This. And also commutes were radically shorter than they are today, with more commuter services in many smaller cities than exist today.

We shifted from a sole-provider/homemaker model of couples to a dual-income-required model, at the same time our choices on car dependency and suburban sprawl came back to bite us in the ass. The working from home era was great for socializing because we could agree on small group nights if we were all feeling well, knowing we didn’t have huge commutes ahead of us after work and with the extra money in our pockets from lowered work costs; RTO mandates killed that again, as did the sudden jump in real estate costs, inflation, and stagnating wages in the face of AI investment.

That’s just the average, too. For edge cases like me in unorthodox households or living arrangements, it’s even harder.