by Christyl Rivers

Created on: September 23, 2011

Blame it all on Beaver Cleaver. 

The iconic fifties situation comedy was all about life in suburban America, and the  American Dream that centered on a nuclear family, with a male breadwinner, two kids, and a smiling housewife who, if she was desperate, was hiding it behind a well pearled smile.  It’s nice to think that June Cleaver actually hid bodies in the cellar, (or had any hobbies at all) but that is a show for a more recent world.

What did this idealized picture actually create?  The idea of the suburbs came with post war economic and baby boomer expansion. Having a car allowed that people could leave city centers behind and live a quiet life in tree lined neighborhoods. It was based on the idea that a middle class could thrive, fossil fuels would stay abundant and non-polluting forever, and the way we never were, actually was real, at least for a time.

It could be called the way we never were because, (Shocker!) Leave it to Beaver, and Father Knows Best, and even Ozzie and Harriet, were fiction. It actually turns out that even in the golden years of the booming mid 20th century, there was racism, sexism, incest, work disparity, and other evils of society.

The suburbs changed how the world lived because they offered a lovely dream. The dream was offered on a bake-lite tray with a Martini, after a hard day at the office, by a smiling June in heels, standing in a spotless house. Everyone was white, either affluent or aspiring to be, the kids came home to a full time mother with the freedom to not have to be a wage earner, and dad, although a bit of a doofus at times, always had the kind hearted wisdom and discipline to keep the suburban dream alive.  Ward was strong, smart, and didn’t drink, gamble, cheat or beat his wife and kids.

It was not until the sixties began to emerge with ideas that everything the suburban dream was in denial about could not stay in denial much longer.

The suburbs gave us car culture, which gave us fast food, which gave us an obesity epidemic. They gave us strip malls, supermarkets, the end of bustling downtown, suburban sprawl, housing developments with ever super-sized McMansions, easy credit, enviable lawns, and education opportunities for returning veterans and the GI Bill. Suburbia also helped create the civil rights movement as more minority people began leaving the south, and building their own versions of the American Dream.  It wasn’t all bad, or all good, just like most

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