Just as people are abandoning cocooning and making connections with the outside world, they are also taking a new approach to their own families. Or, rather, they are taking an old approach that was common in the 1950s but had disappeared by the 1970s.

Television shows like "Father Knows Best," "Ozzie and Harriet," "Leave It to Beaver," and "The Andy Griffith Show" embody the iconic visions of family life a growing number of Boomers and Gen Xers wish they could achieve.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" may explain this longing. The upper socio-economic half of the 35-65 age group has had most of its physical, safety, affiliation, and self-esteem needs met by the rising tide of the past several decades. Now those people are striving for the top level of the hierarchy of needs: self-actualization.

Let's consider the facts and implications behind this trend.

Events like the terrorist attacks, the collapse of the Internet Bubble, and frauds like those at Enron and WorldCom remind us that business success is fleeting. In the late 1980s and early '90s, the leading edge boomers started asking, "Isn't there more to life than a career?"

Not everybody found the same answers, but for most of us they came down to some variations on "God, family and community." Today, acting on the answers has become the quest of a generation. It's not that careers aren't important, it's that the other things are also important. Wealth is no longer an end, but a means to an end. We're increasingly interested in decisions that will matter in 50 to 100 years, not simply this business quarter.

This change of attitude is at the root of the transformation from self-centered cocooning to community-centered hiving. But, for marketers, there's more to it than that. Adults are now making their families their top priority, ahead of career success.

To get an idea of what we're talking about, consider the results of a poll by Family Circle magazine. It finds that "the fully engaged father" is more than a mythical creature. Ninety-five percent of the fathers polled said they know what foods their child likes; 87 percent know the name of the child's doctor; 82 percent know who the child's best friend is; 73 percent know their child's biggest fear; and 54 percent know the offspring's shoe and clothing sizes. Even though the average ...