1. Joint Economic Committee, Manufacturing Productivity Growth, 1960-1977, Vol. 5, no. 7, p. 1. 2. Survey by Louis Harris and Associates, 1977. 3. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings (Washington, D.C.: GPO, January 1971, January 1980); Flaim, Paul and Howard Fullerton, "Labor Force Projections to 1990," Monthly Labor Review (December 1978). 4. Etzioni, Amitai, "Choose We Must," The Individual and the Future of Organizations, Vol. 9 (Spring 1980), Franklin Foundation Lecture Series. 5. The Economic Report of the President, January 1980 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1980), tables B-58-B-68. 6. Office of Management and Budget, Spending Trends in the Budget 1961-1985 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1980); U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Financial Analysis, Government as Percentage of Gross National Product, Selected Years 1929-1974 (Washington, D.C.: GPO). 7. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings (Washington, D.C.: GPO, November 1980). 8. The Economic Report of the President, January 1980 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1980), table B-22. 9. Survey by Yankelovich, Skelly & White, 1979. 10. Etzioni, supra n. 4. 11. Blumberg, Paul, Inequality in an Age of Decline (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). 12. Brenner, M. Harvey, Mental Illness and the Economy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 157-160. 13. O'Toole, James, "Work in an Era of Slow Economic Growth," Paper prepared for Third Biennial Woodlands Conference on Growth Policy (October 28-31, 1979). 14. The 1979 Employee Benefits Survey (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 1980). 15. Yankelovich, Daniel and Bernard Lefkowitz, "Public Debate on Growth: Preparing for Resolution," prepared for the Third Biennial Woodlands Conference on Growth Policy (October 28-31, 1979), pp. 52-59. 16. Ibid, pp. 52-53. 17. Terleckyj, Nestor and David Levy, Cost of Retirement and U.S. Economic Growth Projections 1980-2000, Vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: National Planning Association, October 1980). 18. "The Politics of Program Growth in Washington: A Revolution in the Federal Role," Intergovernmental Perspective, Vol. 5, no. 4 (Fall 1979). 19. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of 21. See Cruikshank, Nelson, "Disability Insurance in 1956," unpub- 22. Congressional Budget estimate, personal communication, 23. The Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 1981 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1980). References Chapter 5 Helping TO HELP THEMSELVES There isn't a human relation, whether of parent and child, husband and wife, worker and employer, that doesn't move in a strange situation. . . . There are no precedents to guide us, no wisdom that wasn't meant for a simpler age. We have changed our environment more quickly than we know how to change ourselves. S -Walter Lippmann everal months ago, the Gallup Organization con- about families in recent years gives the impression of a breakdown in marriage and family life, that study provides a useful corrective and a reminder that for millions of Americans, family life stands out as the greatest single source of satisfaction. A majority regard family life as the most important part of their lives. Nine out of 10 Americans say they are very satisfied or mostly satisfied with this aspect of their lives. As George Gallup comments in his introduction to the study: "Any belief that Americans do not place top priority on the family and family life is completely refuted by the results of this survey. The findings represent a ringing endorsement of the importance of the family in American life.' 991 But, at the same time, that study reflects a widespread feeling of apprehensiveness about what is happening to the family. Nearly half of the people questioned felt that family life has gotten worse over the past 15 years. There is particular concern about how to bring up children. Roughly a third of all mothers of young children, and a somewhat higher percentage of working mothers, worry about the job they are doing as parents.2 They are uncertain about how to bring up their children and unclear about a proper balance between firmness and permissiveness. They often feel they are neglecting their children, but they also sometimes resent the demands of childrearing. Considering how rapid and pervasive the changes in family life have been, a certain apprehensiveness about 71 what is happening to the American family is understandable. Attitudes and values about such matters as sexual expression and sex roles, family size, and the permanency of the marital bond have undergone a rapid transformationand those changes introduce new ambiguities and stresses in family life. Family-related topics that were rarely mentioned a generation ago—such as spouse-beating, child abuse and parent abuse, illegitimacy, abortion, and homosexuality-are now not only widely discussed but also prominent items on the public agenda. The timing of our lives has changed, allowing new stages in the life cycle that include a longer "single stage" for young adults and more years of active life after retirement. Over the past few decades, both the size and structure of American households have been radically altered; there has been rapid growth in the number of single-person households. Perhaps the most fundamental change results from the fact that so many American women now enter the labor force at a relatively early age and stay there throughout most of their lives-thus adding a new role to their traditional responsibilities as the primary caretakers of children as well as of elderly dependents. Far from indicating the "breakdown" or the "death" of the family, as some commentators have claimed, these changes indicate its strength and resilience in responding to a host of outside forces and influences, including changes in the economy and the labor force. The anxieties that many people feel about the job they are doing as parents, and their fears about the future of the family, reflect profound changes. Americans have not had an easy time comprehending those changes or responding to them, partly because of outmoded notions about what families are and how they provide care for children and the dependent elderly. Our first step toward specifying what needs to be done in this area is, therefore, to recognize how different American families and households are today from what they were a generation ago. A generation ago, in the 1950s, there appeared to be little reason for public concern about marriage and family. America at that time was a marriage-oriented society in which domesticity was emphasized and the migration to the suburbs-which promised a better environment for childrearing-accelerated. Young people got married at an earlier age than ever before. The decision of so many of those couples to have relatively large families led to a phenomenon that demographers called the "baby boom,” and that in turn led to a preoccupation with youth. The general impression was that most Americans lived in families that consisted of a working father and a mother Family Diversity in the 1980s 72 who stayed at home to devote her full attention to their children. Sex roles were not yet a matter of controversy, and a relatively low divorce rate seemed to confirm the impression that the existing institutional arrangements were still sound. That impression of the "typical" family was somewhat misleading, for actual families-particularly those that were not middle-class-were much more diverse. Still, that impression reflected the reality in several respects: It was a marriage-oriented society, in the sense that relatively few children were raised by only one adult. The full-time housewife and mother was the norm, at least in middleclass households. The orientation toward youth was a reflection of demographic reality. And among people of all ages, relatively few lived by themselves. There are four basic ways in which American families and households are different now from what they were in the 1950s: There has been a substantial rise in the number of The elderly comprise a growing percentage of the There has been a significant increase in the number There has been a dramatic rise in the percentage of We will examine the combined impact of those trends, for they create substantially new patterns of dependency and have a fundamental impact on the ability of women to carry out their traditional roles as primary caretakers of children and the dependent elderly. Several factors contribute to the rise of the singleperson household: More young adults are postponing marriage; a larger number of elderly widows and widowers live alone; and there has been a rapid increase in the number of people who are divorced but not remarried. As of March 1979, more than one out of every five American households consisted of just one person; there was a 59-percent increase in the number of single-person households between 1970 and 1979.3 Although many of these individuals still depend upon their families-who often live nearbyfor various forms of assistance and care, the rise of the single-person household means that people are looking for alternative sources for those services, such as food preparation and health care, that have traditionally been provided by families. The second of these trends-the aging of the American population-has a variety of implications for dependency patterns in the 1980s and beyond. Because of the decline in the fertility rate since the 1960s, combined with longer life |