Stephanie Coontz is Co-Chair and Director of Research and Public Education of the Council on Contemporary Families.  Dr. Coontz teaches history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She is the author of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (new edition, Basic Books, 2000), The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms with America's Changing Families (Basic Books, 1997), and The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families. She also edited American Families: A Multicultural Reader (Routledge, 1999) and has contributed to numerous anthologies. Her work has been translated into French, Spanish, German, and Japanese. Dr. Coontz is a receipient of the Washington Governor's Writers Award and the Dale Richmond Award of the American Academy of Pediatrics for "outstanding contributions to the field of child development." She is currently working on a history of marriage.