Milly London Dissertation

SUBURBIA: PARADISE OR PRISON? HOW THE EMERGENCE OF AMERICAN SUBURBIA IN THE 1940’S STILL DICTATES GENDER DISPARITIES IN DOMESTIC LIFE MILLY LONDON

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Milly London 170365181 ARC3060 Dissertation Studies 2020/2021 Newcastle University BA Architecture Word Count: 8427 without footnotes

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Contents Preface 7 Introduction 9

Garrison, the 10524 10 Chapter I – Suburbia

The Rise of Suburbanisation in the USA 17 History of Suburbia 18 The Emergence of Suburban Housing 20 Levittown and the ‘American Dream’ 21

I would like to thank Professor Prue Chiles for her continued guidance with this dissertation - your encouragement and good humour throughout was much appreciated.

Chapter II – The Disparities of Gender in Domestic Life

Gender and Space 27

Outdated History Forging Modern Expectations 28

Also to my Mother for her support and willingness to take part in a lengthy interview. Thank you.

Chapter III – The Impact of Suburbia on Gender Roles

Household Labour 31 Childcare 32 Childhood Upbringing 34 Public and Private Space 36 Satisfaction 38

Masculine Cities and Feminine Suburbs 39 Concluding Comments 41 Trouble in Paradise 44 Bibliography 49 List of Figures 53 Appendix 55

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Preface Suburbs are not all alike; they have been classified into types such as residential and industrial. At the risk of stereotyping, this dissertation will discuss the residential. In particular, the seemingly picturesque portrayal of American suburbia, and whether living there functionally serves an employed woman as well as it does an employed man. It explores the history and emergence of suburbia, creating a sense of familiarity with the environment and explaining the attraction of moving there in the post-war era. It also unpicks how the historical views on gender roles within the home structure a topography between gender relations and space and this is supported by analysing the patriarchal division of labour. This is exemplified in Levittown, as this post-war suburban community is based on traditional heterosexist assumptions of “appropriate” jobs and social practices within a marriage.

Alongside this discussion, it will also consider my personal experience of American suburban living, growing up in Philipstown, which is a hybridity of rural and suburban land just north of New York City.

It will address how my parents, and in particular my mother, adjusted to moving there from London. I interviewed my Mum on her thoughts and memories of life there; these comments inform the dissertation throughout and accompany collective opinions upheld by a range of suburban women.

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NEW YORK

Introduction

PUTNAM COUNTY NEW YORK CITY

100km

PHILIPSTOWN

My interest in suburbia stems from growing up for a large portion of my life in New York, in a hamlet called Garrison. Located alongside the Hudson River, an hour north of New York City, in the town of Philipstown (Putnam County), Garrison is a unique place full of character, where I was lucky enough to live from the ages of four to eleven. My childhood memories were made in this town of rural and suburban land, with the vast majority of them set within my home.

We moved from London, going from the busy and dense area of Islington to rural and suburban Philipstown. My sister, being five, and I, being four, enjoyed the increased indoor and outdoor space, with a bigger playroom, garden and bedrooms. My Mum remembers feeling excited for the move as she had lived and worked as a designer in Manhattan as a young woman, however this move was instead centred around my Dad’s career. Mum was nearing the end of her 5-year child break, and about to go back to work in London before my family was offered the chance to move to New York.

Michelson found that after moving to the suburbs, women suffered from lack of stimulation, and felt discouraged about the possibility of getting a job, with many saying that they “saw fewer options available in the suburbs, and the commute to the city was ruled out because of family obligations.”1 Perhaps this was this the case for my Mum – had her entire career been hindered because of the move from the metropolis of London to the detached environment of Philipstown? Mum reported that she “didn’t really think too much of it prior to moving”2, as she was excited for my Dad’s career prospects and the opportunity for our family to experience a different way of life for a few years. It was only when we got there that she realised how isolating it was compared to London.

COLD SPRING GARRISON

10km

FIG. 1, 2, 3 - Maps to locate New York, Putnam County, New York City, Philipstown, Cold Spring and Garrison

1 Michelson, W. The Place of Time in Longitudinal Evaluation of Spatial Structures by Women, University of Toronto Centre for Urban and Community Studies Research Paper no.61 (Toronto 1973) 2 J. London, Interview*, (2020) See Appendix for full interview

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Introduction

Introduction

Garrison, the 10524 COLD SPRING

Garrison is situated within the town of Philipstown in the Hudson Highlands, which is considered to be rural New York with suburban residential patches. In some respects, the town is a relatively typical place in New York, however it obtains a uniqueness and individuality due to the history and charm of its two hamlets, Garrison and Cold Spring. The population is just under 9500, with houses either sitting on individual plots of a couple of acres or on denser grid-structured streets and cul-de-sacs, which gives Philipstown this rural/suburban hybridity. As shown in Fig. 4, our house was located off of one of the main roads that runs through the state – Route 9D.

The architecture throughout the town itself is quite diverse. Mavny of the houses in Cold Spring were built throughout the 1800’s and remain protected by the Historical Society. Mum recalls there being a “vibe” in the Cold Spring area, which is more suburban by nature and design, of “wanting to keep it as pure as possible.” She reported that it was more of a monoculture, with less diversity – even comparing some families there to those from the “Stepford Wives” as shown in Fig. 5.

The architecture in Garrison, however, ranges from farmhouses and cottages to country manors. A lot of families, including my own, buy a plot of land to build their desired house, or renovate and extend older properties, resulting in there being no set style; aside from along the Garrison Landing where the majority of the houses were also erected in the 1850’s in a ‘Carpenter’s Gothic’ style – an application of Gothic Revival – to provide housing for ferry workers.3

RIV E

R

WEST POINT

HUD SON

There is no downtown or main street in Garrison, so the majority of civic life takes place on the Garrison Landing – a small riverside plaza along the Hudson. Here there is a sprinkling of small businesses run by locals, however most adults I knew commuted to the city for work, particularly the men, as a train from the Garrison metro station (situated along the Landing) takes about 1 hour to Grand Central.

GARRISON

HOME FIG. 4 - A map to show the rural and the residential zones of Philipstown, highlighted in the cul-de-sacs and grid like streets.

A large amount of our time in Garrison was spent renovating a small 1870’s vintage Victorian farmhouse and adding a post & beam extension as shown in Figs. 6-10. It was a huge project that was designed, led and managed by my mother. The house was completely redesigned and suited to fit the needs and the preferences of our family.

The lack of architectural conformity throughout the rest of Garrison is reflective of the type of people that live there. “There were lots of artists, there were lots of designers, lots of TV people, writers, journalists, producers” which meant that there was a sense amongst the residents of “we all like living here because we’re all a little bit different.” 4 I find it fascinating that the two areas of Garrison and Cold Spring juxtapose so heavily with one another yet are within the same town and only 4 miles apart. I credit this for why Philipstown was such an interesting and varied place to grow up, however now, I can’t help but question whether I would want to live there as an adult, and particularly if I were a mother raising children. How did this rural / suburban pocket of New York serve an employed woman and her family? What about in pure suburbia? This leads me to explore its history and emergence, to uncover whether American suburbia aids or hinders aspirations of career growth, independence, and equality, and how this differs between men and women.

3 Lindley, Phillip. ‘Carpenter’s Gothic’ and Gothic Carpentry: Contrasting Attitudes to the Restoration of the Octagon and Removals of the Choir at Ely Cathedral, Architectural History 30 (1987) 4 J. London, Interview*, (2020) See Appendix for full interview

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FIG. 5 - A photo taken on set of The Stepford Wives - a thriller where modern-minded women are replaced by soulless robots that live to serve their husbands and their home. A Stepford wife is somebody who is looks perfect, keeps a perfect home and presents a perfect facade.

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Introduction

Introduction

FIG. 6 - Our original Victorian farmhouse pre-renovation.

FIG. 9 - The timber beams.

FIG. 7 - Foundations for the extension.

FIG. 10 - Mum (wearing blue) overseeing the process.

FIG. 8 - Demolition of the original house.

FIG. 10 - The finished extension.

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Introduction

Introduction

Is Philipstown, by definition, considered suburban?

Suburban Characteristic

Garrison

Cold Spring

Lower density than central city

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Surrounded at close quarters by similar dwellings

No – the minimum plot required to build on is 2 acres

Yes – denser gridded street system and cul-de-sacs

Daily needs not within walking distance of home (zoning patterns separate residential and commercial developments)

Yes – most homes came off of main roads No – if you lived along the Garrison Landing

Yes No – if you lived near the Main Street running through

Subdivisions carved from previously rural land into multiple home developments built by single real-estate company

No – still a lot of rural land that is protected by residents to avoid total suburbanisation

Yes – particularly in cul-desacs

Shopping malls instead of classic downtown shopping districts

Yes – mall provides essential products No – Garrison Landing, although it is more of a historical site

Yes – mall provides essential products No – Main Street, although it is more of a historical site

House prices and household income roughly the same

No – huge variety in houses and variety in residential occupations

Yes – similar house prices as renovations usually rejected

by Historical Society

Road network hierarchy

No – houses sprout off of main road

Yes – grid pattern and culde-sacs

Dominated by singlefamily homes on individual plots of land

“The suburb is defined as a residential area situated on the outskirts of a city or urban district. Suburbs are an outgrowth of many influences and ideas stemming from a desire for individual home and land ownership, population decentralization, enthusiasm for dwellings located a greater distance from industrialization, and finally an eagerness for community building and a sense of belonging—an opportunity to forge new social contracts literally and geographically.”5

5 Nowicki, Susan. Suburbs and Suburbanization. In Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Oxford Bibliographies (7 February 2021)

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Chapter I – Suburbia The Rise of Suburbanisation in the USA

FIG. 11 - A track map from 1962 of the New York, Westchester and Boston Railway line - the main commuter lines into New York City from northern suburbs.

