I think the first time I saw a “white picket fence” lifestyle was watching John Hughes movies growing up.
His movies almost always show very quiet and beautiful neighbourhoods with the American flag displayed outside the house and everywhere is white picket fences.
It seems to be a very idyllic setting: friendly neighbours, kids biking or getting together for a friendly game of baseball, birds chirping, you can smell the apple pie left on the window sill, people wearing their Sunday’s best for Church, and so many others.
Not gonna lie, that lifestyle seems very appealing to me.
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I’m not sure its for me, but I can definitely see the appeal.
You have them in Canada too.
Nah it’s not for me. But I also don’t really want kids.
I never found it appealing. It feels too detached from reality. The world is huge and wild, and beautiful in a way that is not easily manicured. To me, it always felt like an attempt to stifle the inherent unruliness of life and nature, instead of embracing it.
It did when I was growing up, now it doesn’t at all. After having neighbors all my life I don’t want any, friendly or not. Give me somewhere with no people, no houses around, no noise.
Car-centric suburbs aren’t actually all that safe to bike in, but also no I don’t find this vision of life appealing at all. I don’t even live in a suburb but it’s all detached houses and no sidewalks and I hate it lol.
Yes, but I would prefer to also have a six foot privacy fence in the backyard. Some of the dog breeds I am interested in can jump a four foot fence no problem. I would not leave them out unsupervised, but that’s beside the point.
Maybe, but it feels less attainable than it probably did in the 80’s. I feel like I see a lot of those movies and they live in very wealthy neighborhoods with super nice houses all around. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to afford that kind of lifestyle. Maybe I’m just a little jaded after growing up through financial turmoil
My fence is chain link, but yeah, my little half acre of paradise on a dead end road is pretty sweet. It’s almost neighborhood BBQ and bonfire weather!
White picket fences are sign to suspected Vampires that we have ample stakes and will whitewash you away if you ever come near my yard.
No. The first dummy check I have for a house is that if there isn’t somewhere I can go take a leak without my neighbors being able to see me I don’t want it.
I think it’s great but not exactly like what that image was in the 1950s.
Having a big house for your (usual) 4 person family and 1 or 2 pets is great. A big yard for the family and pets to play in. Living in a neighborhood that’s safe and you can leave your front door open if you wanted to without worrying about theft or break-ins.
Add in the current climate of our world and you (ideally) can travel and do what you want when you want regardless of your home too, assuming you have the money though if you have such a home, I assume you do.
All this sounds great and i imagine most people with a family would like the same.
I prefer natural colors, but sure.
The “white picket fence” is really just a suburban lifestyle. Basically a spouse, two kids, a dog, a yard, three or four bedrooms, and good schools. It becomes appealing if you have kids. If you don’t have kids, it feels boring.
This exists in Canada too.
Hard no from me. I prefer big city apartments. Even in the case of houses, I’d rather have my own space and not have to deal with neighbors I may or may not like. Not to mention HOAs
I definitely wouldn’t be opposed to it, and I’d take a quiet suburb over a city any day of the week, but I prefer a little less people and a little more space than what the typical affords.
To an extent. I think there’s comfort in it, but it doesn’t really appeal to my ambition nor is it something I’d want to have as part of my life permanently
I like not having a fence. They can be expensive to maintain. Also no need for one when you are blocked from your neighbors by dense forested swamp.
Yeah, I’m not 25 and going to bars 4x a week. The suburbs are popular because they’re good places to live.
It’s picturesque and pretty, but not for me personally.
Biggest thing keeping me from the “white picket fence”-type house is that I *HATE* yardwork. Everything about it. Mowing lawns, weedeating, edging, making sure the grass is perfect, etc. I have enough work to do at work I don’t wanna go home to just to do more work.
Only other reason I couldn’t live with that kind of home is I can’t stand long commutes day in day out. I work in the center of downtown and if I lived in a blocked off suburb, I’d be looking at a half hour or more commute every day there and back. Hence why I bought a condominium downtown instead for 5 minute commutes.
It sounds pretty good to me, though I won’t be having kids unless we decide to adopt at some point. And I’d have to be able to afford a lawn maintenance company because I really don’t want to deal with that.
A lot of people rag on the suburbs for not having nightlife or entertainment, but if you scratch the surface of that they’re mostly talking about new and exciting places to get drunk. Having left that sort of thing behind out of necessity, I’d much rather have peace and quiet.
I get it, but not for me. I’m a cabin in the woods kind of guy.
I live in the exurbs of a medium sized city, so I have some aspects of this but not others.
We have great neighbors who get together for bonfires and walks and our kids color chalk in the driveway, ride bikes, and play together. People keep up with their yards and are super friendly and outdoors a lot.
However, since we’re a bit more rural than the suburbs we also have bigger yards (ours is 5 acres, half wooded) with trees in between the neighbors for privacy. The lawns are too large for white picket fences.
I grew up in the suburbs and this is similar but with more privacy, which I like. I also have to drive farther to get places, so it’s a tradeoff.
Anyway, I do find some aspects of that lifestyle appealing. It’s very family-friendly.
Well, those movies idealized it.
I would say teens and early 20s people typically want to go out and see what they can build for their own lives though and find that type of thing boring. (Unless maybe they are young parents. Because it’s a good way to raise kids.)
To grow up in or get old in, boring and stable is not boring, it’s comforting.
If my backyard is also a shore to a lake or pond then sure.
All I want is my neighbors not to be assholes.
