Hardships of the

Great Depressi

on

Family Life in the 1930s

• Housing: more than one family living under one roof

• Marriage rates declined• Birthrate rates declined• Women struggle: soap,

bread, milk, etc.

“I figured every which way I could to make ends meet…but some of [those] ends just wouldn’t meet.”

Women in the Depression

“I’ve lived in cities for many months broke, without help, too timid to get in bread lines. I’ve known many women to live like this this until they simply faint on the street from privations, without saying a word to anyone. A woman will shut herself up in a room until it is taken away from her, and eat a cracker a day and be as quiet as a mouse so there are no social statistics concerning her. I don’t know why it is, but a woman will do this unless she has dependents, will go for weeks, verging on starvation, crawling in some hole, going through the streets ashamed.”

According to the statement above, how might women have responded to aid offers? Do you think that this response was different from that of men?

Children Suffer Hardships• Clinics and hospitals

reported a dramatic rise in malnutrition and diet-related diseases

• Due to falling tax revenues, the school year was shortened

• By 1933, 2,600 schools had shut down, leaving 300,000 students out of school

• These teens had to work in sweatshops

Oklahoma, 1936

Social and Psychological Effects

• People lost their will to survive• The suicide rate climbed 30%

– More than 20,000 Americans committed suicide in 1932

• More people were admitted to state mental hospitals

• People stopped going to the doctor, raising large families, going to college because they couldn’t afford it

• People developed habits of thriftiness that would see them through the dark days ahead