After the victory of World War II in 1945, the economic boom throughout the United States drove the birth of a new place of domesticity: suburbia. The development of the skyscraper and the sharp inflation of urban real estate prices led to cities being more dedicated to businesses, thus pushing residents outside the city centre. New York and Boston were the first major cities to spawn suburbs. This was due to the rail lines in Manhattan and the streetcar lines in Boston, which made daily commutes to the city possible.6 No metropolitan area in the world was as well equipped with railroad commuter lines at the turn of the 20th century as New York, thanks to the rail lines from Westchester to the Grand Central Terminal which enabled its development. Westchester, which is the county directly south of Garrison, played a crucial role in the suburbanization of America, as thousands of businessmen and executives from Manhattan moved to Scarsdale, New Rochelle and Rye.7 The suburbanisation of Putnam County followed, as residents continued to move further north of the city.

6 Ward, David. A Comparative Historical Geography of Streetcar Suburbs in Boston, Massachusetts and Leeds, England: 1850–1920”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 54(4): pp. 477–489 (1964) 7 Panetta, R. G. Westchester: The American Suburb, (2006)

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Chapter I - Suburbia

Chapter I - Suburbia

History of Suburbia During the post-World War II economic expansion, the suburban population in North America exploded.

Veterans returning from war who wanted a relaxed, slow-paced lifestyle moved in masses to the suburbs, and due to the influx of people in these new areas, the federal government generously supported suburban growth – particularly through guaranteed mortgages and highways.8 Alongside this, the number of shopping centres began to increase, helping to supply goods and services for the growing suburban population to shop for a variety of products in one central location without having to travel to the city. These were vital, particularly as the design of suburban homes brought about requirements for new products that were not needed in urban neighbourhoods, such as lawnmowers and cars. Resultingly, ‘malls’ became a fundamental component of these newly designed suburbs. By 1957, 940 malls were built in the USA, and by 1960 this number more than doubled to keep up with the demand of these increasingly dense suburbs.9 These were often large buildings full of multiple stores and services, that were not just used for shopping; they also became a place of leisure and a meeting point to socialise.

Mum reported that if she wasn’t working on the house renovation, she too would sometimes fill the time by going to an outlet mall with a friend, going to their “favourite shops” and “getting some lunch” but not actually “going for anything in particular.”

Televisions further contributed to the rise of suburbia, partly due to the desire to have the products and lifestyle that were promoted in suburban life in various TV programs and advertisements. Adverts perpetuated the idea that suburbia was a dream location for women who were typically the homemakers, and that acquiring the latest gadget for the white picket-fenced house would bring about fulfilment.

Most significant in suburbia’s development, was the building of many highways, as the Highway Act of 1956 funded $26 billion for the making of 64,000 kilometres of interstate-highway that spanned across the entire country.10 This not only offered more commuter routes between major cities, but also enabled construction machinery and materials to be transported almost anywhere, driving the mass production of the standardised suburban home.

8 Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, 1985) 9 Beauregard, Robert A. When America Became Suburban. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, (2006) 10 Weingroff, Richard F. Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, Creating the Interstate System. Public Roads, Federal Highway Administration (1996)

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FIG. 12 - Old Orchard shopping center fountain in Skokie, Illinois. 1950-1960.

A place of pleasure and beauty.

FIG. 13 - Oregon Lloyd Center Mall, Portland. 1950-1960.

A meeting point to socialise.

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Chapter I - Suburbia

Chapter I - Suburbia

LEVITTOWN NEW YORK CITY 100km

NASSAU COUNTY

10km

FIG. 15, 16 - Maps to show Levittown in relation to New York City. Levittowns 17,000 houses are located in Long Island, east of New York City.

Levittown and the ‘American Dream’ Levittown is considered the prototypical American post-war suburb. It began as a business move by William Levitt, the son of a family homebuilding firm: Levitt and Sons. The second World War had consumed an enormous amount of construction resources and William returned from war knowing that every young veteran would need a home, so he applied his knowledge of the mass-production strategies he learned from building military housing and purchased a seven square mile tract of Long Island’s potato and onion fields. All of Levittown’s residences were built between 1947 and 1951. This speed of construction is reflected through the uniformity across the houses, and through the basic structure and building techniques as seen in Fig. 17. At constructions peak, one house was put up every 16 minutes.13

FIG. 14 - A General Electric advertisement depicting a US soldier and his wife dreaming of a suburban home.

The Emergence of Suburban Housing Little housing had been built during the Great Depression and during World War II, aside from emergency quarters near war industries, therefore overcrowded and inadequate apartments remained the common situation for most people, including returning veterans. Whilst some suburbs developed on a rail line to the city, where predominantly professionals lived so that they could commute, other suburbs developed for the purpose of lower income families who couldn’t afford city living. These suburbs relied on the availability of cars, highways and inexpensive housing. The G.I. Bill, passed in 1944, guaranteed low-cost loans for veterans, with low down payments and low interest rates.11 By 1947, just three years later, 540,000 veterans had bought a house for the average price of $7300 (equivalent to $85,250 today). To keep costs down, the construction industry standardised the homes which allowed for mass production. Suburban houses were all based on a handful of designs, and were shooting up as developers provided streets, utilities, and schools,12 and by the end of the 1940’s, moving out of the city into a single-family home was the national goal, despite the isolated, over privatised and energy consuming nature of the dwelling. The most famous suburban development to date is Levittown.

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Altschuler and Blumin. The GI Bill, p. 118 (2009) Goulden, Joseph. The Best Years, 1945-1950, pp. 135-139. (1976)

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There were 26 highly specialised steps in the overall assembly process, all using standardised materials that were purchased from Levitt and Sons manufacturers. These suburban houses were stamped out with the same aesthetic uniformity and composed from the same architectural plan but varied only subtly in colour, window treatments and rooflines as seen in Fig. 18.14 This ‘cookie-cutter’ approach is the way that most suburban communities in the US are still built today.

The low cost of $7,900 with a 5% down payment (0% for veterans) meant that Levittown became a symbol of the ‘American Dream,’ as it enabled thousands of Americans to become homeowners.15 This attracted more of the population to move to the suburbs, away from the extortionate real estate prices in the city.

City dwellers found that they could buy their own home just as easily as they could rent a small apartment.

By 1950, 80% of Levittown’s men were commuting to Manhattan for jobs, and the development had set an example for countless American communities still to come.16 13 Marshall, Colin. Levittown, the prototypical American suburb – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 25. The Guardian, (April 28, 2015). Retrieved November 20, 2020.

14 Allison, John D. An analysis of Levittown, New York, with particular reference to demand satisfaction from mass-produced low-cost housing. New York: Thesis (Ph.D.) Graduate School of Business Administration, New York University. (1956) 15 Gans, Herbert J. The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community. New York: Pantheon Books p.3 (1967) 16 Lundrigan, Margaret. Levittown, NY Volume Two. Arcadia Publishing. (1999)

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Chapter I - Suburbia

Chapter I - Suburbia

FIG. 17 - A photograph taken during construction, displaying the speed at which these houses were going up.

FIG. 19- A family in front of their Levittown residence.

FIG. 18- An aerial photograph displaying the uniformity across the homes.

FIG. 20- An aerial photograph showing the grid-like layout of the streets.

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Chapter I - Suburbia

Levittown can be more closely compared to Cold Spring than Garrison due to some uniformity across houses in the historical district along Main Street which are protected by the Historical Society, and because the houses sit on smaller plots meaning there’s less room for extensions or alterations. In Garrison however, it’s quite normal to purchase a plot of land to design and build a house on, or completely redesign and restore an existing house on a large plot. This allows the homeowner to have an input on their own, individual house and was one of the main reasons we decided to move to Garrison rather than an alternative suburb outside of NYC. The compromise was that we couldn’t walk anywhere from our house unlike in Cold Spring. With Dad in the city weekdays, and my sister and me in school, this separation from city living was felt most greatly by Mum who felt quite “isolated in the house” and said she couldn’t “just pop in to see a neighbour because [she] didn’t have a neighbour”, however when asked about whether it would be easier if we had moved to Cold Spring instead, she agreed saying, “definitely, Cold Spring was way more suburban than Garrison… it would have been so much easier.” However, she “would have missed culture and the diversity of people, race and jobs” as there “wasn’t much of that in Cold Spring,” and moreover “just down the road in Westchester” where it’s “even more suburban” it was not only lacking those characteristics too, but it “wasn’t historical” and charming. Considering this accumulation of factors retrospectively, it’s clear to me that moving to Garrison was the best option for my family, particularly for my Mum who trained as a designer who found that “to be in a home that [she] couldn’t change… was torture.”17 Whilst living in a truly suburban, monotonous environment didn’t appeal to my parents, it did to older generations – such as that which originally inhabited Levittown – where after surviving the Great Depression and World War II, the general lust for conformity and security offered in those cookie-cutter homes located outside of the dangerous metropolis represented an almost unimaginable luxury and provided a sense of togetherness and safety that had been missing for so long. However, the uniformity of the houses didn’t come without criticism. Eric Larrabee called the Levitt house “American suburbia reduced to its logical absurdity”18, with urban historian Lewis Mumford adding that the community was a “uniform environment from which escape is impossible.”19 Indeed, at the start Levittown was a multitude of unidentifiable houses that were lined up inflexibly and inhabited by people of the same class, race, age group, and that were most likely on a similar income, so yes; it would have been an undesirable choice for a person who aspires to live in their own distinctive home.

However, for most of the population throughout the early 1950’s this was not the case. The suburb is portrayed in a positive light by WD Wetherell, who describes the process the homemakers gleefully undertook after moving into their new home. “The minute we got our mitts on them we started remodelling them, adding stuff, changing them around.” “Thanks to Big Bill Levitt we all had a chance. You talk about dreams. Hell, we had ours. We had ours like nobody before or since ever had theirs. SEVEN THOUSAND BUCKS! ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS DOWN! We were cowboys out there. We were the pioneers!”20

Chapter I - Suburbia

FIG. 21- The Main Street in Cold Spring which is protected by the Historical Society.

