What was driving this decline in the 70s and 80s?
The millennials in my cohort, I imagine across the country, were raised by their schooling to be race and culture blind, in a well meaning attempt to encourage cohesiveness. This education did not erase the actual differences that drive different cultures apart, it only made most of us blind to them, which I think makes it more difficult to overcome subtle cultural barriers because it takes time for, especially "suburban white kids", to be aware of and mitigate the soft social friction that comes from cultural clash.
Even the simple decline in people who identify their neighbour as a friend can be explained by a lack of women living and socializing in the neighbourhood during the daytime. The increased use of paid childcare would similarly reduce the amount of children living and playing in the neighbourhood during the day.
Overall, this would contribute to the feeling that the suburbs are ghost towns during the day, and families arriving home from school/work would rush inside to eat dinner before chauffeuring the kids to all of their extracurriculars.
A lot of the mothers were. Actually we only had 6 teachers, for 6 classes/grades. No other personel ( one of the teachers was the 'head' ).
However, when you shift the majority of connections to those made through the workplace, you end up with just a bunch of connections running roughly parallel to each other. Not so much a fabric as a pile of string.
Probably many flaws to this analogy, but that is basically the idea of "third places". That you need somewhere where people interact based on something different from what they do for a living or who their direct family members are.
Maybe. But I'll counter with my own anecdote. I raised my daughter as a single working dad. No mother in the home at all. And yet, I got in plenty of volunteering and socializing anyway.
My dad spent most of his time on the road, as a travelling salesman. I did spend more time with him as life went on, however. My dad never volunteered though, and all of his social connections were former high school friends that he saw once or twice a year.
My dad did a heroic job, too. I’ll always be grateful for him raising me. I still wish I had had a mom at home though, like most of my friends did.
I’m not saying we need to move backwards. But we do need to find a new way forward. Perhaps the concept of full time work needs to change the most.
This. We're at a point where many jobs could be done in 15-20 hours a week, but we require everyone to punch in and out like it's a factory.
I live in flyover country, and work in higher education. I have exempt staff. Some weeks they have 2 hours worth of work, some weeks they have 70. But, because the cultural norm is that you can't be productive unless you're filling seats from 8-5, they waste 38 hours some weeks, and don't meet the requirements of the extra 30 others.
It's just outrageous, and I don't understand it. This is 2020. It's the real future now. Let's grow up as a society.
I'm questioning if we're paid according to how productive we are. The more steps there are between you and revenue the less likely this seems to be true.
Because you aren't really paid based on hard results in large companies, the 8 hours becomes more about posturing than actually delivering the results.
I'm open to other ideas. I desperately want to work 20 hours a week instead of 40. I'm trying to better understand why we're stuck at 40.
Public healthcare (as a baseline for any luxury private care to beat).
Public vacation / family leave (pooling the liability, seniority, and policies in to a common system).
In this way the funding for these benefits becomes taxes and their distribution disconnected from the employment at any particular business, as well as from the business paying any particular employee.
I think others would echo that sentiment.
I'm not affiliated but I'd love to see more postings here. https://30hourjobs.com/