my name is Sean Annan and I'm a student

project manager at the Clark tender

Dickinson College on behalf of the Clark

center and the department's of history

sociology and Women's Studies I'd like

to welcome you to this week's common our

lecture the way we were memories of

traditional marriage and family life

modern society is strongly being

criticized for his lack of family values

and a declining respect for marriage in

general he would disagree that the

family oriented 1950s

is often used as the basis of comparison

while many argue that the ills of modern

society are to blame for its breakdown

in traditional marriage values and

family life it is important to recall

that during the idolized mid 19th

century teenage childbearing peaked and

alcoholism and drug abuse were just as

prevalent as this today Stephanie Coontz

will discuss a surprising number of

myths about the history of marriage and

family life and how they prevent us from

coping effectively with the challenge of

recent changes she is a professor of

history and Family Studies at Evergreen

State College and director of research

and public education for the Council on

contemporary families she is published

extensively on the topic of marriage and

family life and is the author of several

prestigious books including the way we

never were American families and in

Australia style the trap and marriage a

history from obedience to intimacy a

howl of Concord marriage her work has

been featured in many periodicals

including the New York Times The Wall

Street Journal Newsweek and vogue as

well as academic and professional

journals including Family Therapy

magazine chronicles of higher education

and Journal of marriage and family she

is appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show

crossfire CNN's talkback live and CBS

this morning Stephanie Coontz a former

Woodrow Wilson fellow has taught at Kobe

University in Japan at the University of

Hawaii at Hilo

honors include the council on

contemporary family visionary leadership

award the Dale Richmond award from the

American Academy of Pediatrics and the

friend of the family award from the

Illinois Council on family relations

before we begin I would like to ask that

the sound be disabled on any electronic

devices in addition please hold any

questions until the end of the

presentation when there will be a short

question and answer session out of

courtesy towards those who may be

hearing impaired please raise your hand

and wait for a microphone to be passed

to you before speaking following the

presentation in the lobby there will be

a book signing session and lunch will be

available thank you for your cooperation

and now please join me in welcoming

Stephanie Kunz

well I know we've got lunch waiting for

us and classes at 1:30 so I can't really

take on all the myths about marriage and

family life and I think I'll just

concentrate today on some of the things

about the way marriage has changed that

maybe we don't completely understand I

mean we all know that marriage is

different than it used to be and that's

absolutely right but it's not entirely

clear that everybody actually does know

how marriage used to be a lot of the

things that we think are new were in

fact extremely traditional whereas a lot

of the things that we think are

traditional were in fact very new and

short-lived adventure inventions

probably the best example of the latter

is dual earner families you know the

Ozzie and Harriet family of so-called

tradition was a very short-lived family

form through most of history women were

Co providers for their family they not

only brought home half the bacon they

raised the pig and butchered it and took

it to market the idea that men were

breadwinners was unknown in colonial

days women were called yoke Medes yoke

mates and meat helps this invention of

the ideal of the male breadwinner only

came in the 19th century and then it was

an ideal that was only attained by a

tiny minority of families it wasn't

until the 1920s because even when the

woman stayed home they sent the kids out

to work so in the 1920s a tiny majority

of families actually ended up being one

where the bulk of the income was brought

by the man the wife wasn't working

beside him in a business or a farm and

the kids weren't out at labor that

receded in the 30s and 40s it roared

back in the 1950s lasted about 15 years

it's probably the most untraditional

family form that you can think of what

about the things that we think of as new

but that are in fact traditional well

the most obvious example of that is one

parent families one parent families were

the norm throughout most of history

because of high death rates in the 19th

cent the beginning of the 19th century

the majority of marriages were ended by

death ten years before the last child

was ready to leave home and it wasn't

actually until the 1970s that more key

became likely to experience a parent's

divorce before they left their teen

years then experienced a parent's death

as a result of that step families

another non-traditional form in fact was

about the most traditional form that you

can imagine and in fact many step

families of the past had many more

problems than the ones that we tend to

think of today because marriage as I'll

talk about later was not about love and

individual relationships who most of the

past but about property and power you

have all of these legends you know the

Cinderella legend the wicked stepmother

stories had a real basis in fact because

the stepfather stepmother might well try

to kill the kids from a previous or at

least get rid of them somehow from a

previous marriage in order to make sure

that the property went to their side of

the family you know today the problems

