The American Family from
1900 to 1950
Does this sound like the state of
America at the end of the 20th century?
Actually, according to family historian
Stephanie Coontz, this describes the end
of the 1800s. She explains that
times were actually worse at the
beginning of the 1900s than they
are today. Most laborers worked
10 hours a day, 6 days a week,
leaving little time for family life.
Children, too, often worked full-
time in mines, mills, and
sweatshops.Women did not have
the right to vote. Their wages
were so low that some women
turned to prostitution. Race riots
were more frequent and more
deadly at the beginning of the
20th century than in more recent times.
A white child had a 1 in 3 chance of
losing a sibling before the age of 15, and a
black child had a 50–50 chance of losing
a sibling (Coontz, 1999). Only 6% of
children graduated from high school at
the beginning of the 20th century,
compared to 69% in 2000 (Green &
Winters, 2002). Child abuse and neglect
were widespread, and men who left their
families rarely paid child support.
Sidebar 3.1 examines other startling facts
about this time in the history of the
American family.
As noted in the previous chapter,the
breakdown of the family was such a crisis
in the early part of the century that John
Watson,one of the most famous child
psychiatrists of the 20th century,predicted
marriage would be dead by 1977 (Watson,
1928).As late as 1977,Amatai EtzioniThe Changing Face of theAmerican Family: Modern HistoryAt the turn of the century, wages were low and most laborers worked
10 hour days, 6 days a week, leaving little time for family life.ImagefromBigstockPhoto.com/ScottThere’s an epidemic of sexually-
transmitted diseases among men.
Manystreetsinurbanneighborhoods
are littered with cocaine vials.Youths
call heroin“happy dust.”Even in
small towns,people have easy access
to addictive drugs,and drug abuse by
middle-classwivesisskyrocketing.
Policesee16-year-oldkillers,12-year-
oldprostitutes,and gang members as
young as 11 (Coontz,1999,p.79).