FIG. 22- An aerial shot from Google Earth of Cold Spring to highlight the more suburban environment here than where my house was in Garrison.

Perhaps both the victory of the war, and the resulting economic expansion collectively boosting nationwide morale, purchasing a Levitt house marked citizens one step closer to achieving their ‘American Dream.’ Ironically, the uniformity and equality shown through the construction of Levittown, with every house being made of the same materials and valued the same economically, relies on the residents’ extreme dichotomy of male and female spheres, and the racial separation of class. Levitt’s seemingly equal standard of living for all is contradictory, as the very place is built on the premises of oppression.

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J. London, Interview*, (2020) See Appendix for full interview Larrabee, E. The Six Thousand Houses that Levitt Built in Harper’s Magazine, (September 1948) Mumford, L. The City in History, Harcourt Publishing Company (1961) Wetherell, W. D. The Man Who Loved Levittown, University of Pittsburgh Press. (1985)

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FIG. 23- An aerial shot from Google Earth of Levittown in 2020, to show how densley populated it is compared to Cold Spring.

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Chapter I - Suburbia

Urban living was a dystopian nightmare for residents of New York in the 1930’s, in cramped housing rampant with disease and crime. Therefore, for the fortunate, living in the suburbs and having the opportunity to own their own house, with internal room, external space and one that’s free from the conditions that their parents experienced, made relocating to a place like Levittown an obvious choice. Although, after luring almost an entire generation out of the cities, the financial incentive of a suburban residence reduced American downtowns to little more than collections of office buildings. In 1983, the New York Times reported “widening disparities between residents of central cities in metropolitan areas and those of their surrounding suburbs, not only in income but also in employment, housing, living arrangements, and family structure.” The article concluded that cities and suburbs had become “two different worlds.”21 The residential patterns across these two different worlds, which to a large extent still prevail today, continue to constitute a major influence on society and politics. The post-war exodus to the suburbs vastly reorganised power and money that greatly affected American industry, racial segregation and gender roles – particularly those roles within the home.

Chapter II – The Disparities of Gender in Domestic Life Gender and Space Gender identity develops through the process of socialization within societal institutions, such as in a family home or in a workplace. The term ‘social moulding’ refers to how men and women acquire their gender identities in traditional models of behaviour relevant to each sex – in essence, gender identities are cast onto an individual based on how society expects them to act which changes as societies grow and change. Furthermore, within a society, physical ‘space’ is normally a manifestation of social organisations, with social life taking place in and through space thus, resulting in a clear geography between gender relations and space. The common approach to the gender and space relationship within a domestic setting is the historical patriarchal gender division of labour: unpaid household work carried out by women, and public paid work done by men. This delegation manifested itself spatially, through the separation of urban and suburban realms, and the public and private zones within in a home. 22

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Herbers, John. Census Data Reveal 70s Legacy: Poorer Cities and Richer Suburbs, New York Times (27 Feb. 1983)

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22 Sadoughianzadeh, Minoosh. Gender Structure and Spatial Organization: Iranian Traditional Spaces, The Authors, SAGE Open (2013)

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Chapter II - The Disparities of Gender in Domestic Life

Chapter II - The Disparities of Gender in Domestic Life

Outdated History Shaping Modern Expectations Gender roles within the home has been a widely debated topic for many years. Throughout the 18th century, husbands, being the breadwinners, had economic power over their wives in marriage, career and property, whilst the wives maintained responsibility for the upkeep of the household and the children where they were expected to craft and maintain a private, utopian, blissful household.

Onward through the 19th century, evangelical ideology continued to place increasing moral value on female domesticity. Women were expected to stay home to fulfil the domestique mystique of the “angel of the house.” Roots of this American settlement lie in the environmental and economic policies of the past, whereby “Good Homes Make Contented Workers” was the slogan for the Industrial Housing Associates in 1919, alluding to the idea that it is the responsibility of the woman to create a good, happy and fulfilling environment for a man to live in, in order for him to work efficiently. An excerpt from the books reads:

FIG. 24- Drawing of women spinning linen yarn, 1783.

“What sort of home does your workman come from in the morning? What does he look forward to when his day of toil is over?”23

It was believed that a man would return from his day of work – typically a tense, industrial environment of social degradation and personal alienation – and want to enter his serene dwelling, to his wife, whose responsibility was his physical and emotional wellbeing through the maintenance of his house. These deep rooted, engrained sexist constraints helped major corporations plan better housing for male workers to eliminate industrial conflict. Men received ‘family wages’ and became homeowners, whilst their wives managed the home and became the homemakers. Progressively, the majority of modern marriages don’t quite function this way and there is a growing respect for women to enter the workforce into a position they choose, and therefore less pressure on them to dedicate their lives to maintaining a household.

When women initially entered the paid work force, most occupations that were considered socially acceptable were those still situated within the home or closely linked to domesticity, for example, running a laundrette or being involved in the textile trade. Even though women were encouraged to work and financially support themselves, the nature of their jobs were still linked to that of household labour. 24

FIG. 25- Book cover for the Industrial Housing Associates, 1919.

By the end of the century, there were more jobs available to women that were situated outside of a domestic setting, however due the gender pay gap, it was normal for women to give up their job after having children.

It appeared as though the monetary value of a ‘stay at home mother’ was greater than the value of a wife with occupational income, as the price of childcare and employing someone to do household chores equated financially to that of a second salary. This is still prevalent today and was largely the case for my family.

23 Industrial Housing Associates. Good Homes Make Contented Workers, Edith Elmer Wood Papers, Avery Library, Columbia University (1919) 24 Shoemaker, Robert B. Gender in English Society 1650-1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres? Harlow, (1998)

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FIG. 26- A photograph from a cotton mill sewing class, made up of exclusively girls, 1988.

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Chapter II - The Disparities of Gender in Domestic Life

Our move to America was for the purpose of my Dads job, and Mums career aspirations sat as the second priority. If Mum were to have a full-time job in the city and commute from Philipstown, they would have had to hire a nanny, cleaner, gardener – essentially “all the people that needed to be employed so that [they] could retain the standard of the home” and “by the time [they’d] paid all of that, [they weren’t] sure there would’ve been much left of a salary.”25 Fortunately, the house renovation became her creative outlet, but what happens for mothers who don’t have this same desire?

It is debateable as to whether a woman’s choice between maintaining a home or a maintaining a career is indeed solely her decision, however, I would argue that the choice has been somewhat removed due to external and historical factors, as historically women were not been given the same opportunities for a higher paid job or even an equal wage to a man. Fortunately, there has been a dramatic growth both in the number of women in paid work over the past few decades, and women forging successful careers.

Depending on the occupation of the sole earner, it can be increasingly difficult to maintain a household on one income. Additionally, the increase in divorce rates has made paid employment more important for women than it was before.26 However, whilst these reasons still hold value, it would be prejudicial to assume that women only work for economic reasons. Many women do not consider themselves to be secondary wage earners, but instead as career driven individuals, who derive a great deal of self-identity and self-confidence from their paid employment. The feminist movement has placed increasing emphasis on equal pay, education and opportunity which has expanded opportunities to women for upward mobility.

These structural changes have had a profound impact on family and the household dynamic and reduced the traditional “nuclear” family stereotype. There continues to be an increase of dual-income households as well as lone mother or lone father households. However, suburban communities continue to be the stereotypical preserve of single income married-couple households and due to inherent social expectations on gender roles still prevailing to a certain extent today, the household duties and maintenance still typically fall back on the woman. 27 This somewhat hinders her ability to continue in or progress a career, or in many cases even obtain one.

Chapter III – The Impact of Suburbia on Gender Roles Household Labour Research suggests that within a marriage where both partners have an equal career, even if the husband and the wife would initially delegate an even distribution of household labour, women typically end up doing more due to the inherent misattributions of femininity and masculinity. The equal intentions are disregarded, and this results in the wife taking care of the home and the household responsibilities. It also was found that the contribution of women to household chores is higher on days when their husbands express higher levels of work stress. Therefore, women must subtract energy and time from their career due to the husbands increased work stress, however, men do not adjust their contribution to household chores when their wives bring their work stress home.28 Even within a married couple who prioritise the woman’s profession, she typically still ends up fulfilling household duties and stereotypes to a certain extent. As a result, there can be a hinderance to a woman’s mid-career development. These inherent gender roles that dictate the home can impact the rest of a woman’s career, which ultimately influences the rest of her life outside of the home.29 The private suburban household still remains a stage set for the effective sexual division of labour, as essential household chores and childcare aren’t recognised or valued as equal to a paid profession. Despite the employment status of the individuals, it remains an advance for male paid labour, and a container for female unpaid labour. Saegert described living in suburbia as a “socially organised productive life that perpetuates inequalities.”30 Due to the geographical segregation of suburban towns being outside the city and more widely spread by design, distances to activities outside of the home, lack of public transportation and time schedules inflicted by household duties alongside childcare make involvement in pursuits away from the home difficult, if not impossible, for many women.31 As a result, quite often women are faced with the choice of work or children.

