Here’s an obituary from my suburb’s local newspaper: Peggy Schmertzler. I think that, in one life, it shows the fragmentation of family that has occurred in the U.S. due to a variety of technical and social forces.
The subject was born in 1931 and grew up in Baltimore. She moved to Boston to attend college and settled in a suburb with her lawyer-husband, thus severing her daily ties with her parents and any extended family in Baltimore.
Following a divorce lawsuit (the obit doesn’t say who sued whom, but statistically it is generally the woman who decides to sue (some Massachusetts data)), she moved to Cambridge, thus severing her daily ties with her husband and, presumably, former neighbors.
Her children then scattered to New Zealand, California, and a Boston suburb, thus severing their daily ties to each other and, for the non-Boston-area kids, eliminating the possibility of grandchildren having daily ties with this grandmother.
I’ve written before about how I think one reason that Mexicans might be happier than Americans, adjusted for income, is the central nature of Mexico. People either stay in their hometowns or move to Mexico City, but they don’t generally keep moving after that.
[Separately, the obituary shows how well-educated Americans are pulled into low-productivity-growth non-profit activities. Ms. Schmertzler “worked for the next 15 years in the nonprofit sector” and put 26 years of effort and time into “the Committee for the Equality of Women at Harvard.” (The GDP per capita of China grew from less than $2,000 per person to more than $8,000 per person during the same time period.)]
1. Prior to 1970 US was resource/industrial country and now it is Financial Engineering country. By that standard, everything but wall street is low productivity drab work not fit to be paid minimum wage.
2. Joint family, here you are really saying that two income household is needed to sustain the mythology where as women now have freedom and money because what they stayed home for work is no longer necessary or desired.
3. Non-profit is the most profitable otherwise rich people wouldn’t be setting up foundations and grants and other non-sense to perpetuate their greatness.
4. modernity where people loath to do manual labor then boast about yoga, gym, how much they walked today.
5. Oil is what freed women from being stuck at home. so logic would say take away the oil and you go back 100 years. There won’t be any divorce then.
6. crying about china with white man’s burden’s tears.
So, China’s GDP per capita grew by $6,000 over that period. US GDP per capita grew by $33,100. Yes, China’s percentage increase was larger. Once they start from an equivalent base, then a percentage growth comparison may be meaningful.
It would appear that part of your definition of “fragmentation” is “no longer within walking distance.” Perhaps that’s appropriate, but I’d sure like to see something to back it up. Arguably, even New Zealand is “closer” today than, say, California was in the mid-1850s (or even the early 1900s) – would you view that as a contributor to family fragmentation in that period?
There is only so much crap that you really need. Before 1980, it was the Chinese dream to own sanshengyixiang (三转一响), or “three rounds and one sound” — a wristwatch, bicycle, sewing machine and a radio. If the US had grown at the Chinese rate we would all be knee deep in junk so at some point people turn away from doing productive things and busy themselves interfering with other people’s lives instead, which is what most women would prefer to be doing anyway.
Now the world has really shrunk Even 30 years ago it cost 15 (less inflated) cents a minute to make a “long distance” call to a point 60 miles away and video calls were last seen at the ’64 World’s Fair where they joined flying cars as something off in the distant future that would never come. Now you can skype or facetime with video until you are blue in the face anywhere on earth at zero marginal cost.