[daniel1212]

Excerpts of very lengthy (close to 5,600 words, plus graphs) article. It mentions college educated as being more social, but if so (not where I have lived) that is partly due to having greater access to walkable "third places" and better neighborhoods. 

And (of course), the whole article utterly neglects the absence of children as a catalyst for social interaction. Pets (which there are more of in the US than children) replace children as a catalyst for that.

 Excerpts of Gemini.ai summaries:

This report from the Survey Center on American Life finds that regular socializing between neighbors has fallen sharply, dropping from 59 percent in 2012 to just 40 percent in 2025, with young adults experiencing the steepest decline...

Interaction & Reliance: While weekly neighbor chats among seniors remain steady at 56%, regular conversations among young adults dropped from 51% in 2012 to 25% in 2025. Adults over 30 are also more comfortable sharing house keys (60% vs. 36%) and asking for physical help than younger peers.
 
Defining Neighborliness: 70% of young adults define a good neighbor as someone who minds their own business, compared to 57% of seniors, whereas 41% of seniors value proactive, unprompted assistance. 

Social & Civic Engagement: Weekly religious service attendees talk to neighbors more frequently (49% vs. 35%) and engage more often in shared social or civic activities than non-attendees.

Values: Frequent attendees place higher priority on unprompted help, living near extended family (57% vs. 41%), and sharing traditional values with neighbors (71% vs. 40%). 

Marriage & Ownership: Married individuals talk to neighbors more frequently than those never married (45% vs. 30%). While homeowners and renters chat at similar rates, homeowners report significantly higher trust (79% vs. 56%) and comfort sharing keys or pet-sitting, particularly those in detached single-family homes compared to apartment dwellers....

The report does not directly track or analyze how having children—or the absence of children—drives neighborly socializing, even though parenting is widely recognized by sociologists as one of the strongest natural bridges for neighborhood connection.

What the Report Misses: By focusing heavily on education, religion, and marital status, the authors overlook how kids naturally force adults out of their homes and into shared spaces. Front-yard play,..school bus stops, and neighborhood schools (which 62% of respondents live near) historically act as organic "social glue" for adults who might otherwise never speak...

Connection to the Age and Marriage Gaps: Because the survey omits parental status as a standalone breakdown, it likely misses a major piece of why young adults (down to 25% weekly interaction) and never-married adults (30% vs. 45% for married adults) have seen the steepest drops in neighborliness. Delayed marriage and declining birth rates mean far fewer households have children anchoring them to their immediate streets. 

frequent religious service attendees are significantly more likely to engage with neighbors, work together on community problems, and view proactive support as a core duty. 

As regards external sociological research on how parenthood and declining birth rates affect neighborhood cohesion,

parenthood acts as one of the most powerful catalysts for neighborhood interaction, while rising childlessness is actively reshaping local social capital. 

Sage Journals +1

1. Parenthood as a "Social Bridge"

• Increased Neighbor Contact. Longitudinal sociological studies (such as research by Rözer, Poortman, and Mollenhorst) confirm that becoming a parent leads to a measurable increase in contact with neighbors. Children act as social icebreakers, pulling adults into shared spaces like parks, sidewalks, and schools. 
  Sage Journals
• Intergenerational Closure. Sociologist James Coleman introduced the concept of "intergenerational closure" to describe how children connect adults who would otherwise remain strangers. When kids play together, parents and older neighbors get to know one another, creating informal networks of mutual supervision, trust, and reciprocity. 
  National Institutes of Health (NIH) | (.gov)
• Civic and Community Anchoring. Data compiled by the U.S. Joint Economic Committee shows that compared to non-parents, parents are significantly more likely to volunteer, participate in local organizations, and report lower levels of social isolation. 
  U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee (.gov)

