Kristin Celello, “Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the 20th-Century U.S.” (University of North Carolina Press, 2009)

UNC Press Presents Podcast · Mar 27, 2009 · 1h 1m

When did Americans begin to think of marriage as “work,” as in, “If you want your marriage to succeed, you have to work at it.” Kristin Celello answers this question (and a lot of others) in her timely and relevant new book Making Marriage Work. A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States (UNC Press, 2009). In the nineteenth century, she explains, it was hard to get a divorce, marriage was viewed as an irrevocable duty, and divorce rates were low (by modern standards, of course). But beginning in the later part of the century all those things began to change. It…