Michael Rosenfeld's The Age of Independence is perhaps the most intellectually provocative study of family change in the United States to be published in the past decade. Weaving together strands of literature from social history, demography, and cultural movements, it proposes an explanation of how and why Americans shifted their marriage practices to embrace greater tolerance for alternative unions, including cohabitation and interracial and same-sex partnerships...The Age of Independence, slim in pages but not in content, is engaging reading and should be especially attractive to those of us who are always on the lookout for worthy books for graduate seminars on the family...Rosenfeld's book provides a rich lode of ideas for empirical examination. Whether he is right or wrong in all of the particulars, he has written a valuable book.
Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr. Population and Development Review 20071201 The book offers an original argument about the sources of family change, and about the past and future of the American family. Family Forum 20070901 Rosenfeld's book is meticulously researched, carefully argued, and beautifully written, and it deserves a place on the must-read list of social demographers as well as other social scientists working in the areas of family, race and sexuality...This book has so much going for it that I believe it is destined to rank as a classic in the fields of family demography and sociology of the family.
Kathleen E. Hull International Journal of Sociology of the Family 20080501