Today’s Washington Post includes a article by Shankar Vedantam about the increasing social isolation of the average American.

A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.

One of the sociologists interviewed for the article attributed this isolation to commuting and television.

Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard and the author of “Bowling Alone,” a book about increasing social isolation in the United States, said the new study supports what he has been saying for years to skeptical audiences in the academy.

“For most of the 20th century, Americans were becoming more connected with family and friends, and there was more giving of blood and money, and all of those trend lines turn sharply in the middle ’60s and have gone in the other direction ever since,” he said.

Americans go on 60 percent fewer picnics today and families eat dinner together 40 percent less often compared with 1965, he said. They are less likely to meet at clubs or go bowling in groups. Putnam has estimated that every 10-minute increase in commutes makes it 10 percent less likely that people will establish and maintain close social ties.

Television is a big part of the problem, he contends. Whereas 5 percent of U.S. households in 1950 owned television sets, 95 percent did a decade later.

I’m sure commuting and television contribute to the problem of social isolation. But it seems to me that that a more fundamental problem is the parlous state of the American family. I’m sure the sociological data confirm the following three statements: (1) Fewer Americans marry now than in 1965. (2) Married couples have fewer children now than in 1965. And (3) more marriages end in divorce now than in 1965. In my opinion, nuclear and extended families provide are our first and most stable social networks. If they are declining in scope, decereasing in size, and ending in divorce, then so are our social networks.

I’m all for finding a job closer to home and turning off the TV. But if you really want to solve the problem of social isolation, it seems to me that you’ve got to address the problems of the American family first.