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Splinted Nuclear Families

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hard all their lives to support their families, endured great hardship when they were too old to work or faced loss of income for other reasons (Walton, 2010). To make it through lean times, workers often had to rely on their savings, or help from friends and relatives (Walton, 2010). Although no longer protected by the former economic safeguard of the multigenerational family, American workers had yet to find a new way to endure “severe losses in income” caused by recessions, layoffs, and failed businesses. In the new industrial-age America, characterized by splintered nuclear families, a get-rich-quick mentality prevailed and no one stayed behind to care for the old, the sick, or the poor (Atkinson, 2006). Not all government entities turned …show more content…

When states and communities ran out of money, they turned to the federal government to shoulder the financial and administrative burden, but instead providing them with funding, Hoover suggested that the problem could be overcome through individual volunteerism and charity (Walton, 2010). “Few families were spared” when local programs failed. Lacking federal support, they “were left with no one to turn to” (Atkinson, 2006). Men, women, and children from rural and urban settings were fighting for their existence and “many Americans lost their life savings, their homes, and their land” (Atkinson, 2006). Nationwide, quiet entreaties for change based on economic and ethical grounds emerged, underscoring the need for a permanent federal plan to help American workers cope with severe losses in income “brought on by illness, unemployment, disability, birth of a child and heavy burdens of supporting a large family, and old age.” (Atkinson, 2006). Tired of waiting for the market to self-heal, civic, religious, and state leaders throughout the country took matters into their own hands and proposed “radical” relief programs that rapidly gained popularity with millions of Americans and challenged Hoover’s efficacy (Xxxxx, 2006). When Frances Perkins began her job as Secretary of Labor in 1933, she, “found on [her] desk over 2,000 plans [from workers] for curing the Depression” (Perkins,

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