Marriage, Cohabitation & Committed Relationships

Brief report from CCF Early Career Scholar Dr. Meredith Zhang summarizes new research on how providing unpaid care for family and friends differs by gender, sexual orientation, and partnership status.

A briefing paper prepared by Liana C. Sayer, University of Maryland and Joanna R. Pepin, University of Toronto for the Council on Contemporary Families online symposium The COVID-19 Pandemic and… Read more: Pandemic Influences on Gender Inequality in Unpaid Work

A new CCF symposium highlights what emerging research tells us about changes to family & work life during the COVID-19 pandemic and what they mean for the future of gender equality in the U.S.

A new brief report from CCF takes a look at how cognitive labor related to household management influences well-being in different ways for mothers and fathers.

CCF Expert and Director of Research and Public Education Stephanie Coontz spoke at the recent opening of Legacy Washington’s “Love, Equally” exhibit.

Family formation has long been touted as a source of racial inequality, but what does the research actually say?

It turns out there is a big difference between dividing up the tasks so that each partner does different ones versus sharing or alternating the same tasks, so that partners contribute equally to each.

“Legacy Washington recently recorded an interview with author/historian Stephanie Coontz. Watch Legacy Washington historian Bob Young interview Coontz, an expert on family and marriage whose writing influenced the U.S. Supreme… Read more: CCF’S Stephanie Coontz Interviewed by Legacy Washington

The Marriage Strengthening Research & Dissemination Center (MAST) recently released a new research brief, “Trends in Relationship Formation and Stability in the United States: Dating, Cohabitation, Marriage, and Divorce.” Co-authored… Read more: New MAST Center Brief on Trends in Relationship Formation and Stability

A briefing paper prepared by Daniel L. Carlson (University of Utah), Richard J. Petts (Ball State University), and Joanna R. Pepin (University of Buffalo – SUNY) for the Council on… Read more: Men and Women Agree: During the COVID-19 Pandemic Men Are Doing More at Home

A briefing paper prepared by Amanda Miller, University of Indianapolis, and Sharon Sassler, Cornell University, for the Council on Contemporary Families. Much has been written about the challenges couples face… Read more: Challenges Facing Cohabiting Couples Differ from those of Married Couples in this Crisis

Listen here to see what CCF President of the Board Kristi Williams had to say about romantic love and the modern American marriage on WHYY Philadelphia’s “Solitude and the creative life”.… Read more: CCF’s Kristi Williams on WHYY Philadelphia

Five years after marriage equality, CCF Director of Research and Public Education Stephanie Coontz asks: What can different-sex couples learn from same-sex couples? Featuring research by CCF experts Joanna Pepin, Dan… Read more: CCF’s Stephanie Coontz for The New York Times: What Can Different-Sex Couples Learn From Same-Sex Couples?

January 23, 2020 A fact sheet on prospects for marriage in contemporary America prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Daniel L. Carlson, University of Utah, and Stephanie Coontz,… Read more: National Spouses Day Is This Sunday…. Feeling Any Pressure?

February 6, 2019 A fact sheet prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Youngmin Yi, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology, Cornell University. In the absence of clear pathways to citizenship,… Read more: Household Instability and Complexity among Undocumented Immigrants

JSTOR looks beyond the hype to examine what the “sex recession” is and whether we should be concerned about it. Several CCF experts weighed in on why the fear of… Read more: CCF Experts Weigh in on the “Sex Recession”

A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Arielle Kuperberg, Associate Professor of Sociology and Women and Gender Studies, UNC Greensboro.  October 9, 2018  In the early… Read more: From Countercultural Trend to Strategy for the Financially Insecure: Premarital Cohabitation and Premarital Cohabitors, 1956-2015

A Research Brief Prepared for the University of Texas at Austin Population Research Center Research Brief Series Download a PDF of the Brief Mieke Beth Thomeer, Rachel Donnelly, Corinne Reczek,… Read more: Same-Sex Couples Devote More Attention to End-of-Life Plans than Heterosexual Couples

A Research Brief Prepared for the University of Texas at Austin Population Research Center Research Brief Series Download a PDF of this Brief Kelly Raley Introduction Today, nearly two-thirds of first… Read more: Cohabitating Couples With Lower Education Levels Marry Less. Is This Because They Do Not Want To?