25 J. London, Interview*, (2020) See Appendix for full interview 26 Gerson, K. Changing Family Structure and the Position of Women, Journal of the American Planning Association, 49/2 pp.138-148. (1983) 27 England, Kim V. L. Changing Suburbs, Changing Women: Geographic Perspectives on Suburban Women and Suburbanization. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 14(1), pp.24-43 (1993)

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28 Pittman, J. F., Solheim, C. A., and Blandchard, D. Stress as a driver of the allocation of household chores. J. Marriage Fam (1996) 29 Cerrato, Javier and Cifre, Eva. Gender Inequality in Household Chores and Work-Family Conflict, Frontiers in Psychology, Volume 9, p.1330 (2018) 30 Saegert, Susan. Masculine Cities and Feminine Suburbs: Polarized Ideas, Contradictory Realities. Signs 5, no. 3 p.96111 (1980) 31 Palm, R. and Pred, A. A Time-geographic Perspective on Problems of Inequality for Women, unpublished manuscript, Berkeley: University of California, (n.d)

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Childcare Both men and women are found to be similarly stressed when it comes to work-family conflict, however it is the response to the conflict which sheds light on priorities. For example, when both partners have to be at work, but a child needs a parent’s attention, work-family priorities are revealed through whomever responses to this needed attention. If both parents’ occupations receive equal pay, and require an equal number of hours a week, it can be argued that the partner who misses work to provide childcare in an emergency is placing higher priority on family responsibilities than the partner who is reluctant to miss work. However, the situation may differ due to whether the emergency is seen as a family problem or as a work problem, and therefore the response may be based on the constraints they both face at work and home.

Some fatherhood scholars suggest that men’s support for egalitarianism can be made simply though theorizing that: “men’s behaviours reflect a continued emphasis on family breadwinning.”32 This suggests that a short-term decision to prioritise work over a family/childcare need is in fact, a long-term family priority as maintaining that job and ‘breadwinning’ is essential for family life and arguably, happiness to be financially comfortable. It was found that instead of taking time off work like women might do after having children, men actually increase their working weeks, as “formerly childless men who fathered two or more children over a six-year period increased their typical work week from 42 to 47 hours.”33 Whilst I don’t doubt this statistic, it fails to consider whether or not working women also increase their hours after having children. There is an expense that comes with the addition of having children, so naturally the sole earner of a household would want to increase their income; but what about when there is not one sole earner, and both parents have a level career and salary? This research also fails to consider whether this trend differs between suburban and urban areas.

Suburban and rural environments may provide fewer opportunities for high-wage jobs and promotions, therefore there is an automatic barrier for any resident to firstly obtain employment, and secondly to retain it. After having children this is further tasked by a lack of public transportation and limited childcare availability. For suburban women who have given up a job in the city to stay nearer their children, this may be their harsh reality when seeking employment in suburban areas for stimulation both mentally and socially. A study was conducted in Oregon to investigate rural-urban differences in patterns of participation by families in support programs such as childcare subsidies.34 It was found that many lowincome families rely on childcare as usually both parents are working, and these childcare costs can take a significant portion of their overall income. Therefore, lower costing subsidies are a key support network for these families. One finding was that households whose incomes were in the lowest earning quartile spent 25% of their wages on childcare, while families in the highest-earning quartile spent only 5% income on childcare.

Chapter III - The Impact of Suburbia on Gender Roles

It was also found that families in urban areas took greater advantage of the childcare subsidies than those in rural / suburban areas, who instead utilised home-based facilities. This could be due to a greater support network of friends in a rural community, who know each other better and are willing to do to favours for fellow residents. For example, picking yours and your neighbours’ children up from school and looking after them for a few hours if their parent is still on shift, or doing a carpool to sports practice and driving three other kids as well. These home-based facilities are not only more transitional and flexible than childcare centres, but they are also free. Despite how beneficial these facilities are, they still rely on a parent either being at home or having a job close to home, and in suburbia it normally results in the mother being the one to give up her job or take a job closer to home which she is possibly overqualified for or not interested in.

My Mum mentioned that if she didn’t have the renovation to focus on, she...

“probably would have got a job locally so I could be near, be around to pick you up from school, be around to help with homework, make dinner… you’re only young you need a parent when you’re young. I probably would have gone and got a job locally … like working in a coffee shop or helping out at the school, maybe training to be a real estate agent… but if we were in the city there would have been more options, I maybe could have gone back to working in fashion…”

In Garrison, I remember a strong social network of my parents who were constantly doing favours for one another. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but most of the parents who would drive me places or look after me were women. Mum recalled that;

“Most women worked nearby for lower pay than they were qualified for. Occasionally there were woman that went into the city every day and had high power jobs, and the husbands were stay at home dads … the thing is, the children can’t do anything after school unless someone can drive them.”

What the city offers which suburban and rural areas don’t are not only more options for childcare facilities (such as after school clubs, or creches) but also the increased likelihood of a family being able to hire a full-time au pair or nanny. Au pairs are typically young women ranging from late teens to mid 20’s from a foreign country, who take on the responsibility of childcare and some housework, in exchange for living there and experiencing a new culture. One can assume that these au pairs are more likely going to want to live in an exciting, bustling city rather than in the sleepy suburbs. As Mum said, “What do you do in Garrison on your night off if you’re 20 years old? Nothing!”

32 Townsend, Nicholas W. The Package Deal: Marriage, Work, and Fatherhood in Men’s Lives. Temple University Press (2002) 33 Sanchez, Laura and Thomson, Elizabeth, Becoming Mothers and Fathers: Parenthood, Gender and the Division of Labor. Gender & Society 11 (6): pp.747-772. (1997) 34 Davis, Elizabeth E., et al. Rural-Urban Differences in Childcare Subsidy Use and Employment Stability. Applies Economic Perspectives and Policy, vol. 32, no.1, pp.135-153. (2010)

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Chapter III - The Impact of Suburbia on Gender Roles

Chapter III - The Impact of Suburbia on Gender Roles

However, suburban schools can lack diversity due to the emergence of American suburbia, where stereotypically schools were composed of white families with similar economic income. It was found that the insularity of the community and the subsequent composition of the teachers and student body result in little provision in curriculum or teaching for learning about people of other economic levels or race.39

Childhood Upbringing There has been a longstanding debate on the value of city vs. suburban living for children, and the effects these two opposing environments have on childhood development. Research suggests that fathers frequently talk about the value of the suburban experience for their children, however it has been concluded that urban and suburban living are both good and bad for children.35 In suburban and rural areas, independence is removed from both the parents and the children. In cities where everything is within closer reach, children do not need to rely on their parents to drive them around and arguably therefore, become self-sufficient at a younger age. This was true of my experience; In Garrison I couldn’t leave the house on my own without needing to ask my parents for a lift, limiting my freedom and also consuming their time. When we moved back to the UK, to the city of Guildford, I noticed how much independence my sister and I had gained. I was now able to walk 10 minutes down the road to a station and catch a train to central London, or even just run to a corner shop to pick something up. I no longer had to depend on my parents, in particular my Mum, for a lift anywhere. I imagine this not only freed up a significant amount of my Mum’s time, but also encouraged me to become more self-dependent and knowledgeable.

Many couples opt to leave the city when they have children to raise them in safe, secure suburbia. In the preliminary interviews that were aimed to expose parental concerns about children’s safety and good schooling in the city, a second conflict also came to light36 – the attachment of many wives to the cultural and social opportunities linked to the city, and the desire from many husbands for the relaxation and status of a suburban home. Of the couples interviewed, 48% reported a greater desire on the husband’s part to move to the suburbs, compared to only 14% greater desire on the wife’s part. Many wives reported feeling “afraid of isolation, intellectual stagnation and boredom”, whilst their husbands expressed no such fears.

Although the options for a variety of schools are greater in a dense city, typically the level of education is greater in suburban schools due to better qualified teachers and newer school facilities.37 This is because suburban schools benefit more from state aid than urban schools do. The city must furnish more noneducational government services than suburban communities do, so in suburbia, more financial resources can be devoted to education.38 Also, contextually suburban environments offer more room for expansion and the ability to build facilities such as sports fields or science laboratory’s, which can be more challenging in cities.

35 Michelson, W. The Place of Time in Longitudinal Evaluation of Spatial Structures by Women, University of Toronto Centre for Urban and Community Studies Research Paper no.61, Toronto (1973) 36 Mackintosh, E, Olsen, R. and Wentworth, W. The Attitudes and Experiences of the Middle-Income Family in an Urban High-Rise Complex and in the Suburbs, New York: Centre for Human Environments, City University of New York, Graduate Centre, (1977) 37 Roscoe C. Martin. Government and the Suburban School, The Economics and Politics of Education Series, Number 2. Syracuse University Press, p.84. (1962) 38 Campbell, Alan K. and Meranto, Phillip. The Metropolitan Education Dilemma: Matching Resources to Needs. Educating an Urban Population. Beverly Hills, California, Sage Publications, p.18 (1967)

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As well as the student body and teachers, the transport links into school reflect the surrounding context of the suburban or urban areas. In the city, children might walk, or get the metro or city bus to school and be exposed to a variety of cultures, however, suburban children may either be driven by a parent or take the school bus to school with other pupils of the same race and economic background. Due to these transport links, urban children usually have a greater sense of independence than suburban children. Suburban families are generally forced to drive cars every day, and the cost of maintenance and fuel is higher than bus tickets or metro cards. Expenses aside, traveling with a child in a non-driving situation – such as on the metro – gives an opportunity for the parent to be multi-tasking, ultimately offering more time for activities like reading, working or talking without fear of distraction. If one parent is commuting to the city every day, and a child must go somewhere via car, this lack of public transportation in the suburbs further increases the amount of time one parent must spend away from their job or familial demands – and as research continues to suggest more often than not, it’s the mother who tends to them.

Additionally, the further that suburban areas expand from cities means the further one parent must go to commute to the city, as a result, less time that parent will have at home with their children, and less time that parent may spend on household labour. So, in a family where the husband commutes to the city and the wife has a local job to be near the children, if they live in a suburban area that isn’t directly outside of the city’s perimeter, one could argue that the only reason the employed wife takes on a larger percentage of household chores than her husband does, is simply because she gets home from work sooner. In contrast the “differences between men and women’s domestic contributions were smaller in the city,”40 maybe due to both partners arriving home at a similar time.

