March 19, 2018
What does it mean that the U.S. is experiencing a Suburban Slide? Alieza Durana wrote for the Better Life Lab blog on Slate about the changing meaning of the suburbs in the American imagination, and the ins and outs of work-life conflict that arises as poverty and economic insecurity increasingly live in the suburbs.
In Suburban Slide, the Better Life Lab explores the changing face of poverty in the United States and how the symbol of American prosperity became the new place of poverty. In a six-part series, we explore what this means for Americans’ work-life conflicts and American identity in general.
In Betty Friedan’s seminal 1963 book, The Feminine Mystique, she describes the experience of the languishing American housewife. By staying at home to raise families and keep house in the suburbs, women had set aside their own happiness and potential for life in both the public and private spheres, and despair was the result. She called this the problem that had no name. Though she garnered legitimate criticism for its limited and privileged framing of women and their status, the book galvanized a generation. Decades after women entered the workforce en masse, in part due to Friedan’s inspiration, a new problem has emerged. Inconsistent and insufficient income, housing, transportation, and social supports have created immense and widespread work-life conflict, often among women who entered the workforce not for feminist self-actualization but to feed their families. And no where do we see this work-life conflict more intensely than in the places Friedan once described as serenely boring: the suburbs.