In the spirit of the early settlers and pioneers, Americans claim mobility as their birthright. The original colonies were not long established before expansion began for more farming land. The frontier was the next piece of unexplored land to the west, and successive generations of Americans worked their way across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. After the Civil War, many freed slaves migrate…
Despite lower birth rates and women delaying childbirth, increased longevity has resulted in people from four or five generations being alive at the same time. A number of researchers addressed issues that resulted from multiple generations coexisting in society, the workplace, and the same family. Books such as Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069, the 1991 work by Wi…
As America's mobile society became more racially and ethnically diverse, dating, cohabiting, and marrying a person of another race or ethnic background has become more accepted, at least among the baby boomers and succeeding generations. In 1980, 651,000 couples, 1.3% of all married couples, were identified as interracial. By 2000 interracial couples accounted for 2.6% of married couples. B…
In the 1990s unmarried, opposite-sex couples cracked the door to gaining employer sponsored dependent benefits for live-in partners. Same-sex partners soon pursued the same benefits. In August 2000 the "Big Three" domestic automakers from Detroit—Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler—added full health-care benefits for the domestic partners of their 500,000 U.S. emp…
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 2001, 72.3 million persons used a computer at work, and two out of every five employed persons was connected to the Internet or used e-mail on the job. More women (59.6%) used a computer at work than men (47.9%), and 41.2% of women used the Internet in the workplace compared to 36% of men. Table 6.8 illustrates typical computer functions used by peop…
In addition to the community disconnect brought about by mobility, Robert D. Putnam noted a disconnect among family members in his 2000 book Bowling Alone. Putnam attributed the problem to the availability of more individualized entertainment media. Three or four generations earlier the whole family, and sometimes the neighbors as well, gathered around the radio to hear about world events or laugh…
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