This contradicts the argument for societal gender expectations influencing the distribution of unpaid labour, and instead suggests that it is due to the locational context of the suburban residence. Still, one could argue that the location of the suburban home still persists “the sexist underpinnings of American domesticity” because “women who enter the labour force do double duty by taking primary responsibility for home and childcare in addition to the paid jobs they perform.”41 Indeed, research suggests that most time-use studies confirm that the majority of women who work outside the home simply add it on to other tasks.42

39 Miel, Alice. The Short-Changed Children of Suburbia. The American Jewish Committee. New York, Institute of Human Relations Press (1967) 40 Saegert, S. and Winkel, G. The Home: A Critical Problem for Changing Sex Roles, in Wekerle et al.

41 Sharpe, W. and Wallock, L. Contextualizing Suburbia, American Quarterly, vol.46, pp. 55–61 (1994) 42 Rose, A. The Adequacy of Women’s Expectations for Adult Roles, Social Forces 5, pp.69-77 (1951)

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Chapter III - The Impact of Suburbia on Gender Roles

Public and Private Space In Michelson’s study, urban women commented on their enjoyment of casual socialising, with their timeuse diaries supporting this by showing that they spent 2 hours less alone per day than suburban women.43 This could be a result of urban women being more likely to bump into one another when walking or using public transport instead of travelling by car. Alternatively, it could be due to urban women having more ‘free time’ than suburban women. The privacy that comes with a suburban house in the 1900’s due to residential zoning preferences of a detached, privatised dwelling, meant increased domestic labour for women, as the houses were not built to facilitate the communalization of household labour, nor were they built close to shared community space. Still today, the modernist inspired designs and layouts that have welcomed the addition of large windows, open plan settings, and gallery kitchens often maximise the domestic work of an individual person. These factors add to the visibility of housework, and thereby require someone to enforce high standards of cleanliness and hygiene.44 If an urban woman and a suburban woman are hoovering their home before going out, one can presume that it’s quicker to clean a three-bedroom apartment flat, than a typical three-bedroom suburban house with staircases and extra rooms that an apartment doesn’t. Therefore, one can argue that not only do history’s notions of societal gender roles, and the environmental context of suburbia do their part to confine women to the house, but also the architecture of the conventional suburban home itself. Due to this confinement, one could again argue that it works against the needs of an employed woman, and resultingly could affect how satisfied a suburban woman may feel.

43 Michelson, W. The Place of Time in Longitudinal Evaluation of Spatial Structures by Women, University of Toronto Centre for Urban and Community Studies Research Paper no.61, Toronto (1973) 44 England, Kim V. L. Changing Suburbs, Changing Women: Geographic Perspectives on Suburban Women and Suburbanization. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 14(1), pp.24-43 (1993)

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Chapter III - The Impact of Suburbia on Gender Roles

FIG. 27- A photograph of an original Levittown house, featuring a woman and a baby. The house interior includes large windows, a fireplace and carpeted floor - all of which become obvious when they are dirty.

FIG. 28- A photograph of our house in Garrison which Mum designed intentionally with wooden floors instead of carpets to minimise housework. Although the open plan layout means that dust and dirt can travel from ‘room’ to ‘room’ more easily, this layout didn’t confine Mum to one room if she was doing housework. For example, we could sit at the dining table and chat with her whilst she prepared dinner in the kitchen.

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Chapter III - The Impact of Suburbia on Gender Roles

Chapter III - The Impact of Suburbia on Gender Roles

Satisfaction Saegert argues that “only the suburban man seems well-situated to achieve his home values most successfully.”45 The suburban woman must frequently depend on the resources of her own family and self. The suburban man, however, has two environments – his work life, and his home, these combined, plus the commitment of his wife to household tasks provides him both options for adult activities and a satisfying family-centred environment.

Although “the average female and male suburbanite reported being better satisfied than the urbanite with their homes,”46 with regards to the physical household, this does not account for satisfaction of the overall quality of life there in comparison to an urban environment.

In the late 1970’s, after observing white middle-class couples in northern California over a forty-year time span, it was found that the women who poorly adjusted to living in the suburbs from living in the city were unhappy due to their remote suburban or rural location. However, the well-being and interests of the men in the sample were apparently little influenced by the location of their homes.47 This is perhaps because the location of the home had much less impact on the development of the man’s career whereas the unemployed woman became dissatisfied with her socio-physical environment due to the limited accessibility to sources of fulfilment.

Furthermore, interviews conducted by Betty Mackintosh and her colleagues found that even if urban women were not employed, they felt that they were not cut off from the activities and options presented by the city as they would be if they were to move to the suburbs.48 Therefore there is a degree of separation unemployed women who live in the suburbs feel, that unemployed women who live in the city don’t.

Interestingly, it was also found that in both the cities and the suburbs, more women thought it was important for the home to express their personalities than did most men.49 I knew this was true of my parents, with Mum coming from a design background along with being more housebound in Garrison; however, as it applies to couples from both the cities and suburbs, it makes one consider that there is less of a locational influence, and perhaps rather an inherent difference of feelings toward domesticity between the two sexes. Perhaps women, regardless of employment or family obligations, take more pride in expressing themselves through their home than most men do because of an innate quality of domesticity that comes with the biology of female maternity? To argue this however would be an overgeneralisation, as a lot of women don’t feel drawn toward any motherhood or homemaker roles at all throughout their lives. Despite the oversimplification of that particular finding, there does seem to be a trend in research that portrays a link between women and domesticity, usually by comparing the associations of men and the city with women and the suburbs.

45 Saegert, Susan. Masculine Cities and Feminine Suburbs: Polarized Ideas, Contradictory Realities. Signs 5, no. 3 p.96111 (1980) 46 Saegert, S. and Winkel, G. The Home: A Critical Problem for Changing Sex Roles, in Wekerle et al.

47 Mass, H. and Kuper, J. M. From Thirty to Seventy, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (1974) 48 Mackintosh, E, Olsen, R. and Wentworth, W. The Attitudes and Experiences of the Middle-Income Family in an Urban High-Rise Complex and in the Suburbs, New York: Centre for Human Environments, City University of New York, Graduate Centre, (1977) 49 Saegert, S. and Winkel, G. The Home: A Critical Problem for Changing Sex Roles, in Wekerle et al.

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Masculine Cities and Feminine Suburbs Much like the term’s man and woman; city and suburb are symbols that our culture has construed as polar opposites. The idea persists that they remain two completely different things, with no cross over, having different needs and different physical appearance. The symbolic dichotomy of the city and suburbs links to that of the traditional man and woman. The man is connected with urban life; he is aggressive, assertive, intellectual, active and powerful. He is the definer of important world events, and he is sometimes dangerous. Women and the suburbs, however, share a closeness with nature, domesticity, repose and safety.

Her metaphysical purpose for being is to grow and nurture, so resultingly, the suburbs conform to the Freudian concept of femininity: instinctually passive.50 This hyperbolic model is of course not applied to every man and woman, as city jobs are no longer solely occupied by men, so the gender disparity of the cities daytime population has decreased. However, with regards to unemployed women in both areas, metropolitan women still reap the benefits of the city and the social, stimulating lifestyle that comes with it; but the same does not ring true for unemployed suburban women, who tend to conform more to the feminine suburbia stereotype. Therefore, whether intentional or not, the “gender of the daytime population does suburbia owe its essential femininity.”51

50 Schwartz, B. Images of Suburbia: Some Revisionist Comments, in The Changing Face of the Suburbs, ed. Barry Schwartz pp.334-335 Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (1976) 51 Schwartz, B. Images of Suburbia: Some Revisionist Comments, in The Changing Face of the Suburbs, ed. Barry Schwartz pp.334-335 Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (1976)

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Concluding Comments In 1950’s America, the post-war economic expansion and national lust for conformity, cleanliness and security, worked alongside advertisements to attract white couples to relocate their family to safe, beautiful and green suburbia. Although women had been in the paid work force for years, the prefabricated suburban design, which continues to be designed today, requires at least one adult to be predominately housebound, unlike in cities which offers more independence for parents and children. Research suggests that most commonly in the suburbs, the housebound adult is the woman, as historic societal expectations of gender roles both in a domestic setting and an occupational one, still encourage women to conform to the evangelical ideology of being a perfect housewife. Therefore, suburban residences, both architecturally and contextually isolate women which can constrain them physically, socially and economically, and furthermore, emphasise their historic economic dependence on men. Interestingly, the advertisements that drew couples to the suburbs promising the ‘American Dream’ and equality for all, are arguably now the very thing holding women back.

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Concluding Comments

Concluding Comments

FIG. 29- Lennox Heating System advertisement depicts suburban living as a paradise.

FIG. 31- Advertisement for a new fridge which states that it was “Designed From the Womans Angle.”

FIG. 30- A 1950s magazine cover selling an electric garage door opener, something which only became a requirement since suburban living.

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FIG. 32- Advertisement for an electric oven to assist women when doing househohld chores.

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Concluding Comments

Concluding Comments

Trouble in Paradise The children that grew up shaped in these secure and somewhat alienating suburbs, went on to raise the generation who made a return to city living. Problems in paradise are quickly exposed in today’s environmentally and racial equality conscious society. Many white Americans from the suburbs are moving back to city centres, resulting in a renewal in nearly all major city downtowns.52 City living is no longer like it was in the 1930’s, where housing was cramped and riddled with disease and crime. Instead, architectural and engineering advances in residential apartment construction has lured back young professionals to live and work in a diverse city or downtown, away from the less stimulating, monotonous suburbs. Arguably, this could mean that within a couple there’s a higher chance of the two individuals having a job at a similar income level, located a similar distance away from the house, potentially meaning that both people spend the same amount of time in the house, resulting in a more equal distribution of household labour. This no longer limits that formerly housebound person’s ability to progress a career, which in suburbia was the case for many women.

