Family ties

Vast changes in technology, health care and transportation during the past 100 years mean that today's family lives at a faster pace than its counterpart did in 1905.

A walk through the neighborhoods of Cape Girardeau in 2005 would show them to be very different places than they were 100 years ago, said Dr. Frank Nickell, director of the Center for Regional History at Southeast Missouri State University.

A century ago, families in Southeast Missouri lived in houses without satellite dishes, HDTV, computers, Internet access, refrigerators and microwaves. Today those things are commonplace.

In 1905, most families earned a living from farming, grew their own vegetables in garden plots and canned them. Mothers sent their children off to school each day and met them at the door when they arrived home. In the evening, the family gathered for a meal in the dining room, then perhaps visited with neighbors.

Things stayed fairly stable until the late 1970s and 1980s, when more women began taking jobs outside the home, Nickell said. Children were involved in community sports teams and other after-school activities.

During the last few decades, the family has been through a transformation, Nickell said.

With many social factors as considerations, the number of children per family has dropped. Women are waiting to marry and start families after they've settled into a career. The average age today for first-time marriages for women is 25 and almost 27 for men, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That is an increase of four years for women and three and a half years for men compared to data from 1970.

Dr. Shelba Branscum, an associate professor at Southeast Missouri State University's department of human environmental studies, said it's apparent that the family began to change during the latter part of the 19th century.

She says the change can easily be linked to something as simple as raising the average life expectancy. In 1900, the average life expectancy was 47. Today it's 79.

"So we've almost doubled the life expectancy, and that little bit has been responsible for a whole lot more changes in society and what we do and the nature of families," she said.

Adults today are simply living longer, healthier lives, and that means their families are changing.

Nickell said the decline in the number of children couples have changed family structure drastically, as has the fact that many couples wait until they're older to have children.

"In 1905 if you would have walked through town, there would have been children everywhere. But the number of houses where there would have been grandparents would have been few," Nickell said.

Extended families simply didn't exist in the 1900s because people didn't live long enough to see their grandchildren and great-grandchildren born.

Today, it's much more common for four and five generations to co-exist, Branscum said.

And because adults are living longer, it's also going to be more common for them to have two or three careers, working well past age 65, commonly considered retirement age, Branscum said.

"People are retiring earlier, and at the university we're beginning to see those people who have retired and are going back to get a whole other degree," she said.

Nickell said the clash of family values came in American society when there were family structure changes like divorce, single mothers and remarriage. People over the age of 60 who grew up in a nuclear family have little understanding of the changing family context today, he said.

Yet the U.S. Census Bureau says the "nuclear family" is on the rebound. Statistics released in 2001 showed the proportion of children living with their biological parents grew from 51 percent in 1991 to 56 percent in 1996. With consideration given to stepparents and adoptive parents, more than 71 percent of American children lived in a two-parent household.

With these changes in the American family, Cape Girardeau also has seen changes in its population trends. More families today have fewer children than they did 100 years ago. So while it seems that the population isn't growing but the city is getting larger, it's likely due to the fact that most families have only one or two children, Nickell said.

"It's unusual that there are as many households but fewer people," he said.

ljohnston@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 126