Observations

Recently I was working on a data conversion, porting dependents and beneficiaries from an outside source into a Benefits system.  About a decade ago I think I was working on a similar conversion for a different company, and seem to recall I posted back then about my observations on how that conversion awakened me to the surprising degree to which the nuclear family has been destroyed.

Things have changed in a decade.  Not that the nuclear family has returned, if anything there are even fewer intact families than even back then.

What's changed is that the family itself, whether nuclear or mixed, is fading away.  This conversion shows fewer children than I've ever seen.  And fewer married adults than ever before.

Families with 2 or more children are extremely rare.  When there are children, they're more likely to belong to a single parent, who is overwhelmingly the mother.  Young adult employees simply aren't getting married in the first place.

All these trends are demoralizing, because without the nuclear family society falls apart.  Come to think of it, isn't that exactly what's happening right now? 

Perhaps we need to stop railing against dysfunction in Washington and start paying more attention to the dysfunction in our own families.  Unfortunately, I fear it's already too late.

Update:
Working on an entirely different conversion for a different company from California, I have more observations.  It seems that California is the modern version of an American state of immigrants.  Just scanning surnames, I found none that were European until I got to the Professional and Management positions.

It makes me wonder, where has California's working class gone?  They all seem to have been replaced with immigrants.  Obviously I can't detect whether these are first, second, or third generation immigrants who mostly came from Mexico and Asia, but why is it that there are virtually zero European names among the front-line workers roster? 

Did they move out of California?  Are they living on unemployment going into their fifth year?  Are they on welfare?  Do they just prefer to work elsewhere?  The pay rates on the front line aren't terrific, but they're not terrible either. 

I'm seeing it outside of California, but never to this extent.