Let’s examine the choices we make in our private lives and also the ones we make collectively as citizens and voters. Through these choices – especially those concerning family, work, health, and education — we are constantly defining and redefining American society, that is, we are determining “how we live.”
The raw statistics of recent decades suggest that Americans have been caught up in a whirlpool of social change. For example:
In 1950 only 12 percent of married women with children under six years of age were wage earners; by 1980 the proportion had soared to 45 percent.
In 1960 5 percent of all births were to unmarried women, but in 1980 the proportion was 18 percent.
In 1970 only 11 percent of women ages 25-29 had never been married, but in 1980 this was true of 21 percent.
The proportion of adults living alone almost tripled, from 4 percent to I1 percent, between 1950 and 1980.
Among men sixty-five and over, the proportion in the labor force fell by more than half, from 46 percent to 19 percent, between 1950 and 1980.