Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

The Divorce Culture

Drawing from in-depth research and personal interviews, a thought-provoking and revealing examination delves into the new social stratosphere of dating in today's society where independent, professional, and highly educated women find it extremely difficult to find the perfect mate. Reprint.

The Romantic Plight of the New Single Woman

Why There Are No Good Men Left

Argues that the high divorce rate is building a low-commitment culture in which the needs of children increasingly are neglected

Rethinking Our Commitments to Marriage and Family

David Blankenhorn

Sorcha Brophy-Warren

Americans today often think of thrift as a negative value—a miserly hoarding of resources and a denial of pleasure. Even more telling, many Americans don't even think of thrift at all anymore. Franklin’s Thrift challenges this state of mind by recovering the rich history of thrift as a quintessentially American virtue. The contributors to this volume trace how, from the eighteenth century on, the idea and practice of thrift has been a robust part of the American vision of economic freedom and social abundance. For Benjamin Franklin, who personified and promoted the idea, thrift meant working productively, consuming wisely, saving proportionally, and giving generously. Franklin's thrift became the cornerstone of a new kind of secular faith in the ordinary person's capacity to shape his lot and fortune in life. Later chapters document how in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, thrift moved into new domains. It became the animating idea behind social movements to promote children's school savings, create mutual savings banks and credit unions for working men and women, establish a federal savings bond program, and galvanize the nation to conserve resources during two world wars. Historians, enthusiasts of Americana or traditional American virtues, and anyone interested in resolving our society's current financial woes will find much to treasure in this diverse collection, with topics ranging from the inspirational lessons we can learn from the film It’s a Wonderful Life to a history of the roles played by mutual savings banks, credit unions, and thrift stores in America’s national thrift movement. It also includes actual policy recommendations for our present situation.

The Lost History of an American Virtue

Franklin's Thrift

A hard-hitting, groundbreaking exploration of the new mating conditions that are changing the face of love, commitment, and marriage as we know it. A double revolution is at work in modern American love: A revolution in higher education has created the most professionally accomplished and independent generation of young women in history, and a revolution in mating has created a prolonged and perplexing search for Mr. Right. Based on extensive research and interviews, Why There Are No Good Men Left explores the romantic plight of this high-status woman with findings that are sure to rouse debate. Cultural historian, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead documents the new social climate in which the demands of work, the epidemic of cohabitation, the disappearance of courtship, and the exacting standards of educated women are leading them to stay single longer–and to find the search for a mate even harder when the time is right. From the frontlines of college, where dating is dead, to the trenches of corporate solitude, Whitehead reports on a wholesale shift that has stacked the marriage deck against the best and brightest women. The thirty-something, perplexed single woman is today’s new cultural icon. Why There Are No Good Men Left is the first book to take a serious approach to analyzing where she came from and to ask how she can realize her dreams of lasting love.

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead

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