Strange Bedfellows: Marriage in the Age of Women's Liberation by Alison Lefkovit

Description: FREE SHIPPING UK WIDE Strange Bedfellows by Alison Lefkovitz Strange Bedfellows recounts the unlikely ways in which the efforts of feminists and divorced mens activists dovetailed with the activity of lawmakers, judges, welfare activists, immigrant spouses, the LGBTQ community, the Reagan coalition, and other Americans, to redefine family and marriage without relying on traditional gender norms. FORMAT Hardcover LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description In the inaugural issue of Ms. Magazine, the feminist activist Judy Syfers proclaimed that she "would like a wife," offering a wry critique of the state of marriage in modern America. After all, she observed, a wife could provide Syfers with free childcare and housecleaning services as well as wages from a job. Outside the pages of Ms., divorced mens rights activist Charles Metz opened his own manifesto on marriage reform with a triumphant recognition that "noise is swelling from hundreds of thousands of divorced male victims." In the 1960s and 70s, a broad array of Americans identified marriage as a problem, and according to Alison Lefkovitz, the subsequent changes to marriage law at the state and federal levels constituted a social and legal revolution.The law had long imposed breadwinner and homemaker roles on husbands and wives respectively. In the 1960s, state legislatures heeded the calls of divorced men and feminist activists, but their reforms, such as no-fault divorce, generally benefitted husbands more than wives. Meanwhile, radical feminists, welfare rights activists, gay liberationists, and immigrant spouses fought for a much broader agenda, such as the extension of gender-neutral financial obligations to all families or the separation of benefits from family relationships entirely. But a host of conservatives stymied this broader revolution. Therefore, even the modest victories that feminists won eluded less prosperous Americans-marriage rights were available to those who could afford them.Examining the effects of law and politics on the intimate space of the home, Strange Bedfellows recounts how the marriage revolution at once instituted formal legal equality while also creating new forms of political and economic inequality that historians-like most Americans-have yet to fully understand. Author Biography Alison Lefkovitz teaches history in the Federated History Department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University-Newark. Table of Contents IntroductionChapter 1. The Problem of Marriage in the Era of Womens LiberationChapter 2. The End of Breadwinning and HomemakingChapter 3. Blaming Feminism for the Fragile FamilyChapter 4. Race, Welfare, and Marriage RegulationChapter 5. Sham Marriages, Real Love, and Immigration ReformChapter 6. Gay Marriage and "Homosexual Households"Conclusion. The End of Marriage as We Know ItNotesIndexAcknowledgments Review "[A] sweeping look at changes in public policy and laws governing marriage at the state and federal levels from the nineteenth century to the late twentieth. Lefkovitz zeroes in on individuals, groups, and movements across the political spectrum who pressured courts and legislatures to reconfigure marriage between the end of World War II and Clinton-era welfare reform in the 1990s. Her investigation of the way activists, judges, the Supreme Court, and lawmakers degendered (or "individualized") marriage roles deepens our understanding of the growth and impact of the New Right in the United States as it also enhances existing work on the history of second-wave feminism." * American Historical Review *"[A] fascinating and much-needed look at critical changes in the legal and cultural status of marriage in the late twentieth century United States...Strange Bedfellows is a welcome addition to womens and gender history and the history of the family. It is especially recommended for anyone interested in the postwar United States, the intersection of legal and cultural history, or, of course, the history of marriage." * Journal of Family History *"The title of Alison Lefkovitzs compelling new book does not quite convey just how wide-ranging her subject really is. Rather than a study of how marriages changed (or didnt) during the 1960s and 70 s, Lefkovitz is interested in the legal repercussions of feminist challenges to the remnants of coverture dur-ing that period...Lefkovitz is a clear and concise writer and the book is deeply researched, relying not just on the legal record, but also on the papers of various feminist and anti-feminist activists, congressional testimony, and the archives of legislators." * Journal of Social History *"Strange Bedfellows offers an original perspective on the post-World War II marriage revolution. By focusing on the interactions of feminist advocates, mens rights groups, legislatures, and the courts, Alison Lefkovitz insightfully charts the emergence of new policies toward divorce, alimony, and marital property. In so doing, she reveals the disparate and harmful impact of marriage reform on the