Untying the Knot
A new book untangles historical confusion and contemporary anxieties about marriage June 2010
Modern-day North American society assumes that, until recently, marriage has been a constant, unwavering tradition. Some believe that skyrocketing divorce rates, common-law and single-parent families, and gay marriage, among a litany of changes, have altered us irrevocably by damaging the tradition of marriage: they wax nostalgic over the vanished virtues of a supposedly time-honoured family…