Kids walked to school or the bus stop and used their bikes to get to friends' houses. Afternoons were spent at the baseball diamond or roaming around the neighborhood. Mom tended her garden daily, exerted serious muscle when hanging laundry on the line, and walked to the corner store for milk when she needed it. On the weekends, Dad spent most of Saturday on lawn work. Now, most families have at least two cars.
Many families hire people to mow the lawn, clear the snow and clean the house.
Kids spend free time on the Internet or playing video games. People don't even chop lettuce and vegetables for salad anymore. Now we're in the middle of the great human physical experiment. We've launched into a lifestyle with no exercise, and we're just waiting to see what happens. The irony of this situation, according to one researcher, is that we are paying others to do this manual labor, and then paying again for the privilege of exercising on machines at a gym.