world's people live in countries where marriage rates have plummeted since the 1980s, with the Western world experiencing especially steep drops. Almost everywhere, marriage has declined most among men and women with the lowest levels of education or earnings. And highly-educated and high-earning women are actually more likely to marry and less likely to divorce than in the past. But such women often express more ambivalence about getting married than other women-and typically postpone doing so until later in life. Still, rather than devaluing marriage, people all around the world overwhelmingly describe it as the highest expression of commitment they can imagine. And most people say they eventually want to marry even while they increasingly express uncertainty about whether they will end up doing so. In her new book, For Better and Worse, Stephanie Coontz unravels the origins of these paradoxical trends. Using the past to illuminate the present, she shows how shifting marital ideologies, gender relations, sexual mores, and emotional mind-sets over time have bequeathed us a welter of contradictory expectations and habits that often sabotage our attempts to build mutually satisfactory relationships. "Traditional" roles and values that once promoted successful marriages are now a recipe for relationship failure. Only by undoing the legacy of marriage's "problematic past," Coontz argues, can we help individuals and society at large navigate the "challenging future" of marriage"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

The Many and Much Misunderstood "Traditional" Marriages

The Paradox of Patriarchy and the Dark Side of Democracy

How the Gender Legacy of Democracy Holds Women Back

Separate Spheres, Soul-Mate Love, & Sexual Tension: The Contradictory Legacy of Nineteenth Century Courtship

From Spiritual Soulmates to Sexual Playmates: The Culture Wars of a Century Ago

Nostalgia for the 1950s: What We're Told We've Lost vs. What We've Actually Lost

Has Marriage Become a Luxury Good?

The New "Rules of Engagement": What Makes a Modern Marriage Work?

Afterword / by Haley Swenson.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version Coontz, Stephanie For better and worse

ISBN:

9780593299098

0593299094

OCLC:

1573154865

Publisher Number:

90104655792