THE AFFECTIONAL AND COMPANIONSHIP FUNCTIONS GROW IN IMPORTANCE
The primary community, the small group of neighbors who knew OI another well and had much in common, has disappeared from till. lives of most’ Americans. Urbanization and specialization have destroyed it. In an increasingly heedless, impersonal, and ruthless world, the immediate family becomes the bulwark of emotional support. Only within the family can one hope to find enduring sympathy when troubled, or all jealous joy at one’s success. For both sexes and all races and at all ages, the single. the widowed, the divorced, and the separated show lower levels of happiness and higher death rates’ (or all the leading causes of death. Jl is literally true that the lonely die sooner The importance of the affectional and companionship functions are ‘further magnified by the expansion of the.posll’arenlal period.
