Making Marriage Work

“A lively history. . . . Accessible and enjoyable too.” — The Feminist Review

“A lucid description of the rise and sociological impact of the concept that spouses must work hard to make their marriage work.” — Catholic News Service

“The book’s strength is in demonstrating the tenacity of the idea that marriages can be saved through hard work and the persistence of gender imbalance, which continues to place the burden of the effort on women.” — CHOICE

“An intellectual and cultural history of modern marriage and divorce leavened with rich insights into married love and labor. Celello revises and refines the history of twentieth-century marriage to a story of experts successfully persuading couples that marriage requires work.” — The Journal of American History

“Fascinating. . . . Would be an excellent addition to a course on the sociology of marriage, family or gender roles.” — Journal of Social History

“It certainly claims a place among works about the social history of American marriage.” — INTAMS

“Through most of history, people worked in their marriages, not on them. This highly readable book traces the way that marriage 'experts' developed and changed the 'rules' for marital work over the course of the twentieth century, even as they have continued to make wives more responsible than husbands for getting the work done.” — Stephanie Coontz, The Evergreen State College, author of Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage

“Shrewd, lucid, and compelling, Making Marriage Work is a revelation. Celello shows how family sociologists and marriage counselors advanced an implicit ideology that virtually every marriage (regardless of its quality) was worth saving, that hard work can make almost any marriage successful, and that making marriage work was first and foremost women’s responsibility. This book is a model of the kind of engaged history that can inform contemporary debates.” — Steven Mintz, Columbia University