B-Rant

- submitted by G. Clark on 11/07/2008

  

Suburbanism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice in a Liberal City?

Five years ago, when my husband and I announced we were taking our 18-month-old and leaving Manhattan for a quiet, woodsy southern New England town, our neighbors and friends were shocked. Many expressed concerns like, "But the suburbs are so homogeneous! Your kids won't know anyone of color!" (Subtext: when they become skinhead racist Klan members you can blame living in Connecticut.)

And then there was, "Oh...you're gonna get a case of affluenza. You know, when the community is so nice that the kids suffer." And, "There's no real community in the suburbs. It's all nameless and disconnected." And, "It's nice...but it's not the real world up there, you know."

I never saw this onslaught coming. I thought that friends would be happy for us for finding another place we felt we could call home. That they would be glad that we would be a lot closer to my husband's new job and his 75-minute-each-way commute would end.

But no. We got smacked with a feeling that we were selling out and making a huge mistake that would render us just pale suburban ghosts of our former selves.

I thought about these things for years, because in my heart I'm a city girl. I loved living in New York. I like communal living; I loved having neighbors mere feet away across the hall.

I liked having a whole neighborhood (a whole world, really) right outside my door. I don't like to drive or do housework or yardwork. So all of these comments horrified me in their lack of support, but they also struck a nerve.

I am now five years into my suburban experiment and while I have not fully drunk the Kool-Aid, I am -- finally -- totally over feeling apologetic about living in the ‘burbs. I've been here long enough that I think I can accurately compare the two situations and honestly? All of that anti-suburban talk is just elitism, if you ask me. Or flat-out prejudice. It might be the last prejudice that is okay among left-leaning city-dwellers.

So, to my well-meaning critics I say, in some ways I think my son is getting a better sense of the Real World living up here.

In New York City, yes, the folks you see on the street are all colors and religions and from all over the world. There is probably no chance that my kid will ever be in a taxi in our current hometown and have to pull over so the driver can break his Ramadan fast (this has happened to me more than once in New York.)

But in other ways our urban community was utterly lacking diversity. Our neighbors had all kinds of jobs. All kinds of jobs within the fields of law, medicine, finance, journalism, and design, that is. We lived among doctors, lawyers, professors, filmmakers, designers, writers.

Here, we have friends who do all of those jobs plus friends who are plumbers, electricians, landscapers, carpenters, firefighters, waiters, and stay-at-home parents (a group that I was a very lonely member of in the city.)

So we traded ethnic diversity for what I think is a better sense of socioeconomic and professional diversity. Let's face it, the Real World isn't made up of hedge fund managers and law school professors.

It's also not made up solely of liberal Democrats. In New York we used to joke, "Who'd you vote for? Ha ha ha." Like we had to ask.

Up here, the cars at school drop-off have stickers supporting everyone, from Obama and McCain (and just "Sarah") to Voldemort.

I had a really interesting discussion at peewee soccer with a bunch of moms about why we did or didn't care for Sarah Palin, and there were a number of women on both sides. I like that. I like that there is an opportunity for disagreement and discussion. I like that I can't take for granted that everyone's ideas are basically the same as mine.

The "affluenza" comment is one that has played over and over in my head. I would hate to think that I moved up here to make a nice life for my son and inadvertently screwed him up.

To be sure, the kids here have a nice setup -- there are gorgeous playgrounds in town, with nary a broken Popov bottle or stray used syringe to worry about. There are hiking trails and ball fields and a lake beach. The public schools are safe and good.

But my friends who've raised kids in the city? Well, they might live four people and a labrador in 900 square feet during the week, but on Friday night they head up to the mountains or out to the beach. To their "weekend house." So the kids can "get outside." How is that not a symptom of affluenza? Last I checked, the Real World also does not own more than one home and move to East Hampton or Litchfield in July.

And the "community" thing? In the city I went to the Korean market on the corner so much that the owners knew me and if I showed up without cash or a little short, they'd tell me, "That's okay. We know you'll be back," and float me the money.

That was the sort of community closeness I worried about losing when we moved. I shouldn't have. Here, we are on a first-name basis with the owner of the local ice cream shop. She gives my son free cones for good grades.

The green grocer puts aside banana bread for me when it's warm. The guy who works at the gas station asks after my arthritis. The pharmacist brings antibiotics to my car so I don't have to get out and go inside with a sick kid. My neighbor plows my driveway on snowy days if he is awake before we are. Sorry, but this doesn't feel disconnected and nameless to me.

It shocks some of my urban friends to know that we have suburban friends who are multiracial families, same-sex couples (with and without kids), and single parents.

Our friends here are Catholic, Jewish, Methodist, evangelical, Episcopalian, Hindu, Buddhist, and all over the atheist/agnostic spectrum. Some of them are stinking rich and some struggle to get by. I know that some suburban enclaves are lily-white and WASPy, but not all of them are.

It's not paradise, don't get me wrong. It's not as racially diverse as a big city. It can feel kind of small-town (not in a good way) sometimes. It lacks a funkyness and an edge that I really groove on.

I do worry that my son has only a vague notion of what "homeless" means and I get frustrated when he whines if he has to walk more than 20 yards.

And the day will likely come when we'll live in some large city again, because I do like living in a city.

But my new home is not the soulless suburban hell that my urban critics would have you believe. It's just another corner of the Real World.

Geri Clark is a science and medical writer and former producer at ABC News/Discovery Channel.  She is also the author of two upcoming nonfiction books for children. ...read more rants