But are the "amenities" of civilization, whatever those may be, worth the price in degradation? Our ancestors banded together to build walls to keep out marauders and Indian arrows. We moderns are less successful with sound energy.
The failure of home design to insulate the noisy activities of the children is especially distracting to parents who find it difficult to tune out their multiple sounds. The normal stresses of family life are aggravated by this noise. Husbands made irascible by their daily work, plus commuting noise, find it difficult to step into a noisy home with equanimity. Jansen's studies of German steel workers suggest that men who work in noisy jobs display a higher incidence of domestic difficulties than those who work in quieter jobs. From farmers riding noisy tractors to businessmen who end a day in a noisy office in a rattling bar car that far from tranquilizes the day's tensions, no one is immune.
Housewives are forced to bear the brunt of society's legalization of daytime open-air noises. A reader writes to Good Housekeeping Magazine: "I believe the constant din from our busy streets is literally making me ill. My husband says that's nonsense—that noise may make me deaf, but can't make me sick. Which of us is right?" The magazine answered: "You may well be."
If noise isn't making her sick, it may be undermining her marriage.
In contemporary homes, husband and wife are denied privacy for the intimacies of marriage. Dr. Haim G. Ginott, author of Between Parent and Child, describes our homes as "antisex." "Few modern houses or apartments," he writes, "have deliberate safeguards for sexual privacy...It is a sad comment on our civilization that the sounds of legitimate love must be so low."