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Family Life In The Midst Of The Great Depression

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Family Life in the Midst of the Great Depression

The Great Depression has greatly changed the way the world works as a whole, but how did it affect family life? Numerous families were broken apart during this time because of the lack of money and resources, making it very hard to live. During the Great Depression, families were mainly affected by changes in family roles, differences in food and play, and issues with marriages and abandonment.

From Bible times to the start of the Great Depression, men led the family by making money, while women kept the home tidy. This stereotype was greatly changed in 1929 when men lost their jobs and women stepped into a higher role, causing the number of married women to greatly increase. Women found …show more content…

Over 25,000 boys and girls left their families to jump onto trains or hitchhike a ride to towns far from home that had better opportunities to make money. The loyalty of the children was outstanding because of the way they came back to their family every time they left. Though children were limited to an eight-hour workday (because of child labor laws), they worked from home in the hours forbidden to them by selling junk or working odd jobs for their neighbors. While working, boys found jobs at bowling alleys, farms, or the Civilian Conservation Corps, while girls stayed around the home to cook, clean, and care for their family (“Encyclopedia of the Great Depression”). Though these times were tough, both women and children stepped up in gender roles to keep the American family alive, but still, families struggled to find food and …show more content…

This was called a “poor man’s divorce”. With the loss of fathers and husbands, wives fought to keep the family alive, but many perished because of lack of food and money. In families that were not broken by abandonment, birthrates were greatly lowered, because parents could not support their children, but rose again in the late 1930s (“Encyclopedia of the Great Depression”). Because of this, America’s population only increased by 7.3 percent (between 1930s and 1940s), the lowest rate of increase in at least ten years. Therefore, the Great Depression affected parents and marriages

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