Media Messages to Young Girls: Does “Sexy Girl” Trump “Girl Power”? A briefing paper prepared by Christia Spears Brown, University of Kentucky for the Council on Contemporary Families. September 3, 2020 Children face continued social isolation this fall, with 21 of the 25 largest school districts in the country choosing remote learning instead of in-person […]
Topics of Expertise: Children / Feminism & Families / Gender & Sexuality / History & Trends on Gender, Marriage & Family Life / Sexual Abuse & MisconductFeminism & Families
Feminism & Families
CCF’S Stephanie Coontz Interviewed by Legacy Washington

“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 Court’s 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage. Coontz has recently appeared in The New York Times and Rolling Stone magazine, and gave this year’s commencement speech […]
Topics of Expertise: Children / Cohabitation, Committed Relationships & Marriage / Division of Labor in Families / Family Caregiving (for Adults, Children, and Disabilities) / Feminism & Families / Gender & Sexuality / History & Trends on Gender, Marriage & Family Life / Parenthood: Motherhood/Fatherhood / Work & FamilyHow Greater Travel Distance Due to Clinic Closures Reduced Access to Abortion in Texas

A Research Brief Prepared for the University of Texas at Austin Population Research Center Research Brief Series Daniel Grossman, Kari White, Kristine Hopkins, and Joseph E. Potter Introduction In 2013, the Texas legislature passed House Bill (HB) 2, a law that restricted access to medication abortion, banned abortions after 20 weeks “post-fertilization,” required doctors who […]
Topics of Expertise: Feminism & Families / Fertility,Reproduction & Sexual Health / Reproductive HealthPerceptions of Shared Power, Gender Conformity, and Marital Quality in Same- and Different-Sex Marriages

A Research Brief Prepared for the University of Texas at Austin Population Research Center Research Brief Series Amanda M. Pollitt, Brandon A. Robinson, and Debra Umberson Introduction Marriage is a key institutional context for the study of gender and gender inequality. One way in which gender inequality is maintained in marriage is through gender […]
Topics of Expertise: Cohabitation, Committed Relationships & Marriage / Feminism & Families / Gender & Sexuality / LGBTQ Partnering & FamiliesMen are helping more around the house and favor more gender equality, new research shows

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 work and attitudes about gender equality.
Topics of Expertise: Cohabitation, Committed Relationships & Marriage / Division of Labor in Families / Feminism & Families / History & Trends on Gender, Marriage & Family LifeMillennials Aren’t Traditionalists, Says CCF President Barbara Risman

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 that millennials are not more conservative than previous generations when it comes to roles in a family. “There are no traditionalists, as defined as people […]
Topics of Expertise: Cohabitation, Committed Relationships & Marriage / Division of Labor in Families / Feminism & FamiliesWomen Still at Work: CCF members weigh in on Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family

CCF members Heather Boushey, Stephanie Coontz, and Nancy Folbre join other prominent feminists in reflecting on the significance of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family for Short Takes: Provocations on Public Feminism, an online-first feature of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
Topics of Expertise: Feminism & Families / Work & FamilyCCF President Barbara Risman comments on the US presidential elections in Chicago Tribune

In a Chicago Tribune commentary, CCF President Barbara Risman and Director of Research Stephanie Coontz reflect on what it means to be a woman – and ‘the’ woman – during the 2016 election cycle. Young women may not be the voters that feminists should be courting…
Topics of Expertise: Feminism & FamiliesCCF Civil Rights Symposium: Women’s Changing Social Status since the Civil Rights Act

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 & Workforce / Work & FamilyCCF Civil Rights Symposium: Civil Rights for Women, 1964-2014

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 […]
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Assistant Professor of Family, Health, and Policy in the Department of Family and Consumer Studies at the University of Utah
Curators' Professor Emerita of Human Development and Family Studies, University of Missouri
Assistant Professor of Practice, Child, Youth, and Family Studies program, Portland State University
Associate Professor of Labor and Employment Relations and Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University
Associate Professor, Department of Family Science & Human Development, Montclair State University
Clinical Director, Perelman School of Medicine, Dept of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, University of Florida
Professor of Communication & Director of Graduate Studies, Baylor University