Inside the American Couple: New Thinking, New Challenges - Hardcover

"By interrogating rather than accepting traditional platitudes about our need to be coupled, this vital and original collection both broadens our understanding of what constitutes a couple and deepens our appreciation for the human needs that coupling meets."-Michael S. Kimmel, author of Manhood in America: A Cultural Reader; "Reading this book is like looking at a crystal-first one interesting facet of coupledom and then another comes into view. It's entrancing!"-Barrie Thorne, Director, Center for Working Families, University of California-Berkeley

One of the most fundamental human urges is to form a pair. Despite many tendencies that threaten traditional marriage and even make committed cohabitation problematic, very few people live through adulthood without at least one lengthy relationship, and up to 90 percent of Americans marry at least once in their lives. This volume draws attention to issues that question the unspoken traditional practices underlying coupling in America. In it, the contributors consider the dramatic changes couples have experienced since the mid 20th century, such as the proliferation of divorce, the increase in ethnically-mixed relationships, the preponderance of older couples and the visibility of same-sex unions. Approaching their subject from a range of disciplines, the authors explore the couple as an enduring paradigm for human relationships, despite the changes in ideology and practice that couples have experienced over time. The essays delve into such subjects as the historical roots of modern marriage, the recent phenomenon of lesbian and gay commitment ceremonies, the home as a workplace and a place of refuge and the stresses that turn a happy marriage into an unhappy one. One chapter explod