American - Author | August 31, 1944 -
Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory economic and political institution.
Stephanie Coontz
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Giving married women an independent legal existence did not destroy heterosexual marriage. And allowing husbands and wives to construct their marriages around reciprocal duties and negotiated roles - where a wife can choose to be the main breadwinner and a husband can stay home with the children - was an immense boon to many couples.
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Marriage has been in a constant state of evolution since the dawn of the Stone Age. In the process, it has become more flexible - but also more optional.
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Why do people - gay or straight - need the state's permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn't, because marriage was a private contract between two families. The parents' agreement to the match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its validity.
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Couples need time alone to renew their relationship. They also need to sustain supportive networks of friends and family.
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Contrary to myth, 'The Feminine Mystique' and feminism did not represent the beginning of the decline of the stay-at-home mother but a turning point that led to much stronger legal rights and 'working conditions' for her.
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A primary motivation for introducing no-fault divorce was, in fact, to reduce perjury in the legal system.
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Social changes always involve trade-offs.
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Unilateral divorce has decreased the bargaining power of the person who wants the marriage to last and has not engaged in behavior that meets the legal definition of fault. On the other hand, it has increased the bargaining power of the person who is willing to leave.
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To my mind, it is better to have regrets about the good aspects of your former marriage because you were able to work past some of your accumulated resentments than to have no regrets because you had to ratchet up the hostility to get out in the first place.
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Historically, mass demonstrations have worked best at shifting public opinion and pressuring the powers-that-be when organizers highlighted one concrete demand: 'Bring Our Boys Home from Vietnam'; 'End Segregation Now'; 'Support Women's Right to Choose.'
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Being a feminist is not about how successful, talented, and assertive you are in your own life. It's about whether you support the struggle to overcome the limiting gendered stereotypes and barriers that force so many women to restrict their aspirations as workers, to fulfill their aspirations as parents, and force so many men to do the opposite.
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