in step families arise usually because

the new parent wants the that love to

develop too fast and she or he pushes it

too fast you know Cinderella would have

said boy I'll settle for that kind of

problem as for divorce this is also not

new there have been many times in

history when divorce rates have been as

high as they are today in 20th century

Indonesia and Malaysia in many hunting

and gathering societies among the

Shoshoni Indians a woman who wanted a

divorce would simply put her husband's

possessions outside the dwelling and

when he came home he'd say oh okay I

guess this marriage is over

in Japan a man had to write a letter of

just three-and-a-half lines it had to be

exactly that you know I kind of a haiku

would divorce haiku that in order to get

a marriage and a woman had to put in

however two years of special service at

a temple we tend to think of the

Christian tradition as being very anti

divorce and in fact Jesus was the first

religious leader to prohibit divorce

equally to men as well as to women but

for the first ten centuries of its

existence the church didn't enforce this

very much in and even when they did

begin to divorce for example in the

first three or four centuries there were

many regions where churches had an early

version of no-fault divorce you just

signed a little statement saying that

because we can no longer because we

affirmed before God that we can no

longer live together in harmony will

part and even after the church began to

tighten its regulations on this there

were two ways to get out of a marriage

that that I was researching for this new

book and that I thought were kind of

amusing the first was generally what the

upper-class did now in those days the

church had a very peculiar definition of

incest that if you were related to the

seventh degree removed it was incestuous

and you couldn't marry in other words if

you have the same

great-great-great-great

great-grandfather and who didn't in the

medieval world you were technically in

violation of the incest rules so people

just married all the time and violation

of incest rules and particularly the

upper classes who wanted to consolidate

property and marry customs and then if

they wanted to divorce they would simply

say ah my conscience is killing me

turned out I'm married to my cousin it's

incestuous you got it in the you know

the church would usually say okay the

lower class didn't have as much access

to divorce but they had an interesting

outlet that might have been a little

more common than we realize because the

church also had an interesting position

that again violates most of our notions

about traditional marriage the church

did not demand that marriage take place

in a church or be blessed by a priest or

anything like that and in fact through

most of history marriage

the relationship between families it

wasn't enforced by church or state not

til 1754 did the England require a

license to get married well an early

Pope said you know maybe we should make

the validity of a marriage dependent on

it happening in church but the tradition

in the Roman Empire had been that if

people live together and thought they

were married then they were married and

if they lived together and thought they

weren't married then they weren't

married there was no legal or formal

requirement and so his advisors pointed

out to them that if you made the

validity of a marriage dependent on a

Honda on it having them contracted in

church

the majority of Europeans would

instantly end up illegitimate so the

church took the position that you were

married they would prefer it if you had

bands and parental consent in a church

marriage but if you said that you had

exchanged words of consent out by the

woodpile no witnesses no priest then you

were married and the only way to get out

of that and this is something that I

found in my research a surprising number

of people did was to say just like the

upper bath Oh my conscience is killing

me I know I've been living with will for

the last five years but actually I

exchanged words of consent six months

earlier with John newtripper well in

you've got to go live with him so

divorce is not Lou and you know some

people look back nostalgically to the

days before no-fault divorce or the days

before divorce at all but in most

societies that didn't allow divorce all

that meant is that when desertion

happened women and children had no

recourse to get alimony or child support

and as for no-fault divorce there may

have been some problems with its

implementation but I don't think many

people would like to go back to the

kinds of cases that I found in the 30s

and 40s

the courts used to hold that in order to

get a divorce both parties had to come

to the marriage with clean hands that is

no the one wanting the divorce couldn't

have done anything to can now how

realistic is that about real-life

relationships so you would get cases

like the mauers in Oregon where the

judge admitted that the guy was so

violent that his wife and child lived in

fear

the woman had twice throwing things

across the room and therefore since she

didn't come to court with clean hands

even though the marriage was totally

miserable

neither of them deserved relief from it

and it's worth noting incidentally

whatever the problems with no-fault

divorce that in the five years after its

introduction every state that adopted it

experienced a 20% decline in the suicide

rate of wives and an even bigger decline

in the rate at which husbands were

murdered by wives so as for the idea

that sex outside marriage is something

new you know every generation thinks it

invented sex but in fact throughout most

of history there was more adultery than

there is today it was perfectly

acceptable for men to have mistresses