2. How Declining Birth Rates Erode Neighborhood Cohesion

• The Rise of Childless Households. According to the Aspen Institute Economic Strategy Group, falling U.S. birth rates are driven primarily by a growing share of adults having zero children rather than families simply having fewer kids. Meanwhile, Joint Economic Committee estimates show that the share of prime parenting-age adults without children more than doubled from 14% in 1970 to 31% in 2021. 
  www.economicstrategygroup.org +1
• Loss of Shared "Third Places." As the under-five population shrinks—particularly in major urban centers, as documented by the Institute for Family Studies—neighborhoods lose primary schools, playgrounds, and youth leagues. Without these kid-centric institutions, adults lose the natural, recurring gathering points that foster casual community ties. 
  Institute for Family Studies
• Weakened Mutual Support Networks. Research on family social capital indicates that when fewer households on a block have children, neighborhoods experience lower levels of day-to-day mutual aid (like emergency childcare or borrowing supplies) and reduced informal social control. 
  Child and Family Blog +1

3. Important Nuances in the Research

• Family Structure and Resources Matter. Studies using data from the National Survey of Children's Health note that neighborhood cohesion among parents is not uniform. Two-parent households and families with higher incomes report substantially stronger neighborhood ties than single-parent or lower-income families, who often face time constraints or safety concerns that limit outdoor socializing.

[MMusson]

From 1900 to 1965 Americans were more and more sociable. That began declining in 1966 and by 1980 we saw the first fruits.

Bowling leagues and PTA membership crashed, and church membership began to stall. It’s gotten worse ever since.

Main street churches are closing. Political Party membership is declining. Marriage and family creation is declining.

[Alberta's Child]

I didn’t see mention there of transient living situations as a factor. It used to be far more common for families to settle down in one place and live there until they sold the home as grandparents.

[Adder]

engaging with the people who live around you even if they do not request it. Get off my lawn!

[vivenne]

I live in a city with townhouses in my neighborhood. Years ago the neighbors were friendly and tried to help and get along with others. Those people died of old age, moved to places like assisted living as they got older and the hood changed to the Milkenisls and Gen Z. These generations have no concept of neighborliness. They have no concept of having to interact with her human race. They do not care about knowing anyone even if their house is attached to houses on either side of them. They are rude and incredibly selfish. The few Boomers left who were healthy physically moved because they could not stand these young people.
Without communities, our society will soon die. Frightening to watch.

[maddog55]

I retired and built a home in a rural remote area to get away from neighbors. I’ve got friends in neighborhoods that are large homes, every other one is identical with the next home less that 20’ away. No thank you. No cul-de-sac parties for me, no HOA BS, no interaction with assholes etc.

I can sit on my deck and watch deer, bear, bobcats, racoons etc and they are far more enjoyable then people. They don’t talk just glance over.

No HOA BS, can you keep it down, what are BBQ’ing (if allowed), your dog kept me up all night, did you hear about so & so..... Not the least bit interested.

[ansel12]

Being from Houston I can mention the most important factor of destroying cities and communities in the South for better or for worse, it was instant and forced black integration, that was followed quickly by the arrival of mass immigration as Hispanics arrived by the millions.

It used to be somewhat common for Americans to walk into each other’s homes, some people would knock and then walk inside giving a yell for the neighbor, keys left in the cars overnight, windows left open all day in an empty house with the gun racks showing through the living room window, bicycles left out in the yard, car windows left open while at the mall or anywhere else with the car doors unlocked and windows down, that world ended suddenly and was replaced with burglar bars, big fences, dobermans, locked gates, bicycle locks and chains, and double bolt door locks, never leaving the car unlocked with windows up, even in the driveway, little kids carrying a house key around their neck since the house was always locked.

[V_TWIN]

One of the reasons I see is immigrants moving into neighborhoods and refusing to asimiate.

Example: 2 doors down from me the home has had two different owners in the past 3 years, both Vietnamese.

They stick to themselves and have no desire to communicate with anyone on the street I know of.

I walk my dog past their house every morning and in the year or so they’ve been there I have barely gotten an acknowledgement out of either the man or woman.

