Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which she chaired from 2001-04. She is the author of Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage, (Viking Press, 2005), The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (1992 and 2000, Basic Books), The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America's Changing Families (Basic Books, 1997), and The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families. She also edited American Families: A Multicultural Reader (Routledge, 1999). Her work has been translated into French, Spanish, German, Norwegian, and Japanese. .

Coontz has testified about her research before the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families in Washington, DC, and addressed audiences across America, Japan and Europe. She has appeared on The Today Show, Oprah Winfrey, Crossfire, NPR, CNN's Talk Back Live, CBS This Morning, Leeza, and MSNBC with Brian Williams, as well as in several prime-time television documentaries, including ones hosted by Walter Cronkite and Barbara Walters. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Observer/Guardian, The Times of London, Wall Street Journal, Salon, Washington Post, Newsweek, Harper's, Vogue, LIFE, Time-LIFE Books, and Mirabella, as well as in such academic and professional journals as Family Therapy Magazine, Chronicle of Higher Education, National Forum, and Journal of Marriage and Family.

A former Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Coontz has also taught at Kobe University in Japan and the University of Hawaii at Hilo. In 2004, she received the Council on Contemporary Families first-ever "Visionary Leadership" Award. 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 also received the 2001-02 "Friend of the Family" award from the Illinois Council on Family Relations. She serves as a marriage consultant to The Ladies Home Journal.

Copies of recent articles and other activities are available at www.stephaniecoontz.com

Blog Entries by Stephanie Coontz

A Mother's Day Gift That Would Mean Something

Posted May 9, 2008 | 11:28 AM (EST)


Here's a thought for a Mother's Day gift that would go beyond the complimentary flowers passed out by restaurants and the complementary speeches churned out by politicians every May: Affordable childcare that is operated in accord with high-quality national standards.

It's a gift long overdue. In 1971 the House and...

Read Post

Sexism, Racism and Why Neither Should Matter in the Clinton-Obama Race

Posted April 23, 2008 | 07:01 PM (EST)


It is disturbing that so many Democrats have come to think about the Clinton-Obama race in terms of whether blacks or women need advancement more. Gloria Steinem has argued that voting for a woman is critical because sexism is still taken less seriously than racism. A former colleague of Martin...

Read Post

Unconventional Wisdom on Families

Posted May 11, 2007 | 01:18 PM (EST)


Did you know:

* That married parents, mothers and especially fathers, spend more time interacting with their children today than they did in 1965, when stay-at-home moms were far more common? Single moms spend less time than married ones, but more than married ones did back in 1965.

...

Read Post