poor, racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, and gay couples. This is an important and timely book." * Kathy Peiss, University of Pennsylvania *"The legal evolution of marriage in the United States is as old as the Republic. But beginning in the 1960s, the pace of legal change accelerated with the universal adoption of no-fault divorce. Strange Bedfellows traces this unfinished revolution, highlighting the roles played by men as much as women in challenging the gendered obligations of marriage. As Alison Lefkovitz brilliantly shows, even as the breadwinning/homemaking model of marriage was dismantled for the privileged with decidedly unequal results for women and men, it was redeployed against the poor, especially racial minorities, immigrants, and LGBTQ couples. Placing the legal revolution of marriage firmly in the economic, cultural, and political transformation of the 1960s to the present, Lefkovitz offers a sobering picture of marriage as Americans fundamental social safety net." * Barbara Young Welke, University of Minnesota * Promotional Strange Bedfellows recounts the unlikely ways in which the efforts of feminists and divorced mens activists dovetailed with the activity of lawmakers, judges, welfare activists, immigrant spouses, the LGBTQ community, the Reagan coalition, and other Americans, to redefine family and marriage without relying on traditional gender norms. Long Description In the inaugural issue of Ms. Magazine , the feminist activist Judy Syfers proclaimed that she "would like a wife," offering a wry critique of the state of marriage in modern America. After all, she observed, a wife could provide Syfers with free childcare and housecleaning services as well as wages from a job. Outside the pages of Ms. , divorced mens rights activist Charles Metz opened his own manifesto on marriage reform with a triumphant recognition that "noise is swelling from hundreds of thousands of divorced male victims." In the 1960s and 70s, a broad array of Americans identified marriage as a problem, and according to Alison Lefkovitz, the subsequent changes to marriage law at the state and federal levels constituted a social and legal revolution. The law had long imposed breadwinner and homemaker roles on husbands and wives respectively. In the 1960s, state legislatures heeded the calls of divorced men and feminist activists, but their reforms, such as no-fault divorce, generally benefitted husbands more than wives. Meanwhile, radical feminists, welfare rights activists, gay liberationists, and immigrant spouses fought for a much broader agenda, such as the extension of gender-neutral financial obligations to all families or the separation of benefits from family relationships entirely. But a host of conservatives stymied this broader revolution. Therefore, even the modest victories that feminists won eluded less prosperous Americans--marriage rights were available to those who could afford them. Examining the effects of law and politics on the intimate space of the home, Strange Bedfellows recounts how the marriage revolution at once instituted formal legal equality while also creating new forms of political and economic inequality that historians--like most Americans--have yet to fully understand. Review Quote "The legal evolution of marriage in the United States is as old as the Republic. But beginning in the 1960s, the pace of legal change accelerated with the universal adoption of no-fault divorce. Strange Bedfellows traces this unfinished revolution, highlighting the roles played by men as much as women in challenging the gendered obligations of marriage. As Alison Lefkovitz brilliantly shows, even as the breadwinning/homemaking model of marriage was dismantled for the privileged with decidedly unequal results for women and men, it was redeployed against the poor, especially racial minorities, immigrants, and LGBTQ couples. Placing the legal revolution of marriage firmly in the economic, cultural, and political transformation of the 1960s to the present, Lefkovitz offers a sobering picture of marriage as Americans fundamental social safety net."--Barbara Young Welke, University of Minnesota Promotional "Headline" Strange Bedfellows recounts the unlikely ways in which the efforts of feminists and divorced mens activists dovetailed with the activity of lawmakers, judges, welfare activists, immigrant spouses, the LGBTQ community, the Reagan coalition, and other Americans, to redefine family and marriage without relying on traditional gender norms. Excerpt from Book Introduction In the inaugural issue of Ms. Magazine , the feminist activist Judy Syfers proclaimed that she "would like a wife." But her desire was not sexual or emotional. Instead, she offered a deeply felt and wry critique of the state of marriage in modern America. After all, she said, only a wife could provide her with certain comforts like working for wages, taking care of children, keeping the house clean, preparing meals, having sex with her, and much more. Syfers concluded with a rhetorical flourish: "My God, who wouldnt want a wife?" A few pages away in this same issue, Johnnie Tillmon, the