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Written by Knight Ridder
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Tuesday, 18 April 2006 |
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Growing up in Miami, Barbara Pruitt remembers her parents popping in at friends' houses and staying for a couple of hours. These impromptu visits were threaded into the fabric of the family's social life.
Almost four decades later, Pruitt doesn't know many people who still pay old-fashioned visits. "We've bought into the idea that we're all stressed out and we're really busy, so we don't have time to visit with each other," says the Coral Gables, Fla., mother of two grown children. "You don't pop in on people anymore."
Pruitt's assessment is very much on the mark, according to a recent study by an economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York. Visits to friends have been declining for the past 30 years, and visits to relatives for the past 20. It's not a huge decline — an estimated 10 percent drop — but it's enough to raise eyebrows.
In the 1970s, for instance, the typical American visited friends 95 times a year. By 2000 that was down to 85 visits, with much of the decline coming after 1986.
"It's been slow, but it's there," says economist Henry Saffer. "It's noticeable when you compare it to a past generation."
Saffer tracked social interaction between 1972 and 2002 using data from the General Social Survey. (The GSS, which began in 1972 and is funded by the National Science Foundation, contains demographic and attitudinal questions.) His conclusions come as no surprise to many who lament society's declining sociability index.
"Everything is planned now," says Toni Shreffler of Coral Springs, Fla. "You don't really get together informally because everybody is doing something, me included. But I miss just going by to hang out. Maybe we should all stop and smell the roses."
Shreffler grew up in Queens, N.Y. Weekends were spent visiting her large Italian family, many of whom lived nearby. Weekday afternoons she played with friends out in the streets while her parents enjoyed neighbors' company. "Now I don't see my mother and brothers as much as I would like to," she says, with a sigh. "Sure, we still get together, but it's for an occasion _ someone's birthday or someone's graduating."
There are plenty of reasons why so few of us drop in on friends and relatives: We're working more hours, we live farther away from friends and, quite simply, we have a lot more options for entertainment than our parents did.
"There are cultural factors that have affected the way we socialize," explains Ann Brittain, an anthropologist at the University of Miami. "We don't live in the same kind of world as past generations and our expectations have changed."
Consider time. Most of us live hurried, harried lives. We clock long hours at the office and spend precious time commuting. That inevitably eats into our social life.
Manny Rodriguez, a 43-year-old attorney, knows this all too well. He lives in Miami Beach but works at a securities fraud firm in Boca Raton, Fla. A 10-hour workday is not unusual, nor is a one-hour commute. If he goes in on a Saturday, which he often does, that leaves only Sunday to run errands, spend time with his girlfriend and visit with family and friends.
When he does visit, he makes sure to schedule it with friends and family by calling ahead of time. "There's really no dropping by," he says. "It's not a casual kind of thing anymore."
His social time is further complicated because his friends live in Kendall, Fla., about 45 minutes away, and his parents live in Weston, Fla., about an hour away. "If I want to see anyone, it's a half day at least," he explains. "When Saturdays or Sundays roll around, I'm so exhausted that all I want to do is get my chores done."
Rodriguez illustrates another potential bar to sociability in the car culture of South Florida: distance. If it's a 45-minute ride to see a friend, chances are you'll not rush out to deal with weekend traffic on the only day you want to decompress. Or as he puts it: "The distance inhibits you, and so does the traffic. Miami's gotten to a point that there's always traffic no matter where or when you go, and who wants to deal with that?"
But it isn't just demands on our time that affect our social habits. In fact, some experts believe we have as much free time as past generations. How we use it, however, has changed dramatically. Think computers. Think television. Think Internet.
"It's true we work longer hours than in any other developed country, but we also sit at home and watch TV or play in front of the computer," Brittain says. "It's comfortable and it doesn't require us to get dressed. We choose to do other things with our free time. We have more options."
Long before cable and the Web became pervasive fixtures in our homes, observers had already noted shifts in our social patterns. Saffer's data, for instance, reveals that education and income have a negative impact on the number of times we visit others, particularly neighborhood friends. This doesn't necessarily mean we're less social, though.
Educated, well-to-do friends may meet at a restaurant or at some other event, Saffer adds. They may mix business with pleasure, or pencil in a meeting during lunch.
Marriage and children change our habits, too. Visits to friends go down but visits to grandparents increase when we start a family.
But alas, not all is lost. Technology may have cut into face-to-face meetings, but everyone says cellphones and e-mail communication have allowed them to resurrect friendships that might otherwise have fallen by the wayside.
"I don't like the phone because it lends itself to an artificial conversation," says Rodriguez, who phones his parents and sister daily. "But at least it keeps us in touch."
In South Florida's immigrant communities, visits still comprise an important part of people's social lives. Xiomara Irias, a Honduran who cleans houses for a living, stops by her sisters' homes at least twice a week. She also looks in on friends on the way home from work.
"We don't do anything special," she says in Spanish, "but we talk and find out how everyone is doing and how our day went. We provide each other with support."
Others find inventive ways to make time for friends and family. Sarah Aguila, a Kendall, Fla., hairdresser, meets her buddies once a month to scrapbook, and lately she's made an effort to stop by for coffee at another friend's and to hang out with a neighbor.
"If you don't make it a point to see each other, you end up not ever visiting," Aguila admits. "I feel guilty sometimes when I don't because that's not how I want to live my life. Friends and family are important."
Barbara Pruitt agrees. She tries to visit her mother and two of her brothers, all of whom live close by, on a regular basis. She also attends neighborhood cocktail parties.
"It's a chance for people in our community to get to know each other, and that doesn't happen as much anymore," she says. "We have to remind ourselves how nice it was after the hurricanes because we got to talk to our neighbors." | Only registered users can write comments.
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