Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"[A] fascinating, thorough, and highly readable study of divorce in the history of 20th Century U.S. feminism...
Divorce, American Style provides a rigorously-documented narrative of a uniquely American feminism at a pivotal point in history. It provides important new leverage for understanding how both feminism and social welfare policy got where they are today by focusing on the key intersections between them, as drawn through the legislative and policy debates Kahn explores in correspondence, drafts, committee reports, feminist meeting minutes, news reports, statistical data, and politicians’ pronouncements." * Society for U.S. intellectual History *
Table of ContentsContents
Introduction. Divorce, 1970s Style
Part I. The Divorce Revolution
Chapter 1. From Alimony Drones to Breeding Cows: Women and the Divorce Law Revolution
Chapter 2. From the Altar to the Grave: The Beginnings of the Feminist Divorce Reform Movement
Part II. A Galaxy of Laws
Chapter 3. Partners or Parasites? Class, Race, and Credit Rights
Chapter 4. The Privileges of Marriage: Divorced Women and Selective Entitlements to HealthCare
Chapter 5. Marriage as Work, Marriage as Partnership: Divorced Women's Fight for Social Security
Chapter 6. "How You Lose Money by Being a Woman": Divorce in an Age of Proliferating Retirement Savings Options
Chapter 7. An Expensive Endurance Test: Compromising Toward Success in the 1980s
Part III. Stable Divorce Rates and Unstable Politics
Chapter 8. "Responsibility, Equity; Not Cruelty": Changing Venues for Feminist Divorce Reformers
Chapter 9. "Saving the Next Generation": The Changing Politics of Divorce
Conclusion. No-Fault Divorce in a Morality-Based Welfare System
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
