COMMENTS FROM THE EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Paul D. Robbins
October 1, 1981
During the forties and early fifties I was raised in a minister's home. For several days I've pondered over the differences and similarities between our home and the homes of Peru, Indiana. Frankly, I think we were like most Christian families of our community: it would have made little difference to our internal workings or outward relationships if my father had been an auto mechanic instead of a pastor. Dad earned a living, Mom ran the house, and we children went to school, did our household chores, and helped clean the church on Saturdays. Life moved at a steady pace and the church rolled on. My parents' lives were wrapped up in serving God and providing advantages for us that they themselves had been denied.
This is why Daniel Yankelovich's book New Rules: Searching for Self-fulfillment in a World Turned Upside Down caught my eye. After pointing out that 70 percent of all 1950 households consisted of a working father, a stay-at-home mother, and one or more children, he startled me by saying that this norm has collapsed in a single generation. The "typical American family" now accounts for only 15 percent of all households. There are fewer typical families than there are households consisting of a single person-the fastest-growing category of households reported by the U.S. Census. "In thirty years we have moved from a society dominated by the husband-provider nuclear family to a variegated society with many types of households, none of which predominates."
What kind of people have we become? "All national surveys show a preoccupation with self," says Yankelovich. "Seven out of ten Americans (72 percent) spend a great deal of time thinking about themselves and their inner lives-this in a nation once notorious for its impatience ...
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