and prostitutes as late as the 18th

century I found that when a wife didn't

make a fuss about this which was very

very rare it was so it was considered so

inappropriate that her own family would

write letters to her husband saying

we're sorry she's behaving this way at

the end of the 19th century on the the

recourse to prostitutes by men in

Victorian England and America was so

great that there was an epidemic of

venereal disease in respectable

middle-class homes because they were

bringing it home to them as for sex

outside marriage by politicians believe

me Bill Clinton did not Ellie wait

started with Thomas Jefferson we now

know right

it went through Grover Cleveland who was

forced to admit that he probably

fathered a child with a department store

clerk he'd seduced so that the political

diddy of the day was mama where's my POG

onto the White House wha ha ha

Warren Harding who not only had a

long-term affair with the wife of a

family friend but fathered a child with

a second mistress a teenage girl and of

course John F Kennedy we now think that

both Roosevelt and Eisenhower also had

more discreet Affairs so sex outside

marriage all of these kinds of things

that we think are new are not in fact

new and although for most of European

and American history marriages were more

stable than they are today one of the

reasons they were stable was because

they were not fair and they were not

loving relationships husband and wife

are ones that Anglo American law that

was a that prevailed until the very end

of the 19th century and that one is the

husband he had the right to make all

decisions for the family he owned and

controlled all of the property even if

the woman brought it from inheritance or

it earned it herself and he they had the

right to physically restrain his wife to

Intel 1890s it was until 1897 that the

British courts ruled that a man didn't

have the right to imprison the wife in

his home also had the right to beat his

wife it was until 1864 that the first

courts in America began to forbid that I

did find one prohibition against wife

abuse in my research and that was in

16th century London wife of beating your

wife was prohibited after 9:00 o'clock

because it would wake the neighbors

but these marriages were not harmonious

in the past and nor did traditional

marriages always protect kids you know

sometimes we think that they did but

actually through most of history the

parents didn't sacrifice their kids kids

sacrificed for their parents the put you

know kids were kids were it was child

labor that provided for the parents

retirement and instead of saving up for

the education parents pulled their kids

out of school and although and right up

until the 1940s we have a budget--

studies malnutrition studies hospital

records that show that in many families

that were actually does slightly

officially above the poverty line there

were in fact two standards of living in

that family

one considerably above the poverty line

for the man who had protein medical care

you know meet for dinner and even

recreational money for beer and one

considerably below it for the women and

children that's no longer true in

America partly because the woman's

movement has made it possible for a

woman to lead a marriage that is so

unfair it remains so true in the rest of

the world that in Africa and parts of

Latin America a woman's biggest risk

factor for AIDS is to be married and

children in single female-headed

families where the wife has where the

woman has a job are often more likely to

be well nourished and to get education

than children in two-parent families

where the wife doesn't control any of

the income so these things I think lead

us to suggest that perhaps we shouldn't

romanticize the past but what is new

what is new today the first thing is

that marriage is today about love it's

about a relationship and as I explained

in a minute this is a very rare thing to

find in history and it was a very new

invention and the second is that both

men and women have the options not to

marry or to leave a marriage that they

find unfair or unloving and I will argue

that this has created this tremendous

historical paradox that the very things

that have made marriage more wonderful

more potentially fulfilling as a

relationship have weakened marriage as

an institution and vice versa the same

things that have weakened marriage as an

institution have strength it as a

relationship what makes for a strong

institution its rigid rules nobody has a

choice you don't have a choice

whether you're a citizen of the United

States and have to obey its laws right I

it you don't make individual exceptions

you don't change the rules over time as

someone ages well those things make for

a very strong institution and if I may

say so they make for a fairly crappy

you know what makes a strong

relationship that it's individualized

that it's negotiated that it's fair that

you can change the rules that you can

change it as you grow older but all

those things make for a less stable

institution so what we have created as a

result of these historic changes is that

a marriage when it works is fairer more

fulfilling more loving more passionate

more intimate than any couple I studied

in history would ever have dared to

dream but it's also more optional it's

more fragile it's less bearable when it

doesn't live up to that potential it's

hard to unfor me to to think of a way

that you could keep the one and get rid

of the other so how did we get here well

as I said for thousands of years

marriage was not about love we now

believe that that contrary to the idea

that marriage was invented to you know

protect women or the feminist idea of

the 70s the obverse that it was invented

to oppress women marriage wasn't about

