How inevitable is the suburban nightmare?

My parents and the parents of my friends, are the lawyers, dentists, optometrists, doctors and businessmen of this world.

When they were my age, 25, and looked into their future, they saw a well-paid job, marriage, children, a big house in the leafy suburbs of Sydney and a luxury car. Above all else they came to value material wealth and prestige.

The children of that generation enjoyed the privilege of a private school education, and a comfortable, safe, somewhat conservative upbringing. But many also witnessed the menace that underlies suburbia: workaholic fathers more interested in becoming Very Important People than domestic life. Bored, frustrated stay-at-home mothers slowly going bat crazy. Affairs. Rising debt. Alcoholism. Bitter divorces.

And of course the ultimate cliche, of which I know three examples in my close circle: fathers remarrying much younger wives, while the mother, middle-aged and therefore expired, alone in her big house. Her sanity is being slowly eaten away by those left-over feelings of devotion to her husband (she had trained herself to be so) and her incredible, burning hatred of him (she can’t believe she supported him all those years, only to be traded in for a younger model).

But I am not my parents. Perhaps my upbringing has led me to take certain things for granted, and perhaps many more things I react against. Important to me is spirituality, intellectualism, creativity, Big Ideas (rather than Big People), discovery, internationalism, freedom, truth, romance, friendship and community. And too few of these things flower in the stifling burbs of Sydney’s north-shore.

Don’t get me wrong there are many wonderful things about a suburban upbringing. But there is also much in that picture I do not want for my own future. And yet having witnessed nothing else, I truly know no other.

Recently a friend introduced me to ‘Tete-a-Tete: The Tumultuous Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre’, by Hazel Rowley. I razed through the book like an addict.

Finally, paths which were without ‘respectability’ and yet so rich, so dynamic, so meaningful! They would spend hours and hours writing or conversing about new philosophical concepts in the cafes of Paris. They traveled. They were politically engaged. Disinterested in material wealth. Had ménage à trois love affairs. Had lifelong friendships. And lived in a community; the existential intellectuals of their day.

And oh yes, their day was the 1930s-70s. Simone De Beauvoir was my age 76 years ago, and yet even today her life would be considered brilliantly unconventional.

Yes, like all they had their fair share of tragedy and dysfunction. And no, I don’t consider an ‘open marriage’ the answer to my problems. My point is not that I wish to look to the lives of these two as a road map for my own. Simply how wonderful to ‘witness’, to finally know what ONE alternative looks like. That a life without marriage or kids need not be sad spinsterhood, or the superficiality of DINKs.

Another alternative I’d like to offer is my aunt. She is a Buddhist nun, and probably the most joyful person I know. She is always busy, active in her religious community, and striving for spiritual fulfillment. During this, my recovery, I have begun to read more and appreciate Buddhist philosophy.

Do I believe it possible for me to stay true to the values I listed previously, with marriage and kids in the picture? Walk a path that need not end in a ‘Revolutionary Road’ style tragedy? (Perhaps April and Frank would have become friends with Satre and Beauvoir had they made it to Paris.)

I believe so. And yet is this not an easy slippery slope to go down?

Kids are expensive, so are mortgages.
So you get that job which isn’t really the meaningful work you were hoping to do, but it pays well.
You also move out of the inner-city into the suburbs because it’s cheaper.
Kids are time consuming too.
So you see your friends less, you abandon your creative hobbies, and you leave that exciting, young community you were a part of.
The only travel you can do are quick two week holidays every year or so.
Time moves on.
You begin to hate your job.
You resent your kids and your partner.
You’ve lost many of your friends.
Hello, suburban nightmare.