Stephanie Coontz, "For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage" (Viking, 2026)
About this episode
Stephanie Coontz discusses the evolving perceptions and realities of marriage in contemporary society.
Marriage rates have fallen dramatically since the 1970s. Yet far from devaluing marriage, people still overwhelmingly describe marriage as the highest commitment they can imagine. Most Americans say they want to marry eventually, and couples who do marry have a lower chance of divorce than at any time since the 1970s. Increasingly, though, people tell pollsters they “have no idea” if they actually will end up married. And unlike in the past, young women are more uncertain than young men. In For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage (Viking, 2026), Stephanie Coontz—author of the “rich, provocative, and entertaining” book Marriage, A History—unravels the roots of such paradoxical trends. Examining five critical periods of historical transformation, she reveals how shifting romantic ideals, gender expectations, sexual mores, and cultural myths have bequeathed us a welter of contradictory beliefs, dysfunctional habits, and emotional earworms that make it hard to adjust our family relationships to the social and economic challenges of twenty-first-century life. Coontz demonstrates that today’s widespread nostalgia for a seemingly more stable past is…
People in this episode
Guest: Stephanie Coontz
Topics covered
- marriage
- gender expectations
- historical transformation
- romantic ideals
- cultural myths
- economic insecurity
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Viking
Books & works: For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage, Marriage, A History
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