Stephanie Coontz

Bio: Stephanie Coontz is an academic researcher from The Evergreen State College. The author has contributed to research in topics: Family life & Family values. The author has an hindex of 15, co-authored 23 publications receiving 3158 citations.

The Way We Never Were: American Families And The Nostalgia Trap

Abstract: * Introduction * The Way We Wish We Were: Defining the Family Crisis * Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet: American Families in the 1950s * My Mother Was a Saint: Individualism, Gender Myths, and the Problem of Love * We Always Stood on Our Own Two Feet: Self-reliance and the American Family * Strong Families, the Foundation of a Virtuous Society * Family Values and Civic Responsibility * A Mans Home Is His Castle: The Family and Outside Intervention * Bra-Burners and Family Bashers: Feminism, Working Women, Consumerism, and the Family * First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes Mary with a Baby Carriage: Marriage, Sex, and Reproduction * Toxic Parents, Supermoms, and Absent Fathers: Putting Parenting in Perspective * Pregnant Girls, Wilding Boys, Crack Babies, and the Underclass * The Myth of the Black Family Collapse * The Crisis Reconsidered * Epilogue: Inventing a New Tradition

The Way We Really Are: Coming To Terms With America's Changing Families

Abstract: Introduction Getting Past the Sound Bites: How History and Sociology Can Help Todays Families What We Really Miss about the 1950s Why Working Mothers Are Here to Stay The Future of Marriage Putting Divorce in Perspective How Holding on to Tradition Sets Families Back Looking for Someone to Blame: Families and Economic Change How Ignoring Historical and Societal Change Puts Kids at Risk Working with What Weve Got: The Strengths and Vulnerabilities of Todays Families.

A Treatise on the Family

Abstract: A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

The Consequences of Divorce for Adults and Children

Abstract: I use a divorce-stress-adjustment perspective to summarize and organize the empirical literature on the consequences of divorce for adults and children. My review draws on research in the 1990s to answer five questions: How do individuals from married and divorced families differ in well-being? Are these differences due to divorce or to selection? Do these differences reflect a temporary crisis to which most people gradually adapt or stable life strains that persist more or less indefinitely? What factors mediate the effects of divorce on individual adjustment? And finally, what are the moderators (protective factors) that account for individual variability in adjustment to divorce? In general, the accumulated research suggests that marital dissolution has the potential to create considerable turmoil in people's lives. But people vary greatly in their reactions. Divorce benefits some individuals, leads others to experience temporary decrements in well-being, and forces others on a downward trajectory from which they might never recover fully. Understanding the contingencies under which divorce leads to these diverse outcomes is a priority for future research.

An Integrative Model for the Study of Developmental Competencies in Minority Children

Abstract: In this article a conceptual model for the study of child development in minority populations in the United States is proposed. In support of the proposed model, this article includes (a) a delineation and critical analysis of mainstream theoretical frameworks in relation to their attention and applicability to the understanding of developmental processes in children of color and of issues at the intersection of social class, culture, ethnicity, and race, and (b) a description and evaluation of the conceptual frameworks that have guided the extant literature on minority children and families. Based on the above considerations, an integrative conceptual model of child development is presented, anchored within social stratification theory, emphasizing the importance of racism, prejudice, discrimination, oppression, and segregation on the development of minority children and families.

Work/Family Border Theory: A New Theory of Work/Family Balance

Abstract: This article introduces work/family border theory - a new theory about work/family balance. According to the theory, people are daily border-crossers between the domains of work and family. The theory addresses how domain integration and segmentation, border creation and management, border-crosser participation, and relationships between border-crossers and others at work and home influence work/family balance. Propositions are given to guide future research.

Precarious Work, Insecure Workers: Employment Relations in Transition

Abstract: The growth of precarious work since the 1970s has emerged as a core contemporary concern within politics, in the media, and among researchers. Uncertain and unpredictable work contrasts with the re...