The group that was in there before that were even worse, playing loud music until late in the night and didn’t make any effort to get to know anyone.

A story too long to tell here but I suspected illegal activity and possibly housing illegal aliens by the first group so I reported it to ICE. Inside of two months they sold the house and moved.

[alternatives?]

Bonhoeffer explanation of stupidity identifies part of the reason. The gap between left and right has gotten wider is another. Throw in diversity and you have three.

[ronniesgal]

meh. I think i’m a good neighbor. I keep to myself, wave hello, my dog does not keep people up, we mow our lawn.
I don’t socialize- I never have, even as a young mom I’ve kept to myself. I always keep people at arms length- I don’t want to know your business, and you don’t need to know mine.
I don’t think that makes me a bad person.

[yesthatjallen]

Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

Bowling Alone

[ChessExpert]

At least some of this is about politics. Today it’s much easier for me to have a sense of community with fellow conservatives.

I remember visiting liberal family members decades ago. They were in urban settings, first Chicago, then Portland, OR. “Community” was a buzzword and nothing was more important than “a sense of community.” Question at your peril. It’s like they got their marching orders from Obama.

One sister participated in “a block party.” She was among the hosts. People came in, drank, snacked, conversed and left to go to another house.

One conversation was decidedly liberal, and I decided to throw in a conservative remark. People remained politely neutral (back then). There was a man seated on a couch facing away. When I was done speaking, he stood up and walked out of the house. Apparently. one conservative remark was one too many for him. I was amazed. I wonder if he was the commissar.

I was with another liberal(ish) family group a few days after Charly Kirk was assassinated. They went on and on about Gabby Giffords as a way to avoid talking about Charlie Kirk. Again, I was flabbergasted.

I live in a condo now. During Covid, an unvaccinated person was supposed to announce their status before entering a room in the clubhouse. I just never went.

The next time we have a meeting I might enter and loudly announce “Unvaccinated person entering the room.” I expect most people will be confused as Covid is so 5 minutes ago.

[Varda]

Interesting post.
IMO poor upbringing produced these results. When I studied abnormal upbringing as a young college student, there were multiple case studies about what happened to orphans after WW2. Reports were that babies stopped crying when no one responded, they stopped smiling at strangers and they where socially limited as they aged. It was clear, institutionalizing infants damaged them.
Fast forward to the 1980’s, I walked into a day care to hand the owner something. I looked at the babies and there it was. The hollow look of the WW2 babies. Those babies would be millennial now.
In the 1990’s there was a mega study about the results of different approaches to child raising. They were ranked from best outcome to worst outcome.
Not surprising to me, mother at home was second to none. Second was a surprise, religious orphanages. Brothers and nuns ran places like Boystown and other homes for kids and were quite successful. After that was grandmother care, nannies and daycare. Those last three are how Gen X were raised.
Rather than tear them down I'll celebrate what they've had to overcome.
There has been a recent rise in mother care and with it a better future country if we can survive long enough.

[dfwgator]

People move around so much now, that they feel where they live is just “temporary”, they don’t feel connected to the places they live.

It used to be people spent their whole lives living in one state. Now they change jobs every few years.

[Dr. Sivana]

I grew up in a neighborhood where the neighboring families often had children my age. A healthy mix of ethnicities that we didn’t even think about: Irish, German, Italian, Portuguese, French-Jewish, African. There were a couple of cranky “Get off my lawn” old types. Most of the older people were customers on my paper route, and I got to know them that way. There was a rusty sign on the side street of our house that read “Watch Out for Children”, where we often played ball or “keep away”. Wiffleball was in my back yard because it was flat and rectangular with a fence. We made up rules. Under the fence was a double. Over was a home run. The big tree doubled as first base, and if the fielder threw the ball and hit the tree before the batter got there he was out. A foul on the roof that was caught rolling off as an out (often the pitcher, next to the roof would e guided by the fielder who could see the ball (left ... left ... ok!). You could throw the ball at the runner between bases for the out. We made up all these rules with no adult intervention. It was great.