A Research Brief Prepared for the University of Texas at Austin Population Research Center Research Brief Series Download a PDF of the Brief Amanda M. Pollitt, Brandon A. Robinson, and Debra… Read more: Perceptions of Shared Power, Gender Conformity, and Marital Quality in Same- and Different-Sex Marriages

New research by CCF members Daniel Carlson and David Cotter is featured in the Deseret News. Carlson and Cotter presented two new reports to CCF about gender differences in household… Read more: Men are helping more around the house and favor more gender equality, new research shows

In an opinion piece for the New York Times, CCF Director of Research and Public Education Stephanie Coontz writes about the importance of cultivating “the skills of successful singlehood.” These… Read more: Stephanie Coontz Writes about Marriage for the New York Times

CCF President Barbara Risman weighs in on recent findings that millennials want more traditional gender roles at home in a recent article in the GoodCall. Despite these findings, Risman says… Read more: Millennials Aren’t Traditionalists, Says CCF President Barbara Risman

CCF members Daniel Carlson and Amanda Miller respond to new research on declining sexual frequency among American couples. In their Op-ed, they debunk four common myths about couples’ sex lives,… Read more: Daniel Carlson and Amanda Miller Shed Light on Couples’ Sex Lives

The Frontlines of Welfare Reform: Why Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Programs Succeed or Fail  A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Jennifer Randles, Assistant Professor of… Read more: The Frontlines of Welfare Reform: Why Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Programs Succeed or Fail

In a Washington Post article, “Young people now more likely to live with parents than partners“, CCF Board Member and Director of Research Stephanie Coontz comments on the positive aspects… Read more: Stephanie Coontz Comments on Adult Child and Parent Cohabitation for WP

CCF Director Jennifer Glass and Board member Stephanie Coontz join CCF members Ariel Kuperberg and Constance Ahrons in commenting on divorce for Hopes & Fears’s Is Divorce Really That Bad? .… Read more: Host of CCF members dissect divorce in Hopes&Fears

Check out CCF boardmember Pepper Schwartz’s comments on member Kelly Musick’s report on pre-marital parenting. Tweet

For Immediate Release Contact: Virginia Rutter / Framingham State University Sociology vrutter@gmail.com / 206 375 4139 CCF PRESS ADVISORY: Attention Cohabitors: Having a baby before you marry no longer raises… Read more: CCF Press Advisory: Attention Cohabitors: Having a baby before you marry no longer raises your risk of divorce.

What Happens When Couples Marry after the First Baby?   A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Kelly Musick, Cornell University and Katherine Michelmore, University of… Read more: What Happens When Couples Marry after the First Baby?

First comes love, then comes…housework? A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families Online Symposium on Housework, Gender, and Parenthood by Arielle Kuperberg, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University… Read more: First comes love, then comes…housework?

Experts recommend we delay, protect, and look for more change in the future.

By Arielle Kuperberg The University of North Carolina at Greensboro atkuperb@uncg.edu In the last 50 years, the percentage of men and women who cohabit before marriage – “living in sin”… Read more: Does Premarital Cohabitation Raise Your Risk of Divorce?

For more than 20 years, researchers have reported that premarital cohabitation is associated with an elevated risk of divorce. Yet these findings have failed to deter young people from “shacking up.” Senior CCF Scholar Arielle Kuperberg’s research finds that previous studies have over-stated the divorce risk from premarital cohabitation by ignoring how old the individuals are when they move in together.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s declaration of an “unconditional war on poverty.” Yet this month also marks over a quarter century since President Ronald Reagan’s 1988 announcement that the war on poverty was over, and that poverty had won. In this report, University of Maryland sociologist Philip Cohen examines the many early victories, as well as the setbacks in the War on Poverty.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s declaration of an “unconditional war on poverty.” Yet this month also marks over a quarter century since President Ronald Reagan’s 1988 announcement that the war on poverty was over, and that poverty had won. To mark the anniversaries of these very different points in the government’s role in poverty reduction, two researchers from the Council on Contemporary Families assess where we have come from and where we stand today.

The New Jersey Supreme Court has given the state Legislature a historic opportunity, and I don’t mean the chance to allow same-sex couples to marry. The Legislature has the chance to enact civil unions for all couples – same-sex and different-sex. New Zealand does it. So does the Netherlands, under the name “registered partnership.” Maine and the District of Columbia recognize “domestic partnerships” for both straight and gay couples, although both give domestic partners fewer rights than those accorded married couples. Even New Jersey’s current domestic partnership law allows different-sex couples to register – but only if both partners are over 62, presumably a nod to the impact of remarriage on certain pension and retirement benefits.

A new report, “The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing: First-Ever Estimates for the Nation and all 50 States”, raises the question of how much divorce costs taxpayers. This… Read more: How Should We Think About the Taxpayer Consequences of Divorce?

Download Full Report as a PDF Download Full Report as a Word Document Why do so many low-income couples postpone marriage but fail to postpone childbearing? Which couples eventually do… Read more: Understanding Low-Income Unmarried Couples with Children

By Michael J. Rosenfeld Professor of Sociology Stanford University mrosenfe@stanford.edu, 415.205.1892 Prior to 1970, the overwhelming majority of all couples were same-race married couples. Couples who lived together outside of marriage,… Read more: The Steady Rise of Non-Traditional Romantic Unions

Download Full Report as a PDF Download Full Report as a Word Document By M. V. Lee Badgett Professor of Economics University of Massachusetts, Amherst As a way to understand… Read more: Will Providing Marriage Rights To Same-Sex Couples Undermine Heterosexual Marriage? Evidence From Scandinavia