president of the National Welfare Rights Association, critiqued not only the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program but also marriage. She proclaimed that all women were domestic slaves, and even marriage provided wan protection or pay for this labor. Outside of the pages of Ms. , other Americans debated marriage. Divorced mens rights activist Charles Metz, for example, opened his own book-long manifesto on marriage reform in 1968 with a triumphant recognition that "noise is swelling from hundreds of thousands of divorced male victims. God help us to swell this noise, still a whimper, into a roar of indignation that will be felt in every court and legislative body in this Union of States and their Federal Government." Phyllis Schlafly, similarly, decried the Equal Rights Amendment for its potential danger to the institution of marriage broadly and to wives in particular. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) identified sham unions as one of the main threats to the nations borders. Gay men and lesbians, meanwhile, dressed in drag to try to win marriage licenses from oblivious bureaucrats and then went to local newspapers to call attention to their exclusion from marriage. In other words, a broad array of Americans identified marriage as a problem in the 1960s and 1970s, and the subsequent changes to marriage law at the local and federal levels constituted a legal revolution. But legislators and courts instituted these changes unevenly to ameliorate the problems they identified as the most dangerous, rather than give activists exactly what they had asked for. These new policies replaced the more blatant gender and racial inequalities that courts and legislatures had stripped out of the law during the civil rights revolution. Like law and order campaigns and the War on Drugs, the legal revolution in marriage at once instituted formal legal equality and also created new forms of political inequality that historians--like most Americans--have yet to fully understand. The difficulty began with the legal foundations of marriage. Half a century after the long struggle for votes for women had secured an amendment to the nations founding document, wives and husbands were still sharply distinguished not only in popular culture and private life but also in law. State laws nationwide obliged wives to perform nearly all of the tasks that Syfers catalogued in Ms. ; wives unpaid labor in the home still belonged to their husbands in practice and in law. Indeed, laws in every state entitled husbands to their wives bodies. Until legislators began to recognize the existence of rape in marriage in the late 1970s, state law defined rape as the violent act whereby a man forced a woman who was not his wife to have sexual intercourse. A man could legally force his wife to have sex. Although technically, either spouse could win a divorce based on fault for his or her partners sexual indiscretion, only a wife lost the right to alimony and marital property when her husband won a divorce for her infidelity. Yet husbands had their own gendered obligations to fulfill, characterized above all by the duty to support their wives and children. Though a wife had to bring her case to court, the government enforced a husbands financial duties as spouses entered and left a marriage. Many men faced harsh ramifications for failing to fulfill these obligations ranging from court orders to jail sentences. Of course, there were limits to the breadwinner-homemaker political economy. Even at its peak, only some couples managed to live up to these roles. The family wage that enabled some wives to work from home eluded many in the working class. Not all men and women were punished for failing to fulfill these obligations. Nonetheless, for over a century, the roles of breadwinner and homemaker had not only defined what couples privately hoped to practice but had also shaped public policy. This particular system of gendered obligations was codified alongside the rise of separate spheres, justified higher wages for men, and eventually was enshrined in federal welfare programs from Social Security to Aid to Dependent Children. Beginning in the 1960s, a feminist revival worked to dismantle this system. Feminists questioned and then assaulted the institution of marriage and the gendered roles within it. Different feminists advocated for different ideas ranging from the total destruction of the institution to more cosmetic changes. Liberal feminists had the greatest success at reforming the law, but even among them, two different concepts of equality rivaled one another. One was what I call expansionist --it sought to keep the protections that wives enjoyed by extending them to husbands as well. Wives could take care of their husbands just as husbands had traditionally taken care of wives. The other concept of equality was individualist --it sought to make wives roles equal to husbands financially and in law by compensating women for their household labor at the point of divorce, retirement, or widowhood. Neither spouse would have to take care of the other over time. Both visions of equality