"the contours of American society — that emphasis on individualism, that spreading out with impunity over a vast, sometimes outsized landscape" I hate to be bo

"the contours of American society — that emphasis on individualism, that spreading out with impunity over a vast, sometimes outsized landscape" I hate to be boring enough to ask for citations, but this is a case where we really need them. It reads like something written by a non-American. In most of American history, people lived close to their families. Certainly in smaller towns, they did. Once there were big cities, it became more common for someone to move away from the family and go to one, but that certainly had nothing whatever to do with "spreading out with impunity over a vast, sometimes outsized landscape." People who "spread out" to the frontier nearly always brought a spouse with them, and often kids as well. Recently, there certainly has been an increase in one-person households: https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2019/comm/one-person-households.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2019/comm/one-... but even in 1969, it was only 16.9%. I would bet that in the time of The Searchers it was way, way less.