"The image of the 'wild kid from the suburbs,' starved for love but given enough money to indulge himself in drag racing and drunkenness, 'is largely mythical,' Father Andrew Greeley writes. He wishes, in fact, that suburban children were somewhat wilder, or at least more imaginative. Father Greeley finds the suburban youngster domestic, quiet, docile, unimaginative, sophisticated, worldly-wise, and 'just a trifle cynical.' In his middle teens he may have had big dreams and noble ideas, but this period does not last long. He adjusts too well and too easily to the world his parents have created, and Greeley finds this adjustment disturbing. 'It is the function of the // young to dream dreams,' he states, ' to infuse a little restlessness into society.' For him as for many critics, suburban children are socialized too early and too completely. They schools, especially, stifle any imagination the child may demonstrate, train out any individuality. The children are not too wild; they are too darned mild." (130-31)

(Donaldson, Scott. The Suburban Myth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. Print.)