Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1962-11-15
By Roger B. Farquhar
Sentinel Reporter

County resident has written
a book in which he asks
whether suburbia's children
reared in a FILTERED
atmosphere by "well-mean-
ing think alikes trying their
well-meaning best in a set
ting which nobody has yet
fully understood"-will wind
I'D as naive, frenetic snobs
unable to face adult respon-
Sibilities.
Peter Wyden, one-time Be
thesda-Chevy Chase resident,
calls his book "Suburbia's Cod
died Kids Doubleday & Com
pany. Garden City, N. " and
Montgomery County parents
whose median family income
has been found to be the high
est in the nation are likely to
come out of their upholstered
corners fighting.
Wyden tells in his book about
the reaction of suburban par
ents all over the country to an
article on the same subject he
wrote for The Saturday Eve
ming Post. Suburbia's parents
reacted strongly - SO strongly
that Wyden, who lived in the
suburbs of Chicago and St.
Louis, as well as of Washing
ton, was encouraged to write
book about it.
Pointing out that he is guilty
himself of most of the charges
raised against suburbia in his
book, Wyden then goes on to
spell them out.
He tells of the sixth grader
in a Chicago suburban school
who tried to pay for his So
cent school lunch with $50
bill.
A four-year-old, he reports,
was taken by his mother to st.
Louis where he spotted a Negro
how and said, "Look how dirty
that boys face is"
There was the 17-year-old girl
from a wealthy family who
didn't know how to get on
downtown department stores
escalator because she had never
seen one.
In his swiftly-paced account of
the mainstream of strange sub
urbia the author relates how
the subject matter first regis
tered with him when he and
his two boys were walking near
the North Shore Railroad tracks
In Highland Park, Ill. one Sun
day and they say small boy,
filthy and shabbily dressed,
peering at them out of an UNI
painted door.
"Iook, Daddy" said the 10.
year-old, "a frontier Kid"
'What sort of a picture of the
world are our children getting
by growing up in the suburbS?"
he asks. Are his own children
an extreme product of sheltered
suburban upbringing? he won
ders.
81 began to talk to friends,
teachers, social workers, guild
ance cOumselors, pediatricians
and Others" he relates.
His research uncovered a null
tiplicity of stories about sub
urbia's children.
There was the perfectly nor
NAL 13-year-old girl who on one
of her rare excursions out of
suburbia into the inner city
broke into tears at the unaccus-
toned sight of an inebriated
passerby.
An eighth-grade boy asked
Of his teacher: with your
talent, why aren't you out in
another job making money!"
Today, there are more than
10 million children-28 per cent
of all U. S. children-living in
the suburbs, the author reports.
"Today's enterprisnig families
are lodging problems by fleeing
to suburbia," he says. 1.-THE driv-
ing force that makes suburbs
proliferate," he contends, is es-
cape. Escape from dirt and
crowding, switchblade knives
and minorities and, well, I'M
pleaSantneSS."
When families move farther
and farther into the mo mans
land of yesterdays pastures"
into increasingly self-sufficeint
subdivisions, he says, "the effect
Of this new isolation on the ORR
entation of children is a little
short Of staggering"
while most of us were not
looking" he says, "a little-noted
process began to fission away
out in the now-so-distant subur-