ABSTRACT
Historians are wont to say that significant social changes occurred in whatever period they happen to be discussing. That claim may be truer for some periods than for others. One of those periods is the Jazz Age. No decade in twentieth-century American history, other than perhaps the 1960s, saw greater change in virtually every aspect of family, community, and society—from where people lived and how they earned their livelihoods to courting and dating habits, marriage and child rearing, and leisure time activities. These changes were demographically broad based, affecting every major cohort of the population: whites and blacks, immigrants and the native born, young and old, men and women.
