In 2001, David Brooks penned a piece for the Atlantic called “One Nation, Slightly Divisible,” in which he described crossing the “meatloaf divide,” going from Montgomery County in Maryland to Franklin County in Pennsylvania. “From here on,” he writes of his road trip, “there will be a lot fewer sun-dried-tomato concoctions on restaurant menus and a lot more meatloaf platters.” The differences, of course, were not just in the menu. “On my journeys to Franklin County,” Brooks wrote, “I set a goal: I was going to spend $20 on a restaurant meal. But although I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu—steak au jus, ‘slippery beef pot pie,’ or whatever—I always failed.” This, in turn, led Brooks to an astute observation:
No wonder people in Franklin County have no class resentment or class consciousness; where they live, they can afford just about anything that is for sale. (In Montgomery County, however … almost nobody can say that. In Blue America, unless you are very, very rich, there is always, all around you, stuff for sale that you cannot afford.)
This idea that living in Red America (mostly made up of smaller towns in the South and Midwest) places some limits on residents’ desires is a theme throughout Robert Wuthnow’s new book. In Small-Town America: Finding Community, Shaping the Future, the eminent Princeton sociologists offers the results of more than 700 interviews with people in 300 towns scattered among 43 states. Wuthnow paraphrases one of the interviewees saying, “It is easier to feel comfortable about what he has.” Not only is there little conspicuous consumption in his small town, but the man says, “You can’t buy stuff” there.
As Wuthnow writes, “the scale of a small town establishes a kind of symbolic boundary around a person’s aspirations. It says, realistically, this is what I think I can achieve. With this orbit of accomplishment, I will be content with whatever happens because other sources of satisfaction are present as well.”
And what are those other sources? Wuthnow sums up: “I can enjoy my family and neighbors and learn new things and avoid becoming overly specialized and escape the pressure of always striving for more,” These alternate sources of satisfaction are not always consciously chosen. Plenty of the people Wuthnow interviews never left their small town, and so they don’t have much to compare it to. Others found that they simply couldn’t afford living anywhere else when they did try to leave.
But there are those who have chosen this life consciously. They have tried out city life and have found it too “crowded and frenetic.” As one woman explained of her time in an urban area, “I felt like I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t know what was going on.” A longtime resident of a town of 6,000 jokes, “Oh, today was very stressful. I had to wait for a car to go by before I could pull out of my driveway.”
Small-Town America explores the complexities behind these commonly espoused benefits. While the research is not conclusive, according to Wuthnow, there have been several studies showing that people walk slower in small towns than in big cities, and that financial transactions, like paying for gas or groceries, actually take