The Changing American Family

32      An idea put forward by one businesswoman: a bank of word-processors and a nursery located in a suburban shopping center, so that busy housewives or hus­bands can put in an hour or two of paid work whenever it is convenient for them, and actually have their kids right there with them.

33           In short, anything that makes it easier to combine working and self-help, job-work with housework, easier to enter and leave the labor force, could smooth the transition for millions of people who are now caught, as it were, between the old, Second Wave, family arrangements and the fast-emerging Third Wave fam­ily system.

34   Rather than  wallowing^0 in nostalgia and praising  the  “good old days"— which were never as good as they may seem in retrospect:—we ought to be find­ing ways to make the new system more decent, responsible, morally satisfying, and humane. The first step is an understanding of the Third Wave.

Questions for Critical Thinking