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Stephanie Coontz
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Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage Kindle Edition

by Stephanie Coontz (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 521 ratings
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Just when the clamor over "traditional" marriage couldn’t get any louder, along comes this groundbreaking book to ask, "What tradition?" In Marriage, a History, historian and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz takes readers from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the torments of Victorian lovers to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love is—and how absurd it would have seemed to most of our ancestors. It was when marriage moved into the emotional sphere in the nineteenth century, she argues, that it suffered as an institution just as it began to thrive as a personal relationship. This enlightening and hugely entertaining book brings intelligence, perspective, and wit to today’s marital debate.
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  1. Print length
    449 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Penguin Books
  4. Publication date
    February 28, 2006
  5. Reading age
    18 years and up
  6. File size
    3084 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  10. See all details
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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
521 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book's information fascinating and well-researched. They describe it as an interesting read with a clear writing style. However, opinions differ on clarity - some find it simple and easy to follow, while others feel lost in the details.

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Information qualityReadabilityWriting styleClarity
71 customers mention "Information quality"67 positive4 negative

Customers find the book's information fascinating and well-researched. They say it provides powerful perspectives that will forever change how they understand the Bible. The bibliography is excellent, and the study provides important lessons regarding attitudes and marriage.

"...This study is fascinating, though as complex as life itself. Serious students of marriage may want to read it more than once." Read more

"...It is basically a long list of marriage practices around the world and through the ages and why those practices varied...." Read more

"...This book is a thoroughly researched work (just look at the size of the notes section). I enjoyed it immensely, especially the last part of the book." Read more

"Possibly one of the most fascinating books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. With every page, my mind is blown." Read more

37 customers mention "Readability"34 positive3 negative

Customers find the book readable and engaging. They say it's thorough and informative, with an easy writing style that doesn't get bogged down in academic language. The book is described as a real page-turner that broadens their knowledge.

"...I find Coontz's writing to be clear, easy to read, and thankfully devoid of fluff. Fully 40% of this book are her notes and references...." Read more

"...Overall, an interesting read which broadened my limited knowledge of the subject." Read more

"...This is a must read book for anyone who is ever tempted to utter the words "traditional marriage"..." Read more

"...Overall a good read and I look forward to reading more from the author." Read more

6 customers mention "Writing style"6 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing style excellent and articulated. They appreciate the scholarly tone but feel the author is engaging. The voice is diplomatic and non-judgmental.

"...Coontz is an excellent writer and her research is exhaustive...." Read more

"...The tone is scholarly, but you get the sense of the author holding your hand through several stages of history...." Read more

"...From a literature standpoint, it is well written, entertaining, and engaging. I plan to give copies of it to friends as gifts." Read more

"It is a very well researched and articulated. Stephanie takes us back to stone -medieval ages to now...." Read more

6 customers mention "Clarity"4 positive2 negative

Customers have different views on the book's clarity. Some find it simple and easy to follow by laypeople, while others get lost in the details.

"...and interactions, but on the other hand also the simplicity of core human drives that motivate pretty much all human activity. A fascinating read!" Read more

"...It is so filled with interesting anecdotes that I could not follow the overall premise and got lost in the details...." Read more

"...Easy to follow by 'layman' society and an interesting time capsule to how things really were back in the day...." Read more

"Excellent Scholarship w/ over 100 pages of footnotes and references. Easy, extensive read...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Traveling Librarian
    5.0 out of 5 stars An Enlightening Read
    Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2023
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    This book is an interesting sociological study of marriage from the dawn of human civilization to the present. Coontz turns up a lot of astonishing facts about what marriage has been in the past and how our modern views of marriage have evolved. I was surprised to learn, for example, that for most of the first 1000 years of Christianity, the church had no particular position on the marriages of common people. A couple could marry without a wedding ceremony--in or out of church--and even without witnesses. Also, to understand how radically the definition of marriage has changed over time, it is essential to know that marrying for love is a concept which developed only within the last 200 years. For the 5000 years prior, marriages had little or nothing to do with love, and were in fact, contracts negotiated to strengthen one's position economically or politically within the community. This study is fascinating, though as complex as life itself. Serious students of marriage may want to read it more than once.
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  • Nancyhua
    5.0 out of 5 stars great history
    Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2011
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    A history of how marriage has changed over the course of civilization, from a business or political partnership to the modern quest for a soulmate, this book introduces ideas I view as relevant to my own life and times. Coontz addresses questions such as how contraception and legal rights for illegitimate offspring changed marriage and why among poor people marriage is declining while birth rates are on the rise. I find Coontz's writing to be clear, easy to read, and thankfully devoid of fluff. Fully 40% of this book are her notes and references.

