Stephanie Coontz Quotes

It's one thing to reject the idea that it's a man's job to bring home all the bacon; it's another the 500th time your wife reaches for the check at dinner.

There is no going back to a time when most women will feel compelled to enter or stay in a bad marriage just for economic security or social respectability. So today, the best way to get women once more interested in getting married and having children is for men to accept women's new insistence on equality. This is, I think, why educated women in America, are now more pro - marriage and more disapproving of divorce than other groups of women who have less experience with egalitarian partners or less clout in getting their needs met in relationships.

There was a time when men thought it was sexy to have a housewife waiting for him to come home from work in her slippers, but in modern society, I think an independent woman is even more sexy.

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

A divorcee is a women who got married so she didn't have to work, but now works so she doesn't have to get married.

The roles that men and women play are no longer the standard traditional roles of way back when but are those of two very individual people living their lives. I think it's been a hard transition in society - just take a look at the divorce rate - to figure out what that means now. How do you resolve that?

So many women are financially dependent on men. So why can't men be dependent on women? I'm totally okay with it.

If you're in a heterosexual relationship and you're a female, you win.

'I hate discussions of feminism that end up with who does the dishes,' she said. So do I. But at the end, there are always the damned dishes.

Behind every successful man you'll find a woman who has nothing to wear.

We fear that women are rash, they might divorce too quickly.

While women prefer to have a higher-earning power, men generally prefer to be the higher-earning partner in a relationship. This simple but profound difference … has powerful consequences for the so-called pay gap. If the pay gap were magically eliminated, … simple arithmetic suggests that half the women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate. The pay gap helps to promote and sustain marriages.

I don't know how to cook. I work a lot. So, for me, then, it's important to find a man who can cook. Who will make the house a home more than I can.

It was always the cliche of men leaving their wives for younger women. The playing field is sort of even now. Women make their own salaries. They can do the exact same thing and can have a younger man.

In less enlightened times, the best way to impress women was to own a hot car. But women wised up and realized it was better to buy their own hot cars so they wouldn't have to ride around with jerks.

I don't think guys inherently don't want to clean. I think the roles are most definitely changing, but I think in a good relationship, it's never been defined as 'a lady does this and a guy does this.' I think, in most working, healthy relationships, everybody does a little bit of everything.

Women should let go their responsibilities of kitchen and should take coaching classes of how to give pleasure.

Now, women are expected to be equal to men in so many capacities - financially, career-wise, in education - yet the one disconnect was, and is, with relationships.

My husband and I had a very pragmatic agreement right from the start: whoever earns more works full time. So we switched the classic roles.

Men must be stripped of arrogance and women must become independent for any mutually nurturing alliance to endure between the sexes.

Whichever way I turn, whatever phase of social life presents itself, the same conviction comes: Independent bread alone can redeem woman from her curse of subjection to man.

In Stage I, divorces were not allowed, so men's [sexual] affairs did not put women's economic security in jeopardy; in Stage II, affairs could lead to divorce, so men's affairs did place women's economic security in jeopardy. We did not want political leaders who would be role models for behavior that would put women's economic security in jeopardy.

A house does not need a wife any more than it needs a husband.

I think it's a Pew survey of Millennials, and the first one is that more and more Millennial-aged women are ashamed and embarrassed that they earn more than their husbands or boyfriends.

I'm a little old-fashioned - I like it when the man opens the door and I like it when a man pays for me. I particularly like it when they pay for dinner or whatever, because I've pretty much done the opposite, but for the exception of James [Taylor], where we split everything down the middle. I've been the larger money earner in practically all of my relationships. There's equality and there are positive differences, which are complimentary.