Love Story?

Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage, by Stephanie Coontz (Viking, 400 pp., $25.95)

THE television spirits of Harriet Nelson and June Cleaver haunt historian Stephanie Coontz. Along with Ozzie and Ricky, Ward, Wally, and the Beaver, these black-and-white specters from the 1950s materialize as whole chapters in her books. Like the 15 angry feminist coauthors of the recent volume Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960, Coontz sees “the 1950s Family” as the lodestone of American social history and the early sitcom housewives as bearers of an awesome, cultureshaping power.

AC

About the Author

Allan C. Carlson

Allan C. Carlson is the John A. Howard Distinguished Fellow for Family and Religious Studies International Organization for the Family.

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Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage, by Stephanie Coontz (Viking, 400 pp., $25.95)

THE television spirits of Harriet Nelson and June Cleaver haunt historian Stephanie Coontz. Along with Ozzie and Ricky, Ward, Wally, and the Beaver, these black-and-white specters from the 1950s materialize as whole chapters in her books. Like the 15 angry feminist coauthors of the recent volume Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960, Coontz sees “the 1950s Family” as the lodestone of American social history and the early sitcom housewives as bearers of an awesome, cultureshaping power.