    Contents:

    Antiquity:
    Reasons to marry:
    Political (for elites): "Marriage spoke to the needs of the larger group. It converted strangers into relatives... Marriage had become the way most wealth and land changed hands... also the main vehicle by which leading families expanded their social networks and political influence... sealed military alliances and peace treaties. Elites jockeyed to acquire powerful in-laws... Only very recently have parents and other relatives ceased to have substantial material stakes in whether individuals get or stay married."
    Social: Not ok to have illegitimate kids, not marrying seen as immoral or perverse.
    Economical: "Marriage became a way through which elites could hoard or accumulate resources... The dowry a wife brought with her at marriage was often the biggest infusion of cash, goods, or land a man would ever acquire."
    For non-elites: "Farms or businesses could rarely be run by just a single person... Most people had a two-person, married-couple career that neither could conduct alone." (reminds me of "The Good Earth")
    Reasons not to marry:
    Women have no rights, abused by husbands, people don't like the person they married.

    Change in marriage leading up to 1950s:
    "In the older definition of housekeeping, women's labor was recognized as a vital contribution to the family's economic survival... as housekeeping became 'homemaking,' it came to be seen as an act of love rather than a contribution to survival... Homemakers, now cut off from the sphere of the cash economy, became more dependent on their husbands financially... While the new division of labor stripped many women of their identities as economic producers and family co-providers, it also freed them from the strict hierarchy that had governed the old household workplace... shifted the basis of marriage from sharing tasks to sharing feelings. The older view that wives and husbands were work mates gave way to the idea that they were soul mates... Many men and women came to believe that wives should remain at home, not because men had the right to dominate them, but because home was a sanctuary in which women could be sheltered... The new theory of gender difference divided humanity into two distinct sets of traits. The male sphere encompassed the rational and active ideal, while females represented the humanitarian and compassionate aspects of life. Women had long been urged to hold men's 'baser instincts' in check... 'sex appeal' replaced submission as a wife's first responsibility to her husband. In the nineteenth century, most Europeans and Americans came to accept a new view of husbands as providers and of women as nurturing home-bodies. Only in the mid-twentieth century, however, could a majority of families in Western Europe and North America actually survive on the earnings of a single breadwinner."

    Golden age of marriage:
    "Policy makers recognized that single male workers and all female workers were being overtaxed to support married couples. But this was seen as a good thing because it increased a man's incentive to marry and decreased his wife's incentive to take paid work... As people married younger, life spans lengthened, and divorce rates fell or held steady, individuals were spending much more of their lives in marriage than ever before or since... Marriage provided the context for just about every piece of most peoples' lives. .. No longer did people postpone marriage until they could establish their economic independence, as had been the case for the middle classes in Western Europe and North America up to the late nineteenth century. Nor was marriage, as had been the case in so many peasant villages, something you entered only after a woman had gotten pregnant and showed that she could produce children to work on the family farm. Certainly it was not something you entered to set a joint business enterprise, as had been the case for many craftsmen and artisans in the past. Nor was it an informal arrangement scarcely distinguishable from just living together, as it had been among many lower- class individuals of earlier days, of whom their neighbors often said they were 'married, but not churched.' Marriage of the long decade of the 1950s was simply the be-all and end-all of life. In a remarkable reversal of the past, it even became a stepping-off point for adulthood rather than a sign that adulthood had already been established."

    Change in marriage after 1950s:
    More jobs and the war allowed more women to work, inflation forced wives to also work, better technology made homemaking easier for wives and bachelors so wives had more time to do work outside the home, everyone started marrying later in life, women enjoyed working outside the home and turned from the homemaker model.
    Birth control allowed sex outside of marriage: "Effective contraception allowed wives to commit more of their lives to work, but it altered the relationships between husbands and wives... weakened the connection between marriage and parenthood, eroding some of the traditional justifications for elevating marriage over all other relationships and limiting it to heterosexual couples."
    "Breaking down the distinction between legitimacy and illegitimacy ... weakened [marriage's] hold on peoples' political and economic rights and obligations."

