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In those suburbs where families, income, education and interest are homogenized, suburbanites sometimes wonder whether their children are cocooned from the rest of the world. "A child out here sees virtually no sign of wealth and no sign of poverty," says Suburbanite Alan Rosenthal (Washington's Rock Creek Palisades). "It gives him a tendency to think that everyone else lives just the way he does." Suburbanite-Author Robert Paul ("Where Did You Go?" "Out." "What Did You Do?" "Nothing.") Smith (New York City's Scarsdale), complains that Scarsdale is "just like a Deanna Durbin movie: all clean and unreal. Hell, I went to school in Mount Vernon, N.Y., with the furnace man's son—you don't get that here."
Den of Conformity. And what of the grownups themselves? For some, the suburban euphoria often translates itself into the suburban caricature. The neighborhood race for bigger and better plastic swimming pools, cars and power mowers is still being run in some suburbs, and in still others, the chief warm-weather occupation is neighbor watching (Does she hang her laundry outside to dry? Does he leave his trash barrels on the curb after they have been emptied?). In Long Island's staid, old Garden City, observes Hofstra Assistant Sociology Professor William Dobriner, "they don't care whether you believe in God, but you'd better cut your grass." In close-by Levittown, a poll of householders some time ago showed that the No. 1 topic on people's minds was the complaint that too many dogs were running unleashed on the lawns. Topic No. 2 was the threat of world Communism.
The all-weather activities often center on frenzied weekend parties in the "den," attended by neighbors, who each in his turn will throw a potato-chip and cheese-dip party on succeeding weekends. Cries a Chicago suburban woman: "I'm so sick and tired of seeing those same faces every Friday and Saturday night, I could scream." In Kansas City's suburban Overland Park, three jaded couples formed an "Anti-Conformity League" to fight groupthink, disbanded it soon afterward because, explains ex-Schoolteacher Ginger Powers (two children), "it was getting just too organized to be anti-conformist."
Though suburban wife-swapping stories are the delight of the urban cocktail party, immorality in the suburbs is no more or less prevalent than it is in the cities. But an adventuresome male commuter does have one advantage: he can pursue a clandestine affair easily in the city merely by notifying his suburban wife that he is being kept at the office. One sign of the times is that Private Detective Milton Thompson of suburban Kansas City is also a marriage counselor, has handled 300 marital cases in the past three years. The usual story: "The husband plays on the Missouri side of the river before he gets out here. Maybe it's just a few extra-dry martinis with the gang from his office. Maybe not. Anyway, Mama has a little more money than average. She has a maid. That gives her a heck of a lot of time to sit around and think. If hubby is late—boy, does she think."