Best Books For Those Thinking About Marriage

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7 books

This list won’t help you decide whether to get married, but it will explain why so many people tie the knot. It’ll also help explain why the government, as well as countless other social, political and religious institutions, believe you should (or should not) get married. As a family law scholar, I am fascinated by the institution of marriage and the outsized role it has played in American society. I am interested in how the law shapes people’s marital decisions, how it can make potential partners more or less attractive, and also why the law has anything to do with marriage at all. We say marriage is supposed to be about love, but these books will show you that love is only half the story.

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Get Married

Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization

Brad Wilcox, 2024

This book argues that getting more people to marry will literally save civilization. I disagree with this extreme view, however, the author’s argument for the importance of marriage and his advice on the best ways to achieve a happy marriage are interesting and, in some instances, quite surprising. Although the book is clearly shaped by the author’s religious and conservative perspective, it still provides nuanced and useful insight into the contemporary debates on the continuing importance and relevance of marriage. Moreover, while the book’s suggestions for happier and stronger marriages may not work for everyone, they may be a good place to start.

The Other Significant Others

Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center

Rhaina Cohen, 2024

Marriage is not for everyone yet, as this book notes, not marrying does not necessarily mean not being partnered. Cohen’s book is a moving portrait of people who have chosen to center their lives around friendship rather than a romantic partnership. These non-romantic relationships can be just as important, just as fulfilling, and just as in need of recognition and protection as romantic relationships. Moreover, Cohn argues that one of the best ways to strengthen romantic relationships is to stop asking so much of these relationships. Instead, she suggests that increasing the importance of friendships may be the solution to building strong romantic relationships. She also seeks to end the stigma surrounding friendship noting that for many people, a friendship will be the most important relationship of their lives. According to Cohen, we should embrace that fact and celebrate it rather than viewing it as a failure.

The Two-Parent Privilege

How the decline in marriage has increased inequality and lowered social mobility, and what we can do about it

Melissa S. Kearney, 2023

In this controversial book, economist Melissa Kearney argues that the real difference between kids who succeeded and those who did not is not parental wealth or race or education but rather whether a child’s parents are married. Kearney attributes the decline in child well-being to the substantial decline in marriage over the past fifty years. According to Kearney, there is no substitute for the benefits of being raised by two parents, and the best way to achieve a stable two-parent family remains marriage. Kearney’s argument is economic rather than moral. She argues that households that include two married parents provide children with unparalleled economic advantages and this economic advantage then further compounds the effects of America’s already substantial economic inequality. According to Kearney, it may be unfair, but marriage still remains the best way to combat economic inequality in America.

Marriage, a History

How Love Conquered Marriage

Stephanie Coontz, 2006

You'll Do

A History of Marrying for Reasons Other Than Love

Marcia A. Zug, 2024

You’ll Do is my book, and it was inspired by many of the issues addressed in the other books on this list. Specifically, You’ll Do examines why people get married and how the rights and benefits attached to marriage influence this choice. As the title states, You’ll Do is a history of marrying for reasons other than love. It details the surprising, and even shocking, number of rights and benefits that have been used to incentivize people to marry. It shows how men and women have used marriage specifically to obtain these benefits and how it could also be used to effectively overcome racial, gender, and economic inequality. As a result, the book demonstrates that instrumental marriage could be highly beneficial for individual men and women but that limiting such opportunities to the married ultimately furthered such inequality. As You’ll Do argues, marriage incentives work, but this may be a problem rather than a solution

Wedlocked

The Perils of Marriage Equality

Katherine Franke, 2015

In Wedlocked, Franke questions the benefits of marriage. Specifically, she wonders whether the fight for marriage equality was a missed opportunity to stop prioritizing marriage and consider other relationship forms. By comparing the fight for same-sex marriage with the experience of newly emancipated men and women in the 19th century, Franke shows that marriage can impart important status benefits, and that is particularly true for historically low-status groups. At the same time, she notes that such status benefits are only available to those who conform to a certain conception of marriage and that marriage may actually be a worse family structure than what such groups used prior to marriage equality. Consequently, Franke argues that while the success of the marriage equality movement made marriage available to same-sex couples, the cost of that acceptance was discarding what had made same-sex families unique.

This American Ex-Wife

How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life

This American ex-wife is an autobiography of Liz Lenz’s horribly unhappy marriage and details what she describes as the “commonplace horror” of marriage. For Lenz, marriage is the worst thing that ever happened to her and, she suggests, to most women. American Ex Wife is a damning portrait of marriage and a useful counterbalance to books like Get Married, which present marriage as the solution to society’s ills. If marriage is so good, why was Lenz so miserable? Was it just her, or, as she suggests, is it something inherent in the institution of marriage? Marriage is not for everyone, but according to Lenz, it’s not for anyone. Agree or disagree, she makes an interesting argument.