From Stephanie Coontz:
- "A recent study of divorces that occurred after age 40 found that wives initiated two-thirds of them."
- "College educated women are more likely to marry and less likely to divorce than women with less education."
- "... more couples will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversaries now than at any time in the past."
- "In 1889, a girl could legally consent to sex at 10, 11 or 12 in half the states, and in Delaware the age of consent was 7."
- "Not until 1754 did England require issuance of a license for a marriage to be valid."
- "Early Christians thought marriage was inescapably tainted by the presence of sex. According to the medieval church, virgins ranked highest in godliness, widows were second and wives a distant third."
- "Aside from a huge spike in divorce immediately after World War II, divorce rates in the 1950s were higher than in any previous decade aside from the Depression, and almost one in three marriages formed in the 1950s eventually ended in divorce."
- "For most of history, the main impetus for marriage was getting in-laws and managing property, not love or sex."
- "The region with the highest divorce rate is the Bible Belt."
