Marriage and Belonging

Book review of: 'Public vows: A history of marriage and the nation', by Nancy F. Cott. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2000. Pp. v, 297. $27.95. Marriage is a quintessentially private institution. Cott's book also challenges the conventional understanding in the United States that family regulation is the exclusive province of state governments. For that reason, this volume adds an important dimension to legal historical work focused on the evolving norms and rules of family law in the states during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As she demonstrates, the national government was centrally involved in definition and regulation of the family, from a time long be­ fore the recent wave of "nationalization" or "federalization" of family law.