the relationship between individual men

and women at all it was a way of making

connections between bands that had to be

able to cooperate when they met each

other

it was a way of turning strangers into

relatives many languages have the words

like the ancient anglo-saxon word for

wife the piece Weaver the maori of new

zealand say you can cooperate with

groups in many ways you can have rituals

you can have dances you can have trading

partners you can have feasts to get good

relations but the strongest way to get a

good relation is to make a link that

produces a child with a foot in both

camps so we believe now that marriage

was invented to get in-laws of course

that

yeah I know nowadays we think goodness

we want our in-laws out of our marriage

and that that's yet another good example

of the things that have improved

marriage as a relationship the fact that

your parents don't tell you who you have

to marry and the in-laws can't intervene

have also removed one of the sources of

stability especially after you began to

get more differences of wealth and power

in a community you know if I was a

member of a band and we had to we were

going to exchange spouses you know I

might send my son to marry you know from

the other band and I could allow my son

a little bit of choice in that as long

as you know he knew he had to marry out

or my daughter had to marry out but

let's say now we're in a society where

I'm one of the real upper classes or

almost upper class in that I'm not going

to let my son just marry anybody in that

other group I want to marry someone

equally or preferably more wealthy and

powerful so at that point in history and

it was really where the ancient

civilizations begin to arise marriage

becomes the center of intrigue and

calculation and remain so for thousands

of years I mean we look back at stories

like Anthony and Cleopatra not a love

story you know a self-interested power

play by the to super power by by two

individuals of the two superpowers of

the world attempting to bring them

together there's incest bigamy murder

betrayal false paternity suits you name

it everything I think but love for

thousands of years marriage was about

making these political and economic

alliances for the upper classes it was

the way you consolidated property made

business mergers I laid a claim to

social status so that you could claim to

rule yo you were descended from royalty

on both sides was a way of concluding

peace treaties and making military

alliances for the middle classes it was

also an economic and political

calculation you know the debtor in

Europe of course the dowry than a man

and right up until the 18th century once

they earn maybe God at marriage was the

biggest it was usually the biggest

infusion of cash and property would ever

get at a single time so the dowry was of

a lot more interest than the daughter

and for women of course it was the way

having a dowry was the way your parents

brought you a little economic security

so today of course we in we save up for

college we try to send our kids to

college to give them some Economic

Security and one of the things that

parents say is you don't have a choice

about doing your homework when you're in

high school you know because this is the

providing for your future well that's

the way your parents felt about arranged

marriages at the time you don't have a

choice about who you marriage I'm

providing for your future and often for

ours as well and that's the way it goes

even in the lower classes marriage was a

practical matter you couldn't run a farm

or a business by yourself you needed

someone your neighbors were integrally

concerned is this someone who's going to

fit in with us and neighbors had a lot

of say it turns out over who married

whom your parents were also concerned

what if you why don't why don't you

marry this person because they have

connections at court or they have a

relative where their land holdings are

near to ours and so we find there too

that even in even where individuals had

choice they were more likely to choose

someone who was a good work partner than

somebody you know who they weren't madly

in love with so for centuries what's

love got to do with it could have been

the theme song for most marriages now

that people didn't fall in love but it's

no accident that most love stories

throughout history were tragedies

married wasn't the happy ending to a

love story it was usually the unhappy

ending to a love story when people came

to terms with what their parents would

or what their needs were and got married

and then about two hundred years ago

some circles in Europe and America in

the process of the Enlightenment and the

French and American revolutions began to

spread the radical idea that had been

broached occasional

a tentatively the beginning to spread

over the last couple hundred years but

never had one out you know never the

idea was by the 16th and 17th century

people were saying well maybe you should

marry someone you could learn to love

but marrying someone just for love not a

good idea in the 18th century especially

the Enlightenment had a big influence

here the idea that the state and the

older generation shouldn't dictate to

young people they should maybe be able

to choose their partners for themselves

combine that with the radical idea of

the French Revolution I mean in front

American Revolution Declaration of

Independence pursuit of happiness people

had a right to the pursuit of happiness

and you get this new idea that people

should choose their own marriage

partners and they should do so on the

basis of what would make them happy they

should do so on the basis of love and

one of the funny amusing things to me

and researching this that I didn't

