The Simple Life: Goodbye to having it all.

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The pop-culture machine is rushing to catch up with the times. Gilded '80s shows such as Dynasty and Falcon Crest are gone, swept away by a wave of proudly downscale fare, including Roseanne, The Simpsons and Married . . . with Children. Campy hobnobber Robin Leach of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous has been replaced in the hearts of viewers by chatty Jeff Smith of The Frugal Gourmet and nonaerobic carpenter Norm Abram of The New Yankee Workshop. Love stories, melodramas and family films have taken over Hollywood. Home Alone, Ghost and Pretty Woman, for example, collectively reaped more than $500 million in total revenues last year. Get set for an onslaught of films about people waking up and smelling the coffee.

For many Americans the most startling realization is how much they have given up for their careers. In her new book Down-Shifting, author Amy Saltzman maintains that baby boomers have grown increasingly skeptical about the payoff for devoting so much time to the fast track. As their huge generation crowds toward the top of the corporate pyramid, many are getting stalled. At the same time, companies have been slashing the ranks of middle managers.

For Karen Glance, 36, it came down to all those little packets of shampoo. She remembers the morning she opened her bathroom cabinet in St. Paul and counted 150 that had followed her home from hotels in dozens of cities. Says the former apparel executive: "I was a workaholic, a crazy, crazy woman. I was on a plane four times a week. I just wanted to get to the top. All of a sudden, I realized that I was reaching that goal but I wasn't happy. A year would go by and I wouldn't know what had happened."

A few months ago, Glance was shopping in a neighborhood grocery store when she learned that its owner was about to retire. Something fell into place. She looked around the old-fashioned shop, where clerks still climb ladders to retrieve goods from the upper shelves, and she decided on the spot to buy the place. The new proprietor of the Crocus Hill market may never come anywhere near to matching her old $100,000-plus yearly income, but she couldn't care less. Says Glance: "It really comes down to saying, 'Slow down. The value of life might not be in making money.' "

Mostly, though, what people want now is more time around home and hearth. Most parents of small children work outside the home. More than 7 million Americans hold down two or even three jobs to make ends meet. "Nobody seems to have any damn time anymore," says Winby, the Hewlett-Packard executive. "People can't manage their home, work and personal life." As a result, many working mothers (and some fathers) are giving up full-time careers to devote more time to homelife. "There is a sense of an enormous trade-off between a fast-track career and family well-being," says economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, author of the forthcoming When the Bough Breaks: The Cost of Neglecting Our Children. "Women can see the damage all around them and are making different choices than they did a few years ago."

Some couples are even thinking twice about divorce in light of the problems it can pose for children, the financial damage it does to families and other consequences. The U.S. divorce rate, which reached a high of 5.3 per 1,000 people in 1979, is now 4.7 and may still be falling.

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