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During the culture wars of the 1970s and 1980s, conservative crusaders worried about threats to "traditional" families stemming from both the top and the bottom of the social ladder. In the name of "family values," they denounced educated elites for denigrating marriage, endorsing premarital sex and cohabitation, and refusing to get judgmental about divorce and unwed motherhood. The "do-your-own-thing" individualism of such people, they claimed, was bad enough for spoiled middle-class children…

The public outrage over the "religious freedom" bills recently passed in Arkansas and Indiana caught the governors of those states completely off-guard, judging by their confused and contradictory responses.

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?