Stephanie Coontz

Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and is director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which she chaired from 2001–2004. She is the author of Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage (2005), The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (1992 and 2000), The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America’s Changing Families (1997), and The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families. She also edited American Families: A Multicultural Reader (2009). Her work has been translated into French, Spanish, German, Norwegian, and Japanese. A former Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Coontz has also taught at Kobe University in Japan and the University of Hawaii at Hilo. In 2004, she received the Council on Contemporary Families first-ever “Visionary Leadership” Award. In 1995 she received the Dale Richmond Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics for her “outstanding contributions to the field of child development.” She also received the 2001–2002 “Friend of the Family” award from the Illinois Council on Family Relations.