    Modern marriage:
    "Marriage as a relationship between two individuals is taken more seriously and comes with higher emotional expectations than ever before. But marriage as an institution exerts less power over people's lives than it once did... The fact that individuals now lead productive lives outside marriage means that partners need to be more "intentional" than in the past about finding reasons and rituals to help them stay together....
    A woman who marries a man with few job prospects may end up having to support him as well as their children... Low income women who marry and divorce later have higher poverty rates than women who never marry at all and their children may suffer more emotionally as well... Their mothers' experiences had convinced them that being a single mother was preferable to entering a bad or unstable marriage...
    Today stay-at-home mothers are concentrated at the poorest and richest rungs of the population... Managers and top executives with stay at home wives generally earn more than their counterparts with working wives. The wife's activities free her husband to focus on his job, and she can cultivate the social networks that enhance his status. Most families no longer save money by keeping wives at home. They lose by not having wives in the workplace, where women have more opportunities than in the past to earn decent wages...
    Marriage decreases free time for women but not for men, increases health for men but not for women."
    31 people found this helpful
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  • Lejeli
    4.0 out of 5 stars Thought Provoking
    Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2013
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    As a casual reader with no expertise in this area, I found the book to be quite interesting and thought provoking. It is basically a long list of marriage practices around the world and through the ages and why those practices varied. I did find it a little difficult to differentiate between which practices listed were the typical and accepted ones and which were listed as exceptions to the norm. The book seemed to have a slight female take on the subject but there is certainly no denying that women have been more than denied their due over the history of this institution. I felt the book was generally objective. I had hoped that the book would present a theory or theories of why, despite the wide variation in marriage practices, marriage has universally been the basic unit of human society around the world throughout time, but did not find that. I was also surprised the author did not include any information regarding the effect of comparatively recent government entitlements on marriage. I realize that the subject is rife with political controversy, but surely there are some objective studies which would be relevant. Given the author's emphasis on the impact of finances and wealth on marriage, I think it would have been applicable. Overall, an interesting read which broadened my limited knowledge of the subject.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • McCarthy Newball
    5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it
    Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2022
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    The history of private matters has historically been neglected in favor of the powerful, the political. Marriage is one of the most important relationships we may seek after and shape our lives around. But modern marriage no longer means what is used to mean in the 1960s, or in the eighteenth century, or in the Middle Ages. This is a broad history about how marriage as an institution has changed over time. How expectations over this institution have been changed by economy, religion, beliefs and policy. And expectations over gender roles, over choice of life partner, over "dead do us apart", over same sex partners, over illegitimate children, and the list goes on. I didn't see loose ends here, just well-researched, thorough work of history. This book is a thoroughly researched work (just look at the size of the notes section). I enjoyed it immensely, especially the last part of the book.
    5 people found this helpful
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  • Joanie
    5.0 out of 5 stars A much needed READ.
    Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2024
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    Possibly one of the most fascinating books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. With every page, my mind is blown.
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Natalie D
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!
    Reviewed in Canada on March 18, 2021
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    Fast delivery and happy with order!
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  • Supriya Choudhary
    5.0 out of 5 stars Wow !! What a read 😃😃😃!!!!!!!
    Reviewed in India on September 3, 2022
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    Absolutely stunning!! Gives a very well informed viewpoint about marriage, the need, the history, the social impact of the institution. Revolutionized how I look at marriage and made.me really think about what the reasons for wanting it. Would recommend it to anyone eyes closed.
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  • C. Joyce
    5.0 out of 5 stars The 'traditional marriage' is less easy to identify than you might think
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 25, 2015
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    This is a very accessible and enjoyable romp through the history of marriage. In particular, Stephanie Coontz demonstrates how the definition of marriage has constantly fluctuated. There has never been a time when people could confidently say, 'This is what marriage is". The 'traditional marriage' is less easy to identify than you might think. Few cultures have ever managed to make it universal. America in the 1950s perhaps came closest, with maybe as much as 95% of the population entering into a registered marriage. A third of those marriages, however, ended in divorce and a kind of deep, stifling unhappiness that is still being explored in films and novels about the era. Yet Coontz also clearly shows how marriage has been an aspiration for people throughout the centuries and across many different cultures. She is at her best when describing the quirks and peculiarities that have come under the notion of "marriage" - Cleopatra married both her brothers! - but she also ultimately conveys great affection for the institution that still has room to grow now that love has been recognised as its most essential element. Highly recommended.
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  • Ramon
    5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting book
    Reviewed in Spain on March 5, 2014
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    Extremely well researched, with a very extensive bibliographical list, this book redresses a lot of stereotypes and misbeliefs about marriage. Anybody interested in how the institution of marriage evolved over the ages (or even just the last decades) should read it. Highly recommended!
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  • Anne Rigney
    3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
    Reviewed in Australia on September 10, 2015
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    Well researched but no new insights
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