realize was that traditionalists of the

day social conservatives of the day

defenders of what was then the

traditional marriage of political and

economic calculation were horrified they

thought that this was going to be a

disaster

you've opened a Pandora's box they said

look if you say that marriage should be

about love how are you going to get the

right people to marry each other one of

the most am I don't love him you know

how will we make our you know our social

status work how will we prevent the

wrong people from demanding the right to

marry and today of course that is

playing out over demands for gay and

lesbian marriage but at the time they

didn't want poor people to marry you

know today we say oh let's marry them

off and that'll somehow solve their

poverty they said no let's not allow

them to marry or reproduce and that'll

somehow solve their poverty so they said

what do you do if to poor people fall in

love and demand the right to marry what

will we do about people who get married

and then find that they're not happy

won't they demand the right to divorce

and even scarier for them at the time is

what will happen to this male dominance

that has been there for so many

thousands of years if you get people to

marry for love

won't men start giving in to their wives

so they predicted basically that love

would be the death of marriage and

actually it turns out they had a boy but

but it took another hundred and fifty

years for the radical implications of

that to play themselves out because the

instant that the love match was invented

people did begin to demand the right not

to marry if they didn't fall in love and

to get social respect for making that

choice they began to demand the right to

divorce if the marriage was loveless

they began to question female

subordination and they began to question

but it's always been the dark side of

the strong institution of marriage and

that is the notion of illegitimate see I

said earlier that we think marriage was

invented to turn strangers into

relatives but the flip side of marriage

illegitimate see was invented to turn

relatives into strangers and throughout

the centuries millions of gets lost all

access to their husband to it to our

mother and father because the husband

and mother were not in an improved

marriage so people began to question

that it's no accident that illegitimate

children were called love children

people we began to say why do we have

these penalties for legitimacy if they

were conceived in love all of those

things were raised the instant that the

love match was raised so conservatives

were right to be frightened but it took

a hundred and fifty years on to play

themselves out first of all in the 19th

century they developed what they were

very concerned about this because there

was a wave of women's movements and

demands for divorce in in France America

Europe across even demands for

legitimation of gay and lesbian unions

they didn't call them marriage but they

said if people love each other you know

we should recognize a valid relationship

France developed the slogan there are no

bastards in France they wanted to get

rid of illegitimate

in America there were demands for

equality within marriage and free choice

and the right to remain single but these

were pushed back in the 19th century by

a combination of I'm almost conscious

campaign to redefine love and marriage

in ways that made it a little more

manageable and that was this new idea

about the separation of spheres and that

that now men were considered not to be

in charge of women but they were

considered so different that own that

men and women were only halfway human

beings without each other that men were

the ones the only ones who could go out

and bring home the bacon you know in

contrary to you know thousands of years

of evidence to the contrary this new

idea developed that they should be the

ones who protected women and women

should stay home women by contrast were

the ones in charge of nurturing men

weren't capable of that contrary to

thousands of years of evidence to the

contrary where men were the ones who

remembered birthdays and organized

funerals and weddings so these new ideas

about strict gender roles women

passionless sexless again contrary to

the medieval idea that women were the

more sexual sex these kind of developed

to create a sense that men and women

could only reach humanity by combining

in marriage it looks we look back at

those Victorian marriages and

romanticize them they were very stable

and they did have a lot of you know sort

of sentimental rhetoric around them but

actually when you scratch the surface

they were often quite unhappy because

this new definition of men and women as

polar opposites didn't exactly foster

intimacy in marriage you know women

often refer to men as the grosser sex

they were terrified of marriage do to

get with this guy and men for their part

really didn't know how to deal with you

know these virginal pure angels in the

house and often expressed considerable

discomfort about how to be around them

that prostitutes were better company

than the kind of woman that they'd like

to marry and there were all sorts of

sexual tensions in Victorian marriage so

until you had a sexual revolution

18 20s that particular part of radical

implication of the love match could not

play itself out also of course you had

unreliable birth control and despite the

attempt of France to outlaw legitimacy

the strong penalties for legitimacy

remained in in play until the nineteen

1960s and 1970s most people don't

realize this but until it Court Supreme

Court decision in 1968 a child who was

born to and raised by an unmarried

mother did not have any right to collect

on her debts if she died didn't have no

