Constance Ahrons

Constance Ruth Ahrons was born on April 16, 1937, in Brooklyn, New York to immigrants Jacob and Estelle Ahrons. She attended Upsala College but dropped out when she married lawyer Jac Weiseman and had a baby. After reading The Feminine Mystique, she returned to Upsala and graduated in 1964. In 1967, she received her master's degree in social work from the University of Wisconsin. In 1967, she married therapist Morton Perlmutter.

Ahrons received her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1973. She took a professorship in sociology at the University of Southern California in 1984. In 1996 she was the director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Training Program at USC. She taught there until 2001.{{cite news |last1=Seelye |first1=Katherine Q. |title=Constance Ahrons, Advocate of "Good Divorce" Dies at 84 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/us/constance-ahrons-dead.html |access-date=8 December 2021 |work=New York Times}} She is known for her research in marriage and divorce which cumulated in the book The Good Divorce. In 1977 she began researching divorce which is then used in the book to champion collaborative divorce at a time when divorce was stigmatizing and coined the term "binuclear." Conservative critics saw her work as contributing to the decline of the nuclear family.

Ahrons ended her life through physician-assisted suicide on November 29, 2021, after being diagnosed with lymphoma.

• Radcliffe Institute Fellow, 2000-2001 {{cite web|title=Constance Ahrons|url=https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/people/constance-ahrons|url-status=live|access-date=8 December 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120619133612/http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu:80/people/constance-ahrons |archive-date=2012-06-19 }}
• Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Literary Association for the book The Good Divorce (HarperCollins, 1994), 1995 {{cite web|title=Constance Ahrons|url=https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1003032|url-status=live|access-date=8 December 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110526111020/https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1003032 |archive-date=2011-05-26 }}

• The Good Divorce: Keeping your family together when your marriage comes apart (HarperCollins, 1994). {{ISBN|0060169737}}
• Divorced Families: a multidisciplinary developmental view. with Roy H. Rodgers. 1st ed. New York : W.W. Norton, c1987. {{ISBN|0393700305}}
• "We're still family": What grown children have to say about their parents' divorce. 1st ed. New York : HarperCollins, c2004. {{ISBN|0060193050}}

• "Family ties after divorce: Long‐term implications for children." Family process 46, no. 1 (2007): 53–65.
• "The continuing coparental relationship between divorced spouses." American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 51, no. 3 (1981): 415.
• "The binuclear family." Alternative lifestyles 2, no. 4 (1979): 499–515.
• with Richard B. Miller. "The effect of the postdivorce relationship on paternal involvement: A longitudinal analysis." American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 63, no. 3 (1993): 441–450.
• "Divorce: A crisis of family transition and change." Family Relations (1980): 533–540.

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• [http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n86145597/ Ahrons, Constance R. [WorldCat Identities] ]

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Category:1937 births

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Category:20th-century American psychologists

Category:American women psychologists

Category:Deaths by euthanasia

Category:Divorce in the United States

Category:American women non-fiction writers

Category:Social scientists from Brooklyn

Category:Suicides in the United States

Category:University of Southern California faculty

Category:University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Social Work alumni

Category:Upsala College alumni

Category:Writers from Brooklyn