Stephanie Coontz

Stephanie Coontz teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, and is director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which she chaired from 2001 to 2004. She is the author of several books, including Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage (Viking Press, 2005) and The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (Basic Books, 1992 and 2000). She recently completed a new book on the history of women from the 1920s through the 1960s and the impact of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (forthcoming 2010, Perseus Books). Coontz has testified about her research before the House Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families in Washington, D.C., and addressed audiences across America, Japan, and Europe. Coontz received her bachelor’s degree in American history at the Honors Program at the University of California Berkeley and her master’s degree in European history at the University of Washington in Seattle.