Hacker News Reader

Comment by chongli | Hacker News Reader

To me, the most obvious cause is women’s increased participation in the workforce. With women no longer free to volunteer and socialize throughout the day, a lot of these community organizations would see a decline in membership.

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.

View on HN

I'm sure there's a number of factors, but the problem I've witnessed the most is the general break up of the home. Most often I've seen caused by a father being absent. There has been a measurable decline in the lives of men in our society.

> To me, the most obvious cause is women’s increased participation in the workforce

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.

You did a heroic job then. I was raised by a single, working dad. I spent a lot of time at my grandparents place, uncles and aunts, and at a home day care run by a family friend.

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.

Interesting thought. Wouldn't you think though that women would have gained social capital by being in a workplace with other people rather than being at home alone?

My mother was active in my school, reading exercises, schooltrips and fairs and the like.

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' ).

One way to think of it is that the connections you make in the workplace run in one direction. The connections you make throughout the community run orthogonal to that. Combined, the two build up the social "fabric".

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com