The civic decline’s roots predate sixties upheavals and divorce revolution

Evidence

The roots of our lonely bowling probably date to the 1940s and 1950s, rather than to the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, but what force could have affected Americans who came of age after World War II so differently from their parents and even from their older brothers and sisters? … Family instability, for example, seems to have an ironclad alibi for what we have now identified as the critical period, for the generational decline in civic engagement began with the children of the maritally stable 1940s and 1950s. … Similarly, working mothers are exonerated by this respecification of our problem, for the plunge in civicness among children of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s happened while mom was still at home. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 919

Categorization

• QUESTION: If family instability and working mothers are exonerated by timing, what factor hitting post-1950 cohorts hardest is left standing? Putnam points to wartime solidarity, but the argument could use further scrutiny.
• XREF: connects to: Attention frackers capitalized on pre-existing civic decline rather than creating it — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 296; Civic organizations across America faded dramatically in the late twentieth century. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 22

Broader Connections

• Attention frackers capitalized on pre-existing civic decline rather than creating it #corroborates (0.85) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 296