Stephanie Coontz is the American author of the book Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. During her research she came up with some surprising figures as well as alternative points of view on the subject. Here are some of them.

·        Modern Americans put less emphasis on marriage as an institution that should organise everyone’s life, but they put much more value on it as a relationship based on fairness, intimacy and fidelity. That is, paradoxically, one reason they have become more tolerant of divorce. A 2010 poll found that while only 23 per cent of Americans believe divorce to be morally wrong, 92 per cent believe it is immoral for a married man or woman to have an affair — the highest disapproval of any topic in the survey.

·        In 1965, according to data from a study of how people use their time, American mothers spent 10 hours each week, on average, focused on their children. Since that time, mothers have increased the time they spend with their kids, even as they have also increased their work hours. But university-educated mothers, the people most likely to have careers and to return to work in the first year after childbirth, increased time with their kids at more than twice the rate of less-educated mothers. By 2007 university-educated women were, on average, spending 21 .2 hours a week focused on their kids, while mums with less education were doing 15.9 hours a week. In 1965, fathers averaged barely three hours a week doing primary child care. By 2007 that had risen to almost seven hours a week for less-educated dads, and almost 10 hours for those with a university degree.

·        All that time couples invest in their children comes at the expense of being involved in the world beyond the family’s front door. Sociologists Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian report that married women and men are less likely to visit and give practical assistance to their extended families than are the unmarried. Men without wives are much more likely to call their parents than their married peers. The notion that marriage is an impediment to commitments to the larger community is a long-standing one — and one reason early Christians did not place the institution at the top of their moral hierarchy, complaining that married couples cared more about pleasing each other than doing the Lord’s work. It wasn’t until 1215 that marriage became a sacrament.