However, if family life today seems unsettled, so, too, was family life in the past. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States had the highest divorce rate in the western world, and one child in ten lived in a single-parent home. Hundreds of thousands of children spent part of their childhood in orphanages, not because their parents were dead, but because their mother and father could not support them. Infant mortality, orphan hood, and early widowhood affected a distressingly high proportion of families. Between 35 and 40 percent of all children lost a parent or a sibling before they reached their twenties, manly due to illness or disease.
Americans are prone to glamorizing the past and obscuring historical fantasy and .
reality. This is especially true when Americans ponder our society's foundation .
institution, the family. Among the most potent myths that diffuse contemporary society .
are that divorce, domestic violence, and single parenthood are recent phenomena; that .
throughout American history, most families consisted of a wage earner-husband and a .
homemaker-wife and that in the past strong, stable families furnished effective care for .
the elderly and other dependents. Only careful historical analysis can correct such myths.
In few areas has susceptibility to myth making been more detrimental than with the .
family. Highly romanticized images of the past have contributed to unrealistic .
expectations about family life. A historical thinking has also led Americans to downplay .
the genuine improvements that have taken place in family well-being: especially the fact .
that smaller families mean that parents can devote more time and resources to each child. .
Even worse, a lack of historical perspective has encouraged scapegoating of families that .
deviate from the dominant norms; and it has blinded Americans to the social, economic, .
demographic, and ideological pressures that have contributed to familial change--and .