Another result of the downtown regeneration is the gradual reduction of racial residential segregation which largely prevails today, particularly in American cities. As seen in Fig.33, all non-whites were unwelcome in suburbia therefore there are no generational residents are people of colour. The increased availability of suburban residences, alongside changing attitudes towards racist constraints, allows more ethnically diverse families to move to suburban neighbourhoods which gives them resources they’ve long been denied, such as better schools and more opportunities for economic expansion.53 Research has found that African Americans in only moderately segregated areas have much better employment levels and earnings than African Americans in highly segregated areas.54 With both white families moving back to the cities, and families of other ethnicities occupying suburban homes, the suburbs are gradually becoming more multi-cultural and diverse,55 which is benefitting all minority groups, particularly women and people of colour, and combatting the patriarchal white supremacy that American suburbia was founded upon.

FIG. 33- White tenants seeking to prevent black people moving into their suburb in Detroit 1942.

52 Yen, Hope, White Flight? Suburbs lose young whites to cities. Associated Press at Yahoo! News. (Sunday May 9, 2010) 53 Quick, Kimberly and Kahlenburg, Richard D. Attacking the Black – White Opportunity Gap That Comes from Residential Segregation. Report Race & Inequality, The Century Foundation ( June 25, 2019) 54 Sander, Richard H., Kucheva, Yana A., and Zasloff, Jonathan M. Moving Toward Integration: The Past and Future of Fair Housing. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, pg.1-4 (2018) 55 Grogan, Jessie. AMERICA’S LEGACY CITIES: BUILDING AN EQUITABLE RENAISSANCE. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (2020)

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Concluding Comments

Concluding Comments

Whilst we are seeing an improvement regarding racial and gender divides, the issues remain far from solved. Gender disparities in the division of household labour still exist today all around the world.

According to current research, “conventional wisdom holds that contemporary families are more equal because men are doing more around the house as women increasingly pursue careers, and that gender equality in family life should be assessed by the extent of gender similarity in responding to situations of work-family conflict, such as when both parents must work, but one parent must stay home with child.”56 Perhaps, but what about when both parents must stay home to work? A recent government advertisement in the UK encouraging families to stay at home during the Coronavirus pandemic, stereotypes women doing the domestic chores and childcare, whilst the man pictured is relaxing on the sofa. (see Fig. 34) If our federal government have approved and sent that message to the nation, then it’s hard to believe that much has changed since this, worryingly similar, 1950’s ad for cigarettes. (Fig. 35).

Reports have found that Covid has had a “devastating impact of gender equality”, as statistics prove that women did more unpaid work before Covid, and they continue to do even more since the outbreak. 57 United Nations Women Deputy Executive Director Anita Bhatia said that, “Everything we worked for, that has taken 25 years, could be lost in a year.”58 It has been found that the gender pay gap is widening as a result of working from home, as is the gap between equal division of unpaid labour, which ultimately impacts all progress of equality in the workplace and the status of women in society that has been improving since the 18th century until now.

The problem is paradoxical: women cannot improve their status in the home unless their overall economic position in society is altered; however, women cannot improve their status in the paid labour force unless their domestic responsibilities are altered. The continuing devaluation of domestic private life, and its inherent assignment to women rather than men makes the handling of both a career and a household difficult for women. This problem is amplified in a suburban environment, as arguably the strongest guiding fiction of this problem is the segregation of public and private, male and female cities and suburbs, which finds its way into women’s and men’s sense of who they are, thus, placing a burden of a dual reality on many career driven women – their double duty at home and work resulting in split loyalties and too little appreciation in either sphere.

56 Maume, D. J. Gender Differences in Providing Urgent Childcare among Dual-Earner Parents in Social Forces, Vol. 87, Oxford University Press, pp.273-297 (Sep. 2008) 57 Author unknown. Covid has ‘devastating’ impact on gender equality. BBC News, (20 November 2020) 58 Lungumbu, Sandrine and Butterly, Amelia. Coronavirus and gender: More chores for women set back gains in equality. BBC News, (26 November 2020)

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FIG. 34- A poster that the government sent out to advise on staying home during the pandemic.

FIG. 35- A 1950s ad for cigarettes.

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Lopata, H. Z. Occupation: Housewife, London: Oxford University Press, (1971) Lungumbu, Sandrine and Butterly, Amelia. Coronavirus and gender: More chores for women set back gains in equality. BBC News, (26 November 2020) Lundrigan, Margaret. Levittown, NY Volume Two. Arcadia Publishing. (1999) Mackintosh, E, Olsen, R. and Wentworth, W. The Attitudes and Experiences of the Middle-Income Family in an Urban HighRise Complex and in the Suburbs, New York: Centre for Human Environments, City University of New York, Graduate Centre, (1977) Marshall, Colin. Levittown, the prototypical American suburb – a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 25. The Guardian, (April 28, 2015). Retrieved November 20, 2020.

Mass, H. and Kuper, J. M. From Thirty to Seventy, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (1974) Maume, D. J. Gender Differences in Providing Urgent Childcare among Dual-Earner Parents in Social Forces, Vol. 87, Oxford University Press, (Sep. 2008) Michelson, W. The Place of Time in Longitudinal Evaluation of Spatial Structures by Women, University of Toronto Centre for Urban and Community Studies Research Paper no.61, Toronto (1973)

Sander, Richard H., Kucheva, Yana A., and Zasloff, Jonathan M. Moving Toward Integration: The Past and Future of Fair Housing. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, pg.1-4 (2018) Schwartz, B. Images of Suburbia: Some Revisionist Comments, in The Changing Face of the Suburbs, ed. Barry Schwartz, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (1976) Sharpe, W. and Wallock, L. Contextualizing Suburbia, American Quarterly, vol.46 (1994) Shoemaker, Robert B. Gender in English Society 1650-1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres? Harlow, (1998) Townsend, Nicholas W. The Package Deal: Marriage, Work, and Fatherhood in Men’s Lives. Temple University Press (2002) Ward, David. A Comparative Historical Geography of Streetcar Suburbs in Boston, Massachusetts and Leeds, England: 1850– 1920”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers (1964) Weingroff, Richard F. Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, Creating the Interstate System. Public Roads, Federal Highway Administration (1996) Wetherell, W. D. The Man Who Loved Levittown, University of Pittsburgh Press. (1985) Williams, Joan. Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What To Do About It. Oxford University Press. (2000) Yen, Hope. White Flight? Suburbs lose young whites to cities. Associated Press at Yahoo! News. (Sunday May 9, 2010)

Miel, Alice. The Short-Changed Children of Suburbia. The American Jewish Committee. New York, Institute of Human Relations Press (1967) Muhlestein, Erwin. Kollektives Wohnen: Gestern and Heute, Architese 14, (1975) Mumford, L. The City in History, Harcourt Publishing Company (1961) Palm, R. and Pred, A. A Time-geographic Perspective on Problems of Inequality for Women, unpublished manuscript, Berkeley: University of California, (n.d) Panetta, R. G. Westchester: The American Suburb, (2006) Pittman, J. F., Solheim, C. A., and Blandchard, D. Stress as a driver of the allocation of household chores. J. Marriage Fam (1996) Presser, Harriet B. Can we Make Time for our Children? The Economy, Work Schedules, and Child Care. Demography 26 (1989) Quick, Kimberly and Kahlenburg, Richard D. Attacking the Black – White Opportunity Gap That Comes from Residential Segregation. Report Race & Inequality, The Century Foundation ( June 25, 2019) Roscoe C. Martin. Government and the Suburban School, The Economics and Politics of Education Series, Number 2. Syracuse University Press (1962) Rose, A. The Adequacy of Women’s Expectations for Adult Roles, Social Forces 5 (1951) Sadoughianzadeh, Minoosh. Gender Structure and Spatial Organization: Iranian Traditional Spaces, The Authors, SAGE Open (2013)

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List of Figures Figures 1, 2, 3 – Maps to locate New York, Putnam County, New York City, Philipstown, Cold Spring and Garrison.

Drawn by author, 2020 Figure 4 – A map to show the rural and the residential zones of Philipstown, shown highlighting the cul-de-sacs and grid like streets.

Drawn by Author, 2020 Figure 5 – A photo taken on set of The Stepford Wives - a thriller where modern-minded women are replaced by soulless robots live to serve their husbands and their home.

Sourced from https://ew.com/movies/2017/10/23/the-stepford-wives-1975-history/ Figures 6-10 – Photographs taken by my Dad of our house renovation process.

Taken 2005-2006 Figure 11 – A track map from 1962 of the New York, Westchester and Boston Railway line - the main commuter lines into New York City from northern suburbs.

Sourced from https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2c/14/6e/2c146ef9f13c3433aa3ca4434df99733.png Figure 12 – Old Orchard shopping center fountain in Skokie, Illinois. 1950-1960.

Sourced from https://www.vintag.es/2019/05/1950s-and-1960s-american-shopping-malls.html Figure 13 – Oregon Lloyd Center Mall, Portland. 1950-1960.

Sourced from https://www.vintag.es/2019/05/1950s-and-1960s-american-shopping-malls.html Figure 14 – A General Electric advertisement depicting a US soldier and his wife dreaming of a suburban home.

Sourced from https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/postwar-era/a/the-growth-of-suburbia Figure 15, 16 – Maps to show Levittown in relation to New York City.

Edited by Author but sourced originally from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_New_York#/media/File:Nassau_ County_New_York_incorporated_and_unincorporated_areas_Levittown_highlighted.svg Figure 17 – A photograph taken during construction, displaying the speed at which these houses were going up.

Sourced from https://www.insider.com/vintage-photos-levittown-suburbs-50s#with-all-the-amenities-and-perks-the-community-grew-rapidly-in-less-than-a-decade-there-were-82000-people-living-in-levittown-17 Figure 18 – An aerial photograph displaying the uniformity across the homes.

