This look at sexual frequency among younger couples in equal marriages refutes recent claims that when a man share the housework equally, it is bad for the couple’s sex life.
Topics of Expertise: Division of Labor in Families / Gender & Sexuality / Work & Family
National surveys and other studies continuously tell us that work is a major source of stress for Americans. But this study has found that people have significantly lower levels of stress at work than at home. These low levels of cortisol may help explain a long-standing finding that has always been hard to reconcile with the idea that work is a major source of stress: People who work have better mental and physical health than their non-working peers.
Topics of Expertise: Labor and Workforce
Experts recommend we delay, protect, and look for more change in the future.
Topics of Expertise: Cohabitation, Committed Relationships & MarriageBy 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” as it was still called in the 1960s – has increased by almost 900 percent. Today 70 percent of women aged 30 to 34 have […]
Topics of Expertise: Cohabitation, Committed Relationships & Marriage
Today the Council on Contemporary Families releases the third set of papers in a three part symposium marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. The first two sets of papers described changes in America’s religious and racial-ethnic landscape in the half century since it became illegal to discriminate on the basis of religion, skin color, national origin, race, ethnicity or gender.
It’s appropriate that we turn last to how women have fared since passage of the Civil Rights Act, because the addition of the word “sex” was a last minute addition to the bill. Opponents hoped — and supporters feared — that threatening to make discrimination on the basis of sex illegal would kill the bill, and when it passed anyway, few policymakers took the sex provision seriously. Although the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission immediately moved to ban job ads that specified a particular race, it refused to do the same for the sex-segregated want ads that were the norm in 1964.
Topics of Expertise: Division of Labor in Families / Feminism & Families / Fertility,Reproduction & Sexual Health / Gender & Sexuality / Health & Illness / History & Trends on Gender, Marriage & Family Life / Labor and Workforce / Work & Family
By Joan C. Williams University of California, Hastings College of the Law Fifty years after discrimination on the basis of sex was outlawed, women have made tremendous progress moving into high-level careers, but the glass ceiling still exists, only it rests on different support mechanisms than the past. Prior to 1964, newspapers listed men’s and […]
Topics of Expertise: Gender & Sexuality / Work & Family
By Max Coleman, Research Intern Council on Contemporary Families Fifty years ago, the United States adopted the Civil Rights Act, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, ethnic origin, religion, and gender. Women were a last-minute addition to the bill, and some legislators actually hoped that adding women would mobilize enough opposition to kill the […]
Topics of Expertise: Feminism & Families / Gender & Sexuality
Overview: Changing Racial-Ethnic Realities since the Civil Rights Act Remarks by: Stephanie Coontz Today the Council on Contemporary Families releases the second set of papers in a three part symposium marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. Yesterday researchers described the rearrangement of America’s religious landscape over the past half century. Today’s four […]
Topics of Expertise: African American Families / Economic Inequality / Immigrant, Mixed Status & Transnational Families / Latino Families / Race, Ethnicity & Culture
By Velma McBride Murry and Na Liu Vanderbilt University In 1963, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington, the momentous demonstration that helped spur passage of the Civil Rights Act the following year. He described African Americans as living “on a lonely island […]
Topics of Expertise: African American Families / Economic Inequality / Race, Ethnicity & Culture
By Raha Forooz Sabet University of Miami When the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, racial differences in the United States were almost literally black and white. In the early 1960s, 85 percent of the population was white and 11 percent was black. Less than four percent of the population was Latino and less […]
Topics of Expertise: African American Families / Asian & Asian American Families / Immigrant, Mixed Status & Transnational Families / Latino Families / Race, Ethnicity & Culture
By Kimberlyn Fong Mount Holyoke College In the past 50 years there has been a true revolution in American attitudes toward interracial marriage. In the years when the Civil Rights Act was being debated, only four percent of Americans said they approved of marriages between white and blacks. Today 77 percent of the public approves, […]
Topics of Expertise: Biracial/ Multicultural Children and Interracial/ Multicultural Families / Race, Ethnicity & Culture
By Rogelio Sáenz University of Texas at San Antonio Latinos are increasingly driving the demographic fortunes of the United States. Between 2000 and 2011, the number of white children in the country declined by 4.9 million, a decrease of 11 percent. Blacks and American Indians and Alaska Natives also saw their child populations decline. The […]
Topics of Expertise: Child Welfare / Childcare (Providers & Systems) / Economic Inequality / Latino Families / Race, Ethnicity & Culture
The Council on Contemporary Families asked a dozen researchers to discuss what has changed in the past half century for each of the populations affected by the law – religious groups, racial and ethnic minorities, and women. Today, February 4, the Council is releasing an update on the changing religious landscape of America.
Topics of Expertise: Race, Ethnicity & Culture
David McClendon from the University of Texas-Austin, traces the increase in the proportion of marriages contracted between couples from different religious traditions. Even more dramatic has been the increase in the number of marriages where both partners maintain their separate beliefs and practices, rather than one or both changing so that their religions match. The proportion of mixed-religion marriages has doubled since the 1960s.
Topics of Expertise: Race, Ethnicity & CultureIn 1964 the provisions outlawing discrimination on the basis of religion were less controversial than those against discrimination on the basis of race and sex, even though blatant bigotry and outright violence against Catholics and Jews had been pervasive in American history right up through World War II. Prejudices had begun to ease by the early 1960s, but the Civil Rights Act remains an important safeguard for religious (and non-religious) minorities, according to Jerry Z. Park, Joshua Tom and Brita Andercheck, of Baylor University.
Topics of Expertise: Couples Conflict, Separation & Divorce / Race, Ethnicity & Culture
