What do you think?
Rate this book
The Split-Level Trap
Are we commuting to disaster? Harried young housewives are seeking escape in alcohol and stolen affairs. Husbands, frantic for success, stay later and later in the city. Teenagers, their every wish too easily gratified, steal and engage in open sexual promiscuity.
- GenresNonfiction
Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
33 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 2, 2020
Okay, this isn't that good of a book. I enjoyed it because it coined the word disturbia. The suburbs are painted as full of the new mobile culture that is walking away from traditional family and social structures and this is causing stress. This stress ends up with mental illness and other societal ills.
I agree with some of that. We have seen how isolation can cause or exacerbate mental issues.
The cases are a little lurid and feel like a type of pulp fiction. It is worth it to read just the case histories. Novelists could make hay with this for years. We have seen those tropes extend out into popular culture. How real was it? I'm not sure but it does seem a bit juicy.
The third draw for me was describing the boomer kids as the gimme kids. It seems like 'Okay, Boomer' wasn't that new of an idea.
Worth a read if you are interested in seeing recent history for a different perspective and seeing how sixty years can change the way we talk about things.
I agree with some of that. We have seen how isolation can cause or exacerbate mental issues.
The cases are a little lurid and feel like a type of pulp fiction. It is worth it to read just the case histories. Novelists could make hay with this for years. We have seen those tropes extend out into popular culture. How real was it? I'm not sure but it does seem a bit juicy.
The third draw for me was describing the boomer kids as the gimme kids. It seems like 'Okay, Boomer' wasn't that new of an idea.
Worth a read if you are interested in seeing recent history for a different perspective and seeing how sixty years can change the way we talk about things.
January 2, 2025
It was set in Bergen County but really, could have been anywhere.
Common threads in the book: No listening to elders for advice, not being prepared for major life changes, not being able to accommodate to living in a different culture.
Liked it so much, I am reading it a second time! Dated but very true.
Common threads in the book: No listening to elders for advice, not being prepared for major life changes, not being able to accommodate to living in a different culture.
Liked it so much, I am reading it a second time! Dated but very true.
May 3, 2016
This is a popularized psychological study of suburban living from the early 1960s, a collection of case histories and statistical analyses of Bergen County, NJ in the 1950s.
Ever since Freud psychiatric case studies have been a form of story-telling that borders on fiction, having names and circumstances modified to conceal identities, and being used to give “a local habitation and name” to broader concepts. Each of the case histories give a brief, but fairly detailed summary of a suburban family’s background and social and economic situation. The stresses that arise from some combination of background and current circumstances cause a crisis, mental, physical, or legal, in one of the family members; this crisis is obviously a message to the family and, by implication the reader, that “you must change your life”.
Unlike most respectable fiction, however, the book goes on in its second half to spell out exactly how these people, and, again, the reader, need to change their lives to fit into and thrive within the "mobile society" that dominates midcentury America. The authors' classification of people as "producers" and "freeloaders" smacks a bit of Ayn Rand, though they would probably admit a wider range of citizens into the former category, even including, perhaps, politicians. Rather than celebrating individualism, which Ms. Rand claimed to do, and which most character-based fiction does even, or perhaps especially, when depicting its failures and outcasts, the tendency of the prescriptions is to encourage a broad conformity among suburbanites, allowing for enough functional diversity to remodel their "Disturbia" (as they all too often refer to their subject) into a happy hive of busy bees.
Ever since Freud psychiatric case studies have been a form of story-telling that borders on fiction, having names and circumstances modified to conceal identities, and being used to give “a local habitation and name” to broader concepts. Each of the case histories give a brief, but fairly detailed summary of a suburban family’s background and social and economic situation. The stresses that arise from some combination of background and current circumstances cause a crisis, mental, physical, or legal, in one of the family members; this crisis is obviously a message to the family and, by implication the reader, that “you must change your life”.
Unlike most respectable fiction, however, the book goes on in its second half to spell out exactly how these people, and, again, the reader, need to change their lives to fit into and thrive within the "mobile society" that dominates midcentury America. The authors' classification of people as "producers" and "freeloaders" smacks a bit of Ayn Rand, though they would probably admit a wider range of citizens into the former category, even including, perhaps, politicians. Rather than celebrating individualism, which Ms. Rand claimed to do, and which most character-based fiction does even, or perhaps especially, when depicting its failures and outcasts, the tendency of the prescriptions is to encourage a broad conformity among suburbanites, allowing for enough functional diversity to remodel their "Disturbia" (as they all too often refer to their subject) into a happy hive of busy bees.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews