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Coontz received a BA degree in American History in 1966 from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a member of the campus political party SLATE and participated in the civil rights movement and the Free Speech Movement. After graduating in the history honors program, she went to the University of Washington on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. In 1970 she received an MA degree in European History from that institution, but then quit further graduate work to become a staff member, later a National Coordinator, of the National Peace Action coalition, which focused on building peaceful, legal demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. Before returning to full-time teaching in 1975, Coontz was also a leadership role in the Young Socialist Alliance, connected to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which then considered itself a Trotskyist organization. By the late 1970s, however, Coontz had parted company with the SWP.

In addition to her current teaching position at Evergreen, Coontz has also taught at Kobe University in Japan and the University of Hawaii at Hilo. She is a former Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She won the Washington Governor's Writers Award in 1989 for her book The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families. In 1995 she received the Dale Richmond Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics for her "outstanding contributions to the field of child development." She received the 2001-02 "Friend of the Family" award from the Illinois Council on Family Relations. In 2004, she received the first-ever "Visionary Leadership" Award from the Council on Contemporary Families.

Coontz conducts research on American families, the history of marriage, and changes in gender roles. In particular her book The Way We Never Were argues against several common myths about families of the past, including the idea that the 1950s family was traditional or the notion that families used to rely solely on their own resources. Her book, Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage, traces the history of marriage from Anthony and Cleopatra (not a love story, she argues) to debates over same-sex marriage. A forthcoming book about the wives and daughters of "The Greatest Generation" is titled A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s,

Coontz has appeared on national television and radio programs, including Oprah, the Today Show and dozens of NPR shows. In addition, her work has been featured in newspapers and magazines, as well as in many academic and professional journals. She has testified about her research before the House Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families in Washington, DC, and addressed audiences across America, Europe, and Japan.