Usually Valentine's Day comes and goes with just a day or two of news media attention to courtship and marriage. Not this February. New Yorkers are debating whether to join the other 49 states in legalizing no-fault divorce - even while conservative pro-marriage groups elsewhere plead with their legislatures to repeal it. Meanwhile, Congress has just approved financing for new marriage education programs. And state courts in New Jersey and Washington are expected to rule soon on same-sex marriage.
Everyone agrees that marriage isn't what it used to be, and everyone is quite right. But most of what "everyone knows" about what matrimony used to be and just how it has changed is wrong. How much do you really know about marriage? Find out by answering the true or false questions. (PDF)
Stephanie Coontz, the director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, is the author of "Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage."