ABSTRACT
America today has all the earmarks of an overly individualistic society, with failing families, rising crime, declining interpersonal and political trust, growing personal and corporate greed, deteriorating communities, and increasing confusion over moral issues. People should enact policies that make work more family-friendly, including parental leave, flexible hours, compressed work weeks, more part-time work, job sharing, and home-based employment opportunities. Childrearing has long been the family's main biosocial function or purpose. To fully understand what has happened to the institution of the family in the modern period, one must look at broader cultural change in the values and norms that influence everyday choices. It is useful to examine cultures by scrutinizing the tradeoffs they have made between individualism and collectivism—between emphasizing personal autonomy and self-fulfillment on the one hand, and social order and cultural harmony on the other. The reinvigoration of civil society in America depends in part on shifting away from the current preoccupation with individual rights.