had some significant though mitigated effects on marriage law, which changed but without fully accounting for the vast gender difference that persisted within the home and in terms of jobs, income, and wealth. Feminists redefining of the marriage relationship led husbands to question their roles as well. Many husbands increasingly resented their support obligations when wives began rejecting their roles as homemakers. Most husbands were not well organized, but many nonetheless backed away from breadwinning obligations en masse in the 1970s. Other husbands, like Charles Metz, founded divorced mens groups that sued or lobbied to free men of these obligations. And though these organizations were not the most effectively organized of activist groups, their claims seemed to resonate with state legislatures and courts who limited mens support obligations. Feminists and divorced husband groups questioning of the marriage relationship also coincided with welfare, immigration, and gay marriage activists rising demands that lawmakers treat their families equitably. While their specific goals and who they counted as a family varied, all three of these emerging social movements asked the government to provide the same legal recognition and financial support that "traditional" families received. This diverse array of advocates on the left also made use of the changing legal ground, new resources, and new strategies forged by the civil rights and feminist movements to make demands such as extending gender-neutral obligations to all families or decoupling benefits from family relationships entirely. The resources and strategies had their limits, however. While the feminist movement won a moderated victory in the form of greater legal equality between husbands and wives, these activists gained even less. While feminists, divorced mens groups, welfare rights activists, gay liberationists, and immigration reformers attacked husbands and wives traditional obligations, breadwinning and homemaking also crumbled from within. A range of pressures weighed on the institution of marriage, but financial concerns prompted by deindustrialization were among the most anguishing ones. More husbands found it increasingly difficult to get jobs offering a family wage; financial distress also seemed to spur the growing number of women working outside the home. Though everyday Americans were not necessarily aware of the coming collapse of the postwar economic boom, they certainly understood their own inability to earn a family wage. Even as a diverse array of activists challenged the old marriage regime, many husbands and wives were already necessarily reorganizing their own marriages, "on the ground," on an individual basis across the United States. The federal structure of the American legal and political system profoundly shaped the outcomes of the marriage revolution. In particular, the strand of liberal feminism that advocated for an expansionist approach to equality had significant success at the federal level. The Supreme Court and Congress preserved wives rights by making them gender-neutral. But the protection of gender-neutral breadwinner and homemaker obligations on the federal level had more destructive effects on women on welfare, their partners, immigrant spouses, and gay and lesbian couples. Individualist feminists won a more moderated victory on the state level than expansionist feminists had at the federal level. Many state legislatures passed laws that gave modest financial compensation to some wives for their household labor, but they also scaled back mens breadwinning obligations. Together these two changes helped produce what legal scholar Mary Anne Case has termed a "thin" definition of marriage--legally, husbands and wives owed each other few duties. Ultimately the ideas circulating at the state level had a larger impact on husbands and wives lives than did the Supreme Court or Congress, both of which ignored or did not notice the state-level disintegration of marital duty. The federal government had the power to influe Details ISBN081225015X Author Alison Lefkovitz Publisher University of Pennsylvania Press Series Politics and Culture in Modern America Year 2018 ISBN-10 081225015X ISBN-13 9780812250152 Format Hardcover Imprint University of Pennsylvania Press Place of Publication Pennsylvania Country of Publication United States Illustrations 8 illus. Subtitle Marriage in the Age of Womens Liberation DEWEY 306.810973 Pages 280 Publication Date 2018-05-15 Short Title Strange Bedfellows Language English UK Release Date 2018-05-15 AU Release Date 2018-05-15 NZ Release Date 2018-05-15 US Release Date 2018-05-15 Edited by Mindy Jane Roseman Birth 1958 Position DESIGNER Qualifications M.D. Alternative 9780812295054 Audience Tertiary & Higher Education We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! 30 DAY RETURN POLICY No questions asked, 30 day returns! FREE DELIVERY No matter where you are in the UK, delivery is free. SECURE PAYMENT Peace of mind by paying through PayPal and eBay Buyer Protection TheNile_Item_ID:161722833;

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