The next door neighbor was a middle-aged working class widow with a shack-up. I didn’t figure it out. He was just called “Choo-Choo”, but I was advised not to interact, and they didn’t get the local paper.

I bought cigarettes for one of my newspaper customers (another working class older widow who worked at the steel plant that was on the main drag, which had been a mixture of businesses, factories, older homes, full-serve gas stations and car dealerships.), getting a nice tip. I walked the town or road my bike.

There was one mean divorced lady with a little mean dog. As paper boy, I had access to nice dogs and numerous cats. The Italians across the street let us sled on their hill, unless they were in a mood.

I didn’t realize that this setup was the last of its kind in a Connecticut that would never exist again. In the future, there were few kids in the neighborhood, and we had to turn to our church and drive for the friends for our children.

[T.B. Yoits]

All by design.

The government planners laid out new neighborhoods by income, not by social connections, and intentionally broke up social enclaves as a means of controlling the population. They learned well from their Soviet and British Socialist counterparts in Europe.

Federal housing programs started during the first Depression and ramped up during the 1960s.

Entire neighborhoods were destroyed to build government housing projects. It's about control, not the residents.

Lawsuits against male social organizations killed them most of them quickly.

Forced bussing and school integration killed off many social neighborhoods.

Soft-on-crime policies killed off cultural neighborhoods.

The government-aided illegal alien immigration and Section 8 Housing vouchers killed off the last remnants of many cultural neighborhoods.

So-called "anti-discrimination" laws requiring "low income" housing, with the threat of compliance by a hammer of Federal lawsuits, ensure that no new neighborhoods would be built along cultural lines.

Unless you're wealthy, then no restrictions apply; Martha's Vineyard, Bel Air, the Hamptons, etc. And of course, if you make your neighborhood so ethnic, no one else will want to move there anyway.

Led Zeppelin captured the destruction of neighborhoods in the inner fold of the fourth Led Zeppelin album, with the picture on the wall of the home being torn down to make way for housing projects (which the British call "estates").

[Opinionated Blowhard]

This is one of the sadder trend that has taken place over the course of my life. I was born in 1967. As a kid, we had neighborhood block parties. We went out trick-or-treating. We had church events. My parents were constantly at neighbors’ houses for parties, dinners and card gams and the neighbors were at our house for parties and dinners (lots of drinking but that is a different issue). Over time, that slowly went away. Last Halloween, we had about three groups of kids come to the door. We still make an effort to host parties and go to dinner with friends but unless we host the party, its mostly going out to a restaurant with friends. And the younger generations don’t seem to host parties at their homes or have any social event that doesn’t involve simply showing up at a restaurant or paid event. I moan about it from time to time and everyone just rolls their eyes or laughs when I do.

[Scrambler Bob]

Looking at all the comments, I identify with many.

Visit a neighbor, unannounced. If he is busy, help with whatever he is doing, for example.

And I agree that internet and social media is substituting for face-face communication. Some younger folks can’t have a conversation.

Now, on a side note, the internet, texting, social media, etc. elicits quick responses. People get frustrated with just a little impatience.

And Jesus encourages us to be patient. Wait on God. Stop forcing the issue personally.

My conclusion is that the modern communication system is taking people away from developing that patience, and away from knowing God and His methods.

[Ronaldus Magnus]

Interesting article, thank you for posting. I didn’t see what I consider the biggest factor in this change. The total hours people work has increased dramatically since women entered the workforce, people are working longer hours and need to work more jobs to get by, and work commutes are longer.

[Ronaldus Magnus]

Interesting article, thank you for posting. I didn’t see what I consider the biggest factor in this change. The total hours people work has increased dramatically since women entered the workforce, people are working longer hours and need to work more jobs to get by, and work commutes are longer.