Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States

247 Pages·2009·1.17 MB·English

by  Kristin Celello

making marriage work
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∫ 2009 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
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The University of North Carolina Press has been a member
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Celello, Kristin.
Making marriage work : a history of marriage and divorce
in the twentieth-century United States / Kristin Celello.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8078-3252-3 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Marriage—United States—History—20th century.
2. Divorce—United States—History—20th century. I. Title.
hq535.c36 2009
306.810973%0904—dc22
2008031785
13 12 11 10 09 5 4 3 2 1
For Carl
How exactly did the rhetoric of the factory
become the default language of coupledom?
—laura kipnis, 2004
contents
Acknowledgments 4 Radical Feminists,
xi Liberated Housewives,
and Total Women:
introduction:
Searching for the Future
Making Marriage Work
of Marriage, 1963–1980
1
103
1 The Chaos of Modern
5 Super Marital Sex
Marriage: Experts,
and the Second Shift:
Divorce, and the Origins
New Work for Wives in
of Marital Work,
the 1980s and 1990s
1900–1940
133
13
epilogue:
2 Can War Marriages Be
Still Working
Made to Work? Keeping
163
Women on the Marital Job
in War and Peace Notes
44 167
3 They Learned to Love Bibliography
Again: Marriage Saving 207
in the 1950s
Index
72
223
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illustrations + figure
illustrations
‘‘Now there’s a relationship
that’s working’’
2
Scene from
The Divorcée
15
‘‘Can War Marriages
Be Made to Work?’’
49
On the set of Divorce Hearing
74
‘‘How to Stay Married’’
135
figure
Figure 1. Marriage and
divorce rates, per 1,000
population, 1900–2000
4