I'm not anti immigration in general, and in fact my whole family came here from eastern Europe decades ago - though I grew up American-ish, I've always felt different from the members of my communities, partly because culture in my home was not quite American. This is one of the costs of a liberal immigration policy - families from different cultures are less likely to interact closely and form civic societies. The barrier comes in the form of subtle but different social customs, and different values - there's a reason large groups of immigrants tend to self segregate, and it isn't just the convenience of language. That doesn't mean people won't be kind and neighborly, but it limits the depth of the average inter-familial relationship.

The millennials in my cohort, I imagine across the country, were raised by their schooling to be race and culture blind, in a well meaning attempt to encourage cohesiveness. This education did not erase the actual differences that drive different cultures apart, it only made most of us blind to them, which I think makes it more difficult to overcome subtle cultural barriers because it takes time for, especially "suburban white kids", to be aware of and mitigate the soft social friction that comes from cultural clash.

To me, the most obvious cause is women’s increased participation in the workforce. With women no longer free to volunteer and socialize throughout the day, a lot of these community organizations would see a decline in membership.

Even the simple decline in people who identify their neighbour as a friend can be explained by a lack of women living and socializing in the neighbourhood during the daytime. The increased use of paid childcare would similarly reduce the amount of children living and playing in the neighbourhood during the day.

Overall, this would contribute to the feeling that the suburbs are ghost towns during the day, and families arriving home from school/work would rush inside to eat dinner before chauffeuring the kids to all of their extracurriculars.

I'm sure there's a number of factors, but the problem I've witnessed the most is the general break up of the home. Most often I've seen caused by a father being absent. There has been a measurable decline in the lives of men in our society.

> To me, the most obvious cause is women’s increased participation in the workforce

Maybe. But I'll counter with my own anecdote. I raised my daughter as a single working dad. No mother in the home at all. And yet, I got in plenty of volunteering and socializing anyway.

You did a heroic job then. I was raised by a single, working dad. I spent a lot of time at my grandparents place, uncles and aunts, and at a home day care run by a family friend.

My dad spent most of his time on the road, as a travelling salesman. I did spend more time with him as life went on, however. My dad never volunteered though, and all of his social connections were former high school friends that he saw once or twice a year.

My dad did a heroic job, too. I’ll always be grateful for him raising me. I still wish I had had a mom at home though, like most of my friends did.

Interesting thought. Wouldn't you think though that women would have gained social capital by being in a workplace with other people rather than being at home alone?

One way to think of it is that the connections you make in the workplace run in one direction. The connections you make throughout the community run orthogonal to that. Combined, the two build up the social "fabric".

However, when you shift the majority of connections to those made through the workplace, you end up with just a bunch of connections running roughly parallel to each other. Not so much a fabric as a pile of string.

Probably many flaws to this analogy, but that is basically the idea of "third places". That you need somewhere where people interact based on something different from what they do for a living or who their direct family members are.

My mother was active in my school, reading exercises, schooltrips and fairs and the like.

A lot of the mothers were. Actually we only had 6 teachers, for 6 classes/grades. No other personel ( one of the teachers was the 'head' ).

One thing that comes to mind is that women’s lives have changed so much from 1960s - 1990’s. Women having less children, getting married later and interring the workforce.

I’m not saying we need to move backwards. But we do need to find a new way forward. Perhaps the concept of full time work needs to change the most.

>Perhaps the concept of full time work needs to change the most.

This. We're at a point where many jobs could be done in 15-20 hours a week, but we require everyone to punch in and out like it's a factory.

I live in flyover country, and work in higher education. I have exempt staff. Some weeks they have 2 hours worth of work, some weeks they have 70. But, because the cultural norm is that you can't be productive unless you're filling seats from 8-5, they waste 38 hours some weeks, and don't meet the requirements of the extra 30 others.

It's just outrageous, and I don't understand it. This is 2020. It's the real future now. Let's grow up as a society.

The problem is everytime someone seems to discuss shorter work hours or work weeks, they also ship in a pay cut as well. If I can he equally as productive in 4 hours as I am in 8 hours as a salaried employee, why should I be paid less?

I agree with you, you shouldn't be paid less. The problem is in larger companies rarely are you paid according to the value you create. Mostly likely as a developer your "cost" is how much the hiring manager would need to pay for the next best equivalent worker.

I'm questioning if we're paid according to how productive we are. The more steps there are between you and revenue the less likely this seems to be true.

Because you aren't really paid based on hard results in large companies, the 8 hours becomes more about posturing than actually delivering the results.

I'm open to other ideas. I desperately want to work 20 hours a week instead of 40. I'm trying to better understand why we're stuck at 40.

One very great place to start fixing this would be all "benefits" being public.

Public healthcare (as a baseline for any luxury private care to beat).

Public vacation / family leave (pooling the liability, seniority, and policies in to a common system).

In this way the funding for these benefits becomes taxes and their distribution disconnected from the employment at any particular business, as well as from the business paying any particular employee.

Remote work forces companies to adapt to results-oriented work

On the other hand, you could argue that remote work makes you work more.

That's fustrating to hear about. What can we do to fix it?

I'm not affiliated but I'd love to see more postings here. https://30hourjobs.com/

I'm unsure if this would lead to an increase in socialization and not just a lot of people in their own houses playing video games and watching Netflix.

I think it would lead to an increase in socialization. I am unable to join service leagues or social organizations because the 4-5 hours between work and sleep at night are precious to me and my family. If I did not have that thought hanging over my head, I would volunteer more or just go do social things more in a formal setting.

I think others would echo that sentiment.

I think this is really up to the individual, when I "work from home", I frequently go to artsy cafes around my city to be surrounded with people who are doing different things to get some human interaction (and maybe feel a bit younger than I do sitting behind a desk).

Being in the proximity of other people is really no substitute for real human interaction.

I live in a pretty small city, going basically anywhere is a guarantee for running into friends. It’s not the same when I’m in other places