Articles

Thirteen years ago, Vice President Dan Quayle attacked the producers of TV sitcom's Murphy Brown for letting her character bear a child out of wedlock, claiming that the show's failure to defend traditional family values was encouraging America's youth to abandon marriage.

Nearly every week, the U.S. Census Bureau releases a new set of figures on American families and the living arrangements they have been creating in the past decade. And each time, as the media liaison for a national association of family researchers, I'm bombarded with telephone calls from radio and television producers seeking a talking head to confirm the wildly differing -- and usually wrong -- conclusions they've jumped to about what those figures say…

At a recent talk in Chicago I gave about the dangers of romanticizing "traditional" families, a young man asked me if I didn't think the mass rallies of the men's group Promise Keepers in football stadiums across the country represented "potential fascism." I argued, to considerable skepticism from my audience, that however disturbing the ideology of the leaders, the motivations that bring thousands of men together for these events are not fascist, or even explicitly…

Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with American's Changing Families, offers her take on the following social issues: Wayward Teens There's no evidence that most teens are any more irresponsible or destructive than teens were in the past, but they lack something that many older men grew up with: meaningful work with adult mentors. Apprenticeships, summer jobs in their parents' workplace and community service are possible remedies.

New research about an old institution challenges the conventional wisdom that the family today is worse off than in the past.

The key to regaining a sense of stability during this period of wrenching social, cultural and economic change isn't reclaiming 'traditional family values.' According to historian/author Stephanie Coontz, it's adapting our social institutions. Stephanie Coontz, who studies the history of American families, was riding to the airport when her taxi driver started railing against the welfare system.