Cloth: 978-0-226-67103-1 | Paper: 978-0-226-67104-8 | Electronic: 978-0-226-67105-5
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226671055.001.0001
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ABOUT THIS BOOK
The late twentieth century has seen a fantastic expansion of personal, sexual, and domestic liberties in the United States. In Not Just Roommates, Elizabeth H. Pleck explores the rise of cohabitation, and the changing social norms that have allowed cohabitation to become the chosen lifestyle of more than fifteen million Americans.
Despite this growing social acceptance, Pleck contends that when it comes to the law, cohabitors have been, and continue to be, treated as second-class citizens, subjected to discriminatory laws, limited privacy, a lack of political representation, and little hope for change. Because cohabitation is not a sexual identity, Pleck argues, cohabitors face the legal discrimination of a population with no group identity, no civil rights movement, no legal defense organizations, and, often, no consciousness of being discriminated against. Through in-depth research in written sources and interviews, Pleck shines a light on the emergence of cohabitation in American culture, its complex history, and its unpleasant realities in the present day.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Elizabeth Pleck is professor emerita of history and human development and family studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has edited nine books about the history of American families. Her most recent book is Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England.
REVIEWS
“Not Just Roommates transcends conventional accounts of the dramatic upsurge in cohabitation, demonstrating that it occurred in spite of—and not because of—changes in law and social policy. Pleck deftly chronicles the sociocultural and legal history of ‘living together,’ showing us how class and race are vital to the story and effectively arguing that cohabitors remain second-class citizens in a country that privileges marriage. This is an important scholarly contribution and a book that will transform how readers think about cohabitation and the changing American family.”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
One / Introduction
Two / Night Falls in Miami Beach
Three / Welfare Rights
Four / Coed Facing Expulsion, 1968
Five / From Sheboygan to Madison
Six / Alternative Lifestyle
Seven / Palimony
Eight / Mothers on Trial
Nine / Get Married or Move Out
Ten / Domestic Partnerships
Eleven / Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index