Life+and+Timesg5

=Life and Times = The life and times of the American people have changed very much since the times of the John and Abigail Adams and the Founding Fathers. People have changed to keep up with then fast pase of Americans today. Many aspects of life have changed including family, work, religion, technology and communication.

Family
The average American family has changed quite a bit over the years. The size of families has gotten significantly smaller. Families used to be very large for kids to help out on the farm and around the house. Today kids go to school during the day. Kids usually start kindergarten around age six and go through 12th grade at age 18. Families now have 1 or 2 or maybe 3 kids. Divorce was almost unheard of in colonial times, but the divorce rates have sky rocketed to 40 to 50% of marriages. The role of women in the household has also changed. It used to be that women stayed at home and cooked and did laundry and took care of the kids. Now, women work along side men and make just about the same as men.

= Work =

The occupations of Americans have also changed very much. People used to work on the farm. They would grow crops and food for there families and make sure they had enough for themselves. America has become way more industrialized since then. People now work in jobs that did not even exist 200 years ago. It is also predicted that the top jobs 10 years from now don’t even exist right now. The role of women in the work force has changed. As I stated in the previous paragraph, women often work in the same jobs and the same companies as men. They also make close to the same amount of money as men. People work in more technology jobs like working with computers and jobs like that.

=Religion =  America was a country founded by people looking for religious freedom. Massachusetts was settled by Puritans. The Chesapeake Bay colony was settled by people that followed the Church of England. New Amsterdam was open to people of the Protestant faith and Pennsylvania was formed by William Penn and the Quakers. The First Amendment restricts the government from having a set religion. Now, 76% of Americans are Christian. Approximately 4% of people are non-Christian religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and others. About 15% say they don’t really have a religion.

Technology
Technology has increased a ton since Colonial times. Technology back then was reading glasses and lightning rods invented by Ben Franklin. Now we have technologies not even dreamed possible by the Founding Fathers. Computers are possibly one of the biggest pieces of technology. They help us find information, they help us type and create documents, and they help us communicate with people across the globe. Approximately 80% of Americans have access to computers. We also have other important technologies such as running water, television, electricity. We also have telephones that help us talk to people across the street, across town or around the world. Cell phones allow us to talk to people almost any where from almost anywhere.

Communication
 Communication in the colonies took a really long time. People had to carry messages by horseback to deliver them from town to town. This took days and weeks. When news reached one town it was often outdated. When John Adams was in France, he received news about things that happened months before in America. Now, we have telephones so we can talk to people over phone lines. Most homes have a line so they can talk to people all over the country and all over the world. We also have cellular phones. These phones send waves to towers and that is how we can talk to people. Cell phones can also do many other things. You can access the Internet from many phones. You can also send text messages, listen to music and take pictures. E-mail is another form of communication. You can send letters to anyone anywhere as long as they have an e-mail account on their computer.