claim on her family for inheritance and

if she was killed by the wrongful act of

an employer or someone else could not

sue for damages

so the harsh penalties against

illegitimate C and the unreliability of

birth control prevented the radical

implications of the love match from

playing out there furthermore there was

the ability of elites and employers to

dictate behavior so even though people

were more and more talking about the

idea that you ought to be able to

divorce if you wanted to and that love

match you know was more important that

actual love was more important than a

marriage license you could get penalized

terribly right up until the 1950s men

who were not married by a respectable

age or who were divorced could be denied

promotions and employment and of course

women were just ostracized if they had a

baby they did have babies out of wedlock

but they usually put them up for

adoption or went and went away and

pretended nothing had happened and then

of course there was the legal authority

of men in marriage despite the fact that

by the light 19th century violence was

not acceptable and women began and

gained their own property rights most

people don't realize that right up until

the 1970s most states in this country

and had head and master laws and all of

Western Europe did which gave men the

final right to make the say they have

the final decision about most things

that went on in the home and marriage

was defined very unequally that men but

not women had a duty to support the

family women but not men have the duty

to take care of the kids

do the housekeeping and provide sex

which is why wasn't it all the 1980s

that it was possible to say that marital

rape was a crime if you were raped even

violently by her husband you had no

recourse up until then because the legal

definition of marriage was that once

you'd said I do you'd said I will

forever so as long as that legal

authority of men in marriage prevailed

it was again a consent of tenth tamped

down the implicate the radical

implications of the love match and then

above all the thing that really held in

check was the economic dependence of

women on men so that you know we tend to

think that that women are the more

romantic sex but actually it was men who

were able to embrace the love revolution

first and in the 19th century I read

diaries and letters and the men are like

oh I'm just madly in love with this

woman I can't wait to marry her and the

women are like well you know my heart

inclines to Harry but you know John over

there has got better economic prospects

it's late as 1967 there was a college a

poll of college students in America and

they found that only 5% of the men but

two-thirds of the women said they would

consider marrying someone they didn't

love if he met all their other criteria

well in the last thirty years all of

those things have been swept away we

have reliable birth control we have

destroyed

we have abolished the old penalties for

a legitimacy important humanitarian

reform but one that has weakened the

ability of marriage to dictate people's

lives in the distribution of resources

we have told people that they cannot

discriminate on the basis of personal

behavior that we use objective behavior

to decide whether you can get into

college or whether you're going to be

promoted at a job again decreasing the

coercive power of elites we've removed

the legal authority of men in marriage

we've allowed women access to education

and above all we've had women enter into

the workforce in terms that make them

more possible to be able to either

refuse marriage even if they pregnant or

to leave a marriage marriage has changed

more in the last thirty years than the

previous three thousand five hundred it

is a worldwide irreversible revolution

that I've come to think of as the

equivalent of the Industrial Revolution

and like the Industrial Revolution it

really shook things up you know I mean

the Industrial Revolution has had some

long-term benefits of course but at the

time there were lots of tragedies you

know for every individual who found a

new way to to move out of the pack and

develop a new entrepreneurial success

there were a dozen who lost their old

ways of living and were displaced from

their farms and had to go into dangerous

factories but you know you really didn't

have a choice you couldn't say well

we're going to shoehorn everybody back

onto self-sufficient farms you had to

say well look if we don't like the way

this is working this industrial

revolution we have to find new routes to

self-employment for people because the

old ways are gone and we have to

recognize that corporations and

factories are here to stay so instead of

you know sitting around cursing at them

we need to reform them right well I

would say the analogy is completely

holds for this change in in marriage we

there is no way we will shoehorn people

back into lifelong universal early

marriage where we can be sure that all

obligations will be contracted in

marriage and all interdependencies will

be taken care of and all child-rearing

will take care of that there's no way

we're going to actually be able to just

completely ignore as we did for

centuries the accidents that that were

outside of marriage the rising you add

these other changes that I've talked

about to the rising age of marriage so

that there's now a 10 to 15 year or

longer period of sexual maturity between

the time that people reach puberty and

the time they get married no Society in

history has ever kept young people

celibate that long say marriage is no

longer the only place for

sex people get initiated into sex the

separation of reproduction means that in

that some people can have children who

never would have been able to have them

