Gary Gates over at Freakonomics Quorum on the future of suburbia:
While Ward and June Cleaver and their two boys might still be around in the suburbs in forty years, my guess is that their neighbors will be Olivia and Harriet and their twin girls. The Will and Grace version of gay America — urban, wealthy, and white — is starting to look a bit dated.
Suburban locales like Decatur, Georgia (Atlanta), Takoma Park, Maryland (Washington, D.C.), and Ferndale, Michigan (Detroit), are joining urban neighborhoods like Castro, Chelsea, and West Hollywood as gay meccas. Lots of lesbians and gay men now view the suburban home with a white picket fence and a family with 2.5 kids as their version of gay equality …
Suburbs, home ownership, and marriage — what’s left but the kids? In 1990, fewer than one in ten same-sex couples had children. Today, it’s more like one in five. In states like Mississippi, South Dakota, Alaska, South Carolina, and Louisiana, it’s one in three. The gay-by boom is alive and well in small town and suburban America. And these new parents are largely non-white. African-American and Latino/a lesbians and gay men are two to three times more likely than their white counterparts to be raising kids.
So back to the question at hand — my vision of suburbia circa 2050. Lesbian and gay families will be a much more visible community fixture. They’ll probably be married, own their homes, be raising a few kids, and will very likely not be white.
August 13th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I’m surprised about the stats for the southern and middle American states. What about the possibilities for this expansion further north? Are the burbs of WV and PA the kind of places that would adjust well to this demographic shift?