By the end of World War I, the skyrocketing divorce rate in the
United States had generated a deep-seated anxiety about marriage.
This fear drove middle-class couples to seek advice, both
professional and popular, in order to strengthen their
relationships. In
Making Marriage Work, historian Kristin
Celello offers an insightful and wide-ranging account of marriage
and divorce in America in the twentieth century, focusing on the
development of the idea of marriage as "work." Throughout, Celello
illuminates the interaction of marriage and divorce over the
century and reveals how the idea that marriage requires work became
part of Americans' collective consciousness.