Modern American family: Strained and losing intimacy

AP

The intimate moments that once were the glue of American family life are disappearing amid job demands and nonstop activities. Scientists at UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families have spent the past four years observing 32 Los Angeles families in a study of how working America somehow gets it done. Day after day. "We've scheduled and outsourced a lot of our relationships," says the study's director, Elinor Ochs, a linguistic anthropologist. "There isn't much room for the flow of life, those little moments when things happen spontaneously.

For Ochs, the most worrisome trend is how indifferently people treat each other, especially when they reunite at day's end. In her view, the chilly exchanges repeated in so many of the study's households suggests something has gone awry. >> continue