before which means that wonderful

wonderful gain from married couples who

are infertile but it also means it's

next to impossible to prevent single

women or gays and lesbians from having

children it also means that more and

more marriages are childless so that the

old equation of marriage with childhood

is broken down you add that the

invention of consumer products that do

away with the need of a full-time

housewife and you have a situation where

this is an irreversible change yes it

causes lots of problems you know these

shakeups are very disturbing you know

and the entry of women into the

workforce in a in a country that has

unlike other the European countries has

not caught up with these changes and

doesn't have subsidized parental leave

policies or good childcare this is a

problem for people the new access to

divorce yes some divorces deliver people

from very difficult situations but in

other cases they're very very painful

and the kids and the adults alike go

through agonizing changes remarriage and

stepfamilies it's hard to blend a family

the ability of women to say no to a

shotgun marriage good in some ways but

also creates economic burdens for them

and of course it's really hard to raise

a kid when you have one parent only you

know having just got my own kid off to

what is now a very successful college

and post college career but he was a

handful I you know think three or four

good parents well would have been a help

far less trying to do it as one but just

as with the Industrial Revolution these

changes are here to stay the question is

not what we wish we could accomplish but

how do we build on the gains that we

have and there have been many gains you

know for the in the position of women in

the improvement of the relationship of

marriage how do we minimize the losses

and there have

losses and challenges to us but that's

the question not how do we turn the

clock back and as it turns out once you

ask that question there is exciting new

research that shows that we can meet

these challenges that dual earner

families don't have to be so stressful

and in fact although there is extra time

there are real time management problems

that when they have access to decent

childcare or leaves these these there's

less likelihood of depression than there

is in more traditional male breadwinner

families there is men whose wives work

are much more likely to become hands-on

fathers and that has tremendous benefits

for the kids it raises boys who are more

empathetic and it raises girls who are

more likely to succeed especially in

non-traditional fields even the use of

child care is not bad when when you

actually look at good child care it

substitutes for the historical loss of

all of these sources of non parental

care and peer socialization outside of

the families that we don't have in our

commuter neighborhoods you know in our

smaller families today and improves kids

social and economic adjustment although

I'm not good unregulated childcare does

not do that we know how to make

marriages work better there's lots of

fascinating wonderful fun new research

on how to make marriages work better but

part of it has to do with weeding out

incompatible couples before they get

marriage so we're not going to get

everybody back into marriage and we're

not going to make divorce disappear it's

been rising in a steady line ever since

the invention of a love match and

although it is leveled off the divorce

rates actually come down by 26% since

1981 there is still going to be divorced

but we know how to teach people to

divorce better and to minimize the

damage that's associated with it that

same is true for single parenthood we

actually know what we can do to minimize

the impacts of that little thing I'll

just I can talk about these more on the

question

if you like but little things dolts and

single-parent families actually read to

and talk to their kids more than adults

and two-parent families if you can

harness that and channel it in

productive ways and make sure that that

talking doesn't become inappropriate

like venting about things that the kids

shouldn't know those kids can turn out

just fine so I don't want to be a

Pollyanna we do face real challenges but

we have to be realists you're not going

to turn the clock back so let's figure

out how we can build on these

possibilities how we can minimize the

weaknesses that every family form

including two-parent families you know

male breadwinner families these families

face tremendous stresses in our society

today and they're not immune proof to

divorce and how do we so how do we

minimize the weaknesses and the

vulnerabilities that every family form

has how do we build on the strengths

that yes every family form potentially

has that's the question today and the

only way we're going to answer it is if

we stop pointing fingers and start

extending a helping hand so I want to

end perhaps since I didn't have an

ending I'm going to make one up right

here in order to have time for the

question period by by telling you my

grandmother's favorite saying when I was

growing up it was well my my father and

my grandmother had two sayings that I

think sum up the argument I've been

trying to make today my father used to

say if wishes were horses then beggars

would ride you know which i think is a

very good thing to remind people of when

they start saying what can we do to make

marriage once again the only option that

people have and then my grandmother used

to say problems are sometimes

opportunities and work clothes but if

you won't sit down with them because of

the way they're dressed you're never

going to find out and that I think is

the theme that we have to have in

dealing with today's families thank you

very much

you