How Did The Great Depression Affect Families

The Great Depression affected many people and families in the 1930s. They had to deal with many different challenges and hardships. These families had to face hunger, unemployment, and some even with being homeless. Some families crowded into a small apartment or house with other families. Others lost their homes and moved into a tent in a Hooverville. To help with fathers being laid off from work, mothers would sometimes go out and look for work. In other cases, teens would travel by freight train or hitchhiking to find a job that they could send money home with. More often the husband would leave his family in search of a new job. This left family relationships torn up. The family would miss their father, but if he were to return without a job things would sometimes get worse. The fathers would feel like failures and would mope around the house. Thus leading to irritated wives which lead to more fights between them. Some fathers

Many consider the Great Depression a tragedy but few actually know the ways in which it actually affected the people who lived through it. One way it affected the people of the time is the hopelessness it brought. During the early 1920's many men returned from the "Great War" jaded and angry. The same effect was seen in most people during the depression. It was this hopelessness that spawned modernist literature and thought. Another way the depression affected the everyday man was the loss of homes. Many homes were foreclosed during the depression and this left many homeless. In fact the "Okies" were people left homeless after farm foreclosures. The last way the depression affected people was the broken homes it caused. The number of father's leaving their families rose dramatically during

with no roof over their heads. This along with everything else, took a tremendous, emotional toll on society. Some even saw no other options than ending their lives. The Great Depression had an emotion drenching and ground breaking effect on the generation to go through it.

The Great Depression was a very influential era in American history, affecting many future generations. One of the most prevalent impacts it had on society was the extreme poverty that swept across the nation, affecting both people in cities and in the country. The main cause for this poverty was the mass loss of jobs among the middle class. Millions lost their jobs and consequently their homes. Families lived out of tents and cars in shanty towns or Hoovervilles. In these camps, many people didn’t have their basic human needs met, children and adults alike starved. They lived in clothes that were caked in dirt and tattered, too small for growing children and too cold for the frail elderly. Government relief programs attempted to help but offered little support to the now impoverished families of the millions that lost everything.

Families found themselves setting up in a way unfamiliar before. The Depression bombarded families who lost everything in their saving accounts and were suddenly facing poverty. Around nine million families lost everything they had in the banks creating two kinds of poor; the poor who were already suffering to make a living and new the “new poor ,” middle class Americans losing their homes left and right. Men and women’s roles

Women, during the Great Depression, had the toughest time out of all of the people who lived through the Great Depression for many reasons. Women often had to sell themselves on the street to

The Great Depression transformed American society and the way people thought about themselves and their relationship to the country. During this horrendous time period, many people lost many important pieces in their lives like money and jobs. Millions of families lost their savings as many banks collapsed in the early 1930s. They were unable to make rent payments or mortgage and many were removed from their apartments. The Great Depression challenged American families in vital ways, placing great economic demands upon families and their members.

The Great Depression affected many lives of americans and many others outside of the United States. The Great Depression first affected the people who were in the city. Then the depression reached the outsides of the cities and then the rural parts of the country. The wheat prices drop extremely. Then because of the poor farm practices from the many different plows used the Dust Bowl started. The Dust Bowl made it harder for farmers to survive in the Great Depression.

“At one point in the Depression, the cupboard was literally bearing of money.” What effect did the Great Depression have on the people who lived through it? The jobs they had, how they had to use their money, and the help they had to get.

    The Great Depression significantly affected Americans lives, and even everyday activities. The unemployment rate reached an all time high for this time period. Instead of waking up to go to work, Americans were forced to search for jobs all day long because workplaces could not afford to to keep people employed.

It was also horrible to read about how widows or single women were treated. They had the worst conditions and no one cared to help them. People believed that it was their fault and they deserved to be where they were. Overall, it was awful how women were treated during the Great Depression, and because of the Cult of Domesticity, people saw no problem with

One of the reasons young kids had to get jobs is because they were young and small. Smaller children could do work in factories that adults couldn’t because they could fit in tight spaces. They could also be paid less because they were children. Common jobs among unmarried boy’s ages 18-25 was going and working for the CCC, the Civilian Conservation Corps where they made about $30 a month and $25 of that money was sent back to help their families. Some other jobs popular among boys were newspaper delivery, working in markets and stores, and factory jobs. During the great depression, employment rates went down but malnutrition rates went

The depression brought homelessness, and sadness, and hunger to a lot of families. During the great depression homelessness was a common impact on American lives. Many Americans lost their jobs and could no longer pay the necessary bills that they needed to pay. A lot of people lost their jobs, and were forced out of their homes.

“The Great Depression was the most severe, prolonged economic crisis in American History. It displaced thousands of families, created hardships for millions of people, shaped an entire generation, and reshaped the way Americans viewed the role of their government,” (Cravens). Although the Great Depression had devastating effects on the United States, its impacts on family life and structure were the most devastating. Children had to take on more responsibilities by attempting to find jobs in a market where there were a scarce amount of jobs even available for adults. These children suffered a lot from the depression since their parents didn’t have the money to take care of them, but more children started finishing high school and going to college to get better jobs. Mothers were greatly affected by the Great Depression as well, they had to start working to help take care of their families. Most of the jobs a woman could find were very difficult, low paying jobs with long hours. Women additionally started separating from their husbands and started having less children. Families had to make do by budgeting, changing their shopping habits, and finding alternate ways of bringing money home.

Family pressure during the great depression was unlike any the U.S. has ever seen. Everything about families changed in the 1930s. Couples during the depression delayed marriage, and at the same time the divorce rates dropped because people could not afford to pay for two households. Birthrates also dropped and for the first time in American history below the replacement level. Income was closed to none in all families; regular income had dropped by 35% just in the years Hoover was in office. Families had a lot of stress; some pulled together and made do with what they had others pushed away. People turned to who ever they had, family, friends, and after all else the government. Although there were rich people in the depression as well