If they can become friends, that is a bonus.
Oh, and it would be great if they also aren’t crazy.
Reading the comments on Nextdoor sometimes, sheesh people are nuts.
I’m not sure that kind of community can exist the way it did for me as a child, where our parents would tell us to play outside and we would just roam the neighborhood playing with friends and looking for other kids to play with at the park until the street lights came on. Everyone is so paranoid now, and kids are caught up on screens, and staying indoors. And it’s not as if there are any more perverts out in society, probably less TBH, it’s just now they have little dots on their houses and everyone knows where they are, which was supposed to make our communities safer, but seems to have had the opposite effect on how our communities “feel”. I still find it an appealing, but I don’t know that it will ever be what it once was.
no, i live in a city and I hate suburbs
Yes a nice house in the suburbs is just right for us.
I find it out of reach for the average American nowadays.
I like my denser, urban version of it, with wrought-iron fences and brick houses that are closer together. One way streets and people block them off for parties and holidays. Playmates a hollar away, ready to race bikes and scooters or build a snowfort. But close enough to public transit and amenities that we can walk anywhere we need to be – grocer, library, school, playground, pool.
I grew up in a little town on Cape Cod, it was the fucking best and I miss it a lot. I also think my nostalgia has as much to with being a kid in 80s and a teen in the 90s as the location.
Every year on the fourth of july the neighborhood had its own little parade. We’d wrap our schwinn bikes red white and blue and gather at this one house, they’d launch a foil covered tennis ball into the crowd with a mini cannon, if you caught the ball you’d get free bag of hot peanuts from the guy with the cart.
Then the parade started and we’d all wind around the ‘hood. One year we all went through someones house! It was really like growing up in Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls…
Our HOA requires our fences to be a natural wood color, and of a specific design that no one can mistake for ‘picket’.
Owing to our landscape, it is nigh impossible to smell an apple pie baked by our neighbor, yet when people are grilling steaks and burgers the wind always gets straight to **my house!**
At any rate, while it is conforming and a bit boring, it is nice to see the kiddos out playing like kids are supposed to do. Riding their little bikes, playing in the neighborhood playground, even when the older kids are playing grabass on a summer night – I have to appreciate that they aren’t just staring at their damn phones.
I have traveled the world a bit, Asia and Europe, and I can tell you that I live like a king compared to many. You can make fun of it, if you want, hell I do because I go to the neighborhood Home Depot all the damn time. It is still not a bad way to live.
Didn’t appeal to me until I had a kid. I get it now.
No. I think it was more appealing when people were actually in those houses regularly and there could be something of a community. Now with both parents working and kids going to daycare/school/extracurriculars all day the houses are just kind of places to sleep. Those areas look lonely and boring to me- it was the community that was attractive and that doesn’t exist so much anymore from what I’ve seen.
I’m sure there are exceptions out there, but it would be really hard to tell prior to moving in and if you do get an involved community it’s as likely to be ppl just complaining all the time about so and so as it is to be a nice and friendly community.
I think many Americans (myself included) seek desperately to avoid this when young, wanting to travel, live in a big city, and not “settle down”.
After getting that out of my system, I’ve moved to the suburbs of a city to have the “white picket fence” life, and it’s wonderful. Safe, quiet, well-maintained trails and places to walk my dog.
I’m only a 15 minute drive from two different cities’ downtowns though, so it’s not like you have to make a drastic choice!
Oh god no. I fled from that life and never looked back.
ehhh it’s okay. I hate being packed in to dense city areas and if I was just choosing for myself after winning the lottery I’d be off in the mountains somewhere BUT the burbs put us right next to family, good schools, easy access to entertainment, ready transport to the city if the wife wants to go out or the kids want to hit the zoo or museum, things like that.
It’s definitely an area built for families and it works pretty well for that. As an adult living there it often seems to just be a giant exercise in mediocrity between the urban and rural extremes. Those have clear pros and cons and people tend to feel strong about both one way or the other. The burbs are just…fine. They’re fine and that’s it. It’s like that boring acquaintance you can only ever describe as “nice” because there’s nothing specific to say about them.
I guess. I prefer living in walkable cities, though.
I’d love that life, and I’d hang laundry out in the breeze, and my family would live within walking distance and everyone would be happy. Such a nice fantasy. I lived that life for the first 14 yrs of my life in the late 60’s early 70’s. That world no longer exists.
No. I prefer to avoid suburbanite small talk, awkward fake smiles, socializing, etc. I’ve enjoyed living in rural communities and after moving back to the city I realized how much I hate living near others and commuting through traffic to get to work. I plan on moving to the outskirt of a small town where I can see the stars at night, animals during the day and rarely see another human or vehicle.
No. Put me in a dense, walkable neighborhood, where I’m not trapped in my house or car all day. Let me walk outside to interesting places like they do in Spain and Italy. I grew up in a suburb, and spending years upon years in a car-dependent single family house until you finally get a car and can go to a depressing indoor mall to hangout is just the pits.
I would also accept a rural standard of living as well. Just get me out of the car-infestation.
The older I get the more I yearn for it. Kinda makes me think of the song “subdivisions” By RUSH.
More so, I feel like I just long for a life where the biggest drama is something that would land in a John Hughes movie and not worldwide pandemics and possible nuclear war with Russia.
It’s where I live now, in the suburbs of NYC. I can be in the city in 40 mins by train, but when I want peace and quiet, it’s awesome here. Sipping coffee while listening to the birds chirping right now.