Stephanie Coontz

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Stephanie Coontz (born 31 August 1944) is a historian, author, and faculty member at The Evergreen State College. She teaches history and family studies and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which she chaired from 2001-2004. Coontz has authored and co-edited several books about the history of marriage. Her work has been translated into French, Spanish, German, and Japanese.

In addition to her current teaching position at Evergreen, Coontz has also taught at Kobe University in Japan and the University of Hawaii at Hilo. She is a former Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She won the Washington Governor's Writers Award in 1989 for her book, "The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families". In 1995 she received the Dale Richmond Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics for her "outstanding contributions to the field of child development." She received the 2001-02 "Friend of the Family" award from the Illinois Council on Family Relations. In 2004, she received the first-ever "Visionary Leadership" Award from the Council on Contemporary Families.

Before turning to full-time teaching in 1975, Coontz had spent much of the previous decade as a Seattle-area leader of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which then considered itself a Trotskyist organization. By the late 1970s, however, Coontz had parted company with the SWP. She is listed as an "advisory editor" of Against the Current, a bimonthly theoretical journal of the Marxist-Socialist organization Solidarity.

Coontz has appeared on national television and radio programs and her work has been featured in newspapers and magazines, as well as in many academic and professional journals. She has testified about her research before the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families in Washington, DC, and addressed audiences across America, Europe, and Japan.