Sourced from https://www.insider.com/vintage-photos-levittown-suburbs-50s#with-all-the-amenities-and-perks-the-community-grew-rapidly-in-less-than-a-decade-there-were-82000-people-living-in-levittown-17 Figure 19 – A family in front of their Levittown residence Sourced from https://www.insider.com/vintage-photos-levittown-suburbs-50s#with-all-the-amenities-and-perks-the-community-grew-rapidly-in-less-than-a-decade-there-were-82000-people-living-in-levittown-17 Figure 20 – An aerial photograph showing the grid-like layout of the streets.

Sourced from https://www.insider.com/vintage-photos-levittown-suburbs-50s#with-all-the-amenities-and-perks-the-community-grew-rapidly-in-less-than-a-decade-there-were-82000-people-living-in-levittown-17 Figure 21 – The Main Street in Cold Spring Sourced from https://eileen14800.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/new-york-cold-spring/ Figure 22 – An aerial shot from Google Earth of Cold Spring.

Sourced from Google Earth but edited by Author.

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List of Figures Figure 23 – Aerial shot of Levittown from Google Earth.

Sourced from Google Earth.

Appendix

Figure 24 – Drawing of women spinning linen yarn, 1783.

Sourced from https://www.thoughtco.com/women-at-work-early-america-3530833

Interview with Jill London (my Mum) on 20.12.2020

Figure 25 – Book cover for the Industrial Housing Associates, 1919 Sourced from http://archive.org/stream/goodhomesmakecon00indu#mode/2up

Milly London (ML): Do you think living in a typical, American suburban house is more satisfying for a man or a woman?

Figure 26 – A photograph from a cotton mill sewing class, 1988.

Sourced from https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-cotton-mills-influenced-contemporary-gender-roles/ Figure 27 - A photograph of an original Levittown house, featuring a woman and a baby.

Sourced from https://www.insider.com/vintage-photos-levittown-suburbs-50s#with-all-the-amenities-and-perks-the-community-grew-rapidly-in-less-than-a-decade-there-were-82000-people-living-in-levittown-17

Jill London ( JL): Definitely a man. Well, it depends…um, so I think for men, if either the man’s going to work locally, or he’s going to work in the city, by nature of what suburbia is – there will always be good transport links to suburbia because that’s why it was developed in the first place wasn’t it? Around the train stations?...

ML: …Yeah.

Figure 28 – Photograph of our house in Garrison Taken 2010.

Figure 29 – Lennox Heating System advertisement depicts suburban living as a paradise.

Sourced from https://rogerwilkerson.tumblr.com/post/43590217235/lennox-heating-system-in-suburbia-1950 Figure 30 – A 1950s magazine cover selling an electric garage door opener, something which only became a requirement since suburban living.

Sourced from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Car_of_the_Future_1950.jpg Figure 31 – Advertisement for a new fridge which states that it was “Designed From the Womans Angle.”

Sourced from https://www.flickr.com/photos/sputnikhousewares/2103117601/in/set-72157606298328662 Figure 32 – FIG. 31- Advertisement for an electric oven to assist women when doing househohld chores.

Sourced from https://www.flickr.com/photos/sputnikhousewares/2103117601/in/set-72157606298328662 Figure 33 – White tenants seeking to prevent black people moving into their suburb in Detroit 1942.

Sourced from https://tcf.org/content/report/attacking-black-white-opportunity-gap-comes-residential-segregation/?session=1&agreed=1 Figure 34 - A poster that the government sent out to advise on staying home during the pandemic.

Sourced from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55844367 Figure 35 – A 1950s ad for cigarettes.

Sourced from https://www.flickr.com/photos/leifpeng/106909767/in/pool-damnfineproduct

JL: So, I would say that, for a man with children, a married man with children, living in suburbia, um, is probably very satisfying because there’s going to be good transport links to where he works, or he’ll work locally, and he’s going to be able to afford a bigger house than he could if he lived in the city, and if he’s got children he’s going to have that slight sort of sense of safety about where his children live, so his children aren’t, kind of, on the mean streets of the city, they’re in a gentler suburban environment – which he will feel is safer than, possibly safer than, city living. I mean I’m sure there are plenty of men that prefer to live in the city, but overall, I think there is quite a lot to be gained for a man in suburbia… more than a woman would gain.

ML: So why would you say it’s not as good for women then?

JL: Well, no I mean it is also good for women if that’s what they want, but I think the choices of childcare are probably much more limited than they would be in the city. The choices of, so if they want to work, whilst they can still get into work as easily as a man can if it’s city based, there are going to be less, probably less, childcare facilities, and if you’ve got this distance between where you work and where you leave your children, which means that if the trains are messed up or if the motorways are messed up, or if there’s a power cut like there was in Manhattan that time, it’s harder to get back, than it is if you live in the city, and you can walk to work or jump on a bus. Obviously if you work locally, and you live in suburbia it’s probably fine for a woman. And what about people who, what about women who or men that don’t work, whichever it is the family that’s decided to raise the children, if one of you have decided to raise the children and another one work, then, then… see some people will prefer it and some won’t.

ML: Why did you automatically say that the childcare was the woman’s job just then?

JL: Well, that’s what I’m saying, so if one of you decides to stay at home and raise the children whilst the other goes to work – it doesn’t have to be the man or the woman who does that it could be either – um, and Covid has certainly showed us that. A lot of women are going out to work while the men are at home and doing the home schooling and the childcare, because often the women are the key workers in the family like a nurse, so um, but I think it’s harder in suburbia, well… I think it depends where you live in suburbia though, like if you live in cul-de-sac suburbia, or you live in a close community, a purpose built community in suburbia, where you’ve got a central swimming pool, a central sports ground, a central creche, a central school and a central everything which is very American, Americans really like that, and where everything’s built within a gated community – that’s pretty easy for both men and women, because it’s all on hand and

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you don’t even have to leave the gates. But yes, um, it depends… it’s not a very easy question is it!

ML: Yes, it’s more of a debate isn’t it. So, when we moved from London to Garrison, how did you feel about leaving the city of London to move to Garrison?

JL: Well, I was excited about the move to America because I’ve lived in America before and um, I really do like it, and it was an exciting opportunity – it was an exciting opportunity for your dad as the breadwinner, as his salary was going to be larger and he was going to have more room for promotion, more room for growth, and his career was going to be taking off and I was excited for him for that.

ML: But what about you…

JL: …well I was excited for a change, we were living in London, I was doing a 5-year child break after having Poppy and you, I was near the end and I was about to be going back to work, and it would have been quite easy where we lived because it was just a bus ride away. You two would’ve been at school then, and I would have had, you know, maybe a helper, a nanny, to pick you up and get you home, and get your homework started and feed you, and that would have been really easy living where we lived in Islington. But I think going to, where we chose to live in American, that was a lot harder for me because first of all I had to meet new people, create a new social world, create a new, join a new community of parents and um, you find out about things as you go along, and it was just like starting again. But we chose it and I wanted it, so it was easy the move, but we did go from you know, two minutes’ walk that way for a takeaway, two minutes’ walk that way for a cappuccino, two minutes’ walk that way for a supermarket, it would’ve been three or four minutes’ walk to the school, and then I would’ve walked to the bus stop to go to work…

ML: …but for you personally were you afraid of isolation, or intellectual stagnation or anything like that?

JL: Well, I didn’t really think about any of that, I just though ooo it’s a really pretty place, we could maybe build a house here, it’s got big views, it’s got the Hudson river. I didn’t really think much about myself or what am I going to do, and it wasn’t until we got there that I realised how isolating it was. You were at school, both of you, once I got home from dropping you both at school – and I was driving 20 miles for your school, driving 20 miles home, and then dropping Poppy off at the local school, and I’d get back home and I’d do some chores, then I thought – well what am I going to do now? I didn’t know anybody, do I drive to… well you couldn’t just pop out to get a coffee, there was nowhere to get a coffee, just houses, so do I go to the supermarket? Which was another 7 miles to drive, then do I get home with the shopping… there was a lot of coming home in the dark, with a full boot of shopping, two daughters, sport kit that needed washing, you know… then you’d have to start your homework. There were long journeys between school and home, and I was quite isolated within the house, it wasn’t like I could just pop in to see my neighbour because I didn’t have a neighbour, because Garrison was more spread out…

Appendix

ML: Yeah so, we went from urban straight to rural didn’t we, and Cold Spring would have been more of a steppingstone for you.

JL: Yeah exactly, its somewhere in the middle… it would’ve still been a big jump from the city but not quite as big.

ML: Right… so, were you ever planning on getting a job when we moved there?

JL: Yeah so, I thought we would go there and I would find myself a job…

ML: …where, in the city or in Garrison?

JL: Well, I realised that if I tried to get a job in the city, you were 50 miles away on the train, and the train took about an hour and 5 minutes, there were no local childcare facilities, I would’ve had to have, pretty much have a live-in nanny which I wasn’t really sure I wanted, and I wouldn’t see much of you. You hardly saw your dad when he was commuting down to the city, he would leave early in the morning and be home late at night, so I didn’t want you both to not see either of us. So, I then realised, had we moved to the city, it would’ve been a lot easier for me to get a job, as the lower earner, it would have been easier for me to get a job in the city than it was… and also by the time I’d paid a nanny, and for the train, and a cleaner and a gardener and all the people that needed to be employed so that I could retain a standard of the home, by the time I’d paid all of that I’m not sure there would’ve been much left of a salary.

ML: Yeah, that’s a common issue. So, in Garrison and Cold Spring, so basically living in Philipstown did you ever feel trapped or part of a suburban monoculture, and did you ever fear that, um, it was too noncultural or closeted for us as kids growing up?

JL: Um, well…

ML:

…well

what

type

of

families

lived

there?

JL: Yes. Definitely, Cold Spring was way more suburban than Garrison, definitely… and it would have been so much easier, because there would have been more of cul-de-sacs, you got kids playing outside in the streets on their bikes, you’ve got a parent – you’d always have a parent hovering around, possibly a group of mums and dads chatting, possibly with a coffee or a glass of wine while the kids played, and it was kind of, you know, much more community based, whereas we lived more rurally, and I think that was quite isolating.

JL: So, it wasn’t a typical suburban American town in that sense, and we did look at some of those before we moved, and that was where we did feel it was very, there wasn’t a lot of diversity. It was very white, the men all worked in the city, there were mainly stay home mums that also had a lot of help, there was a lot of wealth, there was a big gym culture for the mums. It was all about what car you drove; it was less diverse, it was less um… it was a lot less interesting than I suppose living in a city where you’ve got lots of different people – and you’ve got to watch that in Suburbia – that’s why we moved to Garrison, which had a different vibe. There were lots of artists, there were lots of designers, lots of TV people, writers, journalists, producers…um, and you had the people that worked in the city. But it was slightly different, there was a sense of ‘we all like living here because we’re all a little bit different.’ Some of those suburban areas in Cold Spring, that was very much more – whilst you get the benefits of your kids being able to play in the streets – it was more of a monoculture, haven’t got as much diversity, everyone starts to feel all a little bit the same. They were all a bit like the ‘Stepford Wives’ like the TV programme, where the women were like robots, they all look the same they were all blonde and curly, they all had all the equipment in the kitchens, they were all like super-housewives, and the husbands just liked them that way because they just didn’t challenge them, they didn’t argue with them over dinner, they didn’t ask them any difficult questions. The men were able to come home, have everything given to them at the door, “come in, have dinner, how was

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ML: So, do you think in Cold Spring, it would’ve been easier if we moved there…

Appendix

your day?” pouring them wine, and women being so happy with just their new gadgets and the tennis club, and not having an opinion on anything. I think… if we had moved to really pure suburbia, I would have missed all those things. I would have missed culture and diversity of people, diversity of race, and jobs.

There wasn’t much of that in Cold Spring.

ML: So, seeing as the families were all varied and the people were all from different cultures, do you think that reflected itself in the type of architecture that’s in Philipstown? I remember some of our family friends’ houses – some people did renovations, some people had old colonial houses, ours was like a barn renovation. Do you think it was traditionally American architecturally, or no?

JL: Actually the whole area where we lived was quite historical, there was a Historical Society in Cold Spring, a group of people who raised money to keep the history alive, they…Cold Spring was built in the 1800’s initially, and so there was definitely a vibe of ‘we want to keep it looking as pure as it could be’ and if you wanted to do an extension, you had to get, you know, the Historical Society had to approve it. But just down the road in Scarsdale and Westchester area, that whole area is even more suburban and that culture, wasn’t historical as much, that was more based on the, that grew up around the suburban American leaving Manhattan, 30 minutes on the train and the architecture there reflects that – all of our friends with houses there had those big TV rooms, the gardens, the picket fences, a laundry chute inside the houses. You know inside the houses, there was a big chute with a hatch, and everyone just chucks their laundry down, and the mum or the maid, it would go all the way down the chute to the basement or laundry room, and then it would just drop on the floor and it would go straight into the wash. A lot of my friends had those in houses, we didn’t build one though.

ML: So, purpose-built places like that, where everything is in one place in the home, and 20 minutes from the city – would you agree with the quote “suburbia is the best of the city and the best of the countryside?”

JL: Yeah, I mean, if you can be 30 minutes into Manhattan, and yet you can live with a swimming pool in your garden, and a big house and a cul-de-sac and it’s all safe, whereas in Manhattan you’d have to live in an apartment, with no outside and you couldn’t have a dog and your kids couldn’t play in the yard, I mean of course it’s a paradise for some people. The compromise is someone needs to do all the running around of the kids and the housework, and also you haven’t got the city on your doorstep. You probably haven’t got a theatre in your town, you haven’t got multiple things that the city has, and choice of shops.

ML: But do you think, because dad commuted to the city every day, he was more satisfied probably with the house, location and everything, he was more satisfied because he had both?

JL: Yeah, and he… um also for younger kids it’s fabulous, but as your get older, if you don’t, if the kids don’t drive, it’s quite tricky that, how do you get from this friend to that friend to there? – if your mum has to drive you then you don’t get the independence you get from the city, but now… so in Guildford, you could walk to school at 11 years old, you could go into town after school with your friends. Massive independence because we live in a city now, whereas when we were in Garrison you hadn’t ever even been out of your own, walked down the street on your own when you were 11 years old. So, so that was very limited for you.

Appendix

JL: Um… I think, because I was the one at home, running the house, running everything to do with the house – the choices of the house were very much my suggestions and my choices. Plus, also I was designing the house and making our house work, so I would change it. If something didn’t work, I would change it round so if the guest room didn’t work, I would change it to the back room and put this here and change this to that, because I was the one in the home. But when dad came back off the train, exhausted everyday he just wanted to flop with a meal – but then over the weekend he would be the one driving you to soccer and doing fun sports with you two. But overall, he didn’t get as involved, it was all me.

ML: Right so what were parts of the house you felt were exclusively for you, that you felt dad never went in to, or rarely did. And did dad have any spaces that you rarely went into?

JL: Well dad had um… well I had a studio because I was always creating things and I was sewing and I was doing a bit of drawing and painting, so I doubt he went it there a lot. And dad had an office, and he had a tool room where he kept his tools. Dad had a gym, he had a little gym in the house because by the time he got back from the city, the last thing he wanted to do is go out to a gym, so we made a little mini gym in the house that he would use, whereas for me I wanted to get out every day because I wanted to see people and meet people, so I went to a gym. I drove to a gym and worked out there so the gym for me was somewhere I went to also socialise at.

ML: What else did you do for enjoyment? So, you said you went to the gym and spent time in your studio but what else and what do other stay at home mums do for fulfilment? If they’re not as fulfilled within the home as you were?

JL: Well, a lot went to play tennis – lots of my friends who were also stay at home mums would go to have tennis lessons at the tennis club or go to the swimming pool. We would go shopping, we would go, like, to the mall, we would drive to the mall and buy clothes and things there.

ML: Did they become places of socialising for you and other mums?

JL: Yeah, exactly so I’d go with a friend, I’d go to Woodbury Commons with Dana and we would make sure we go to our favourite shops and we would, you know, get some lunch there, and there was definitely an element of ‘ooo lets go to the outlet mall because there might be something nice there’, we weren’t going for anything in particular.

ML: So, you were satisfied with your life there, you were satisfied with the house because we built it and because you made it work for us…

JL: …well yeah it gave me a project.

ML: Yeah, so that filled your time, but do you think you would have been less satisfied with where we lived if you didn’t have that project, and do you think you would have got a job in the city or somewhere else to seek satisfaction?

ML: So, this is a different topic, but with homes – it was found that both in the cities and the suburbs, more women thought it was important for the homes to express their personalities than did most men. Do you think this happened in our house? As I know you sort of led the renovation?

JL: Yeah, when we first moved, I don’t know if you can remember we lived in a rental for a short period and I wasn’t allowed to do anything like change colours or knock walls through. That was very restrictive, to be in a home that I couldn’t change and especially because I trained as a designer it was torture. If we

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had stayed in that rental, I probably would have got a job locally so I could be near, be around school to pick you up from school, be around to help with homework, make dinner, you’re only young you need a parent when you’re young, so I probably would have gone and got a job locally, like working in a coffee shop, maybe helping out at the school, maybe training to be a real estate agent that would have been the best option for me probably. But if we were in the city there would have been more options, I maybe could have gone back to working in fashion…

ML: …and also jobs in the city have higher pay, so would you have been willing to take a lower paying job in Garrison, that you were overqualified for in order to be nearer home, rather than a job you really wanted with higher pay but in the city?

Appendix

ML: …and were there any of these that you were aware of in Philipstown?

JL: No, nothing at all like that.

ML: But overall, you look back at Garrison in a positive light?

JL: Oh absolutely, we loved living there. It was a great experience for you two as children, and great for dads career, also the people were fab – if it were more typically American then I don’t think we would have ever moved, but Garrison was special.

JL: Yes, and that’s what I found most women did actually, they worked nearby for lower pay than they were qualified for, definitely. Occasionally there were women that went into the city every day and had high power jobs, and the husbands were stay at home dads – the thing is the children can’t do anything after school unless someone can drive them.

ML: Do you think that’s the child age though, because even if you live in a city, you’d still need to accompany your child on public transport – well they could get themselves there technically on public transport, but they’d be too young to anyway on their own – so do you think it’s just a child thing or a city/suburb thing?

JL: Well technically, but in the city you could be working so close to home.

ML: True, so if you had been working in the city how would you have coped with the lesser availability of childcare in Philipstown.

JL: Well, I would have had to employ a nanny that lived in with us, like the Dupree’s and the Hine’s who employed a live-in nanny and paid them very well and gave them a car, paid holiday and basically the nanny became the mum.

ML: But if we lived in the city, would you have to employ a nanny or would…

JL: …no because if you live in the city your kids could probably go to after school club because there were loads of those, and you would have gone there until one of us was free who would then dart across town on the subway to pick you up, or the kids could have gone to a creche – there were just more after school choices. You could have employed; you could do a nanny share with people. Quite often you would have one woman looking after three families of children, they’d pick three lots of families kids up and take them across town to the creche, also au pairs were more of an option in the city. Young women were more likely to want to be an au pair in the city, in Manhattan and live in Manhattan and be an au pair there than in the Philipstown. What are they going to do there during the day? Nothing, you could hardly get them to come to Garrison and live up there. I mean what do you do in Garrison on your night off if you’re 20 years old? Nothing!

ML: True, so would you agree that higher-density, mixed-use residential apartment blocks gave women more options?

JL: Yes definitely…

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My sister, Mum and me in Garrison, January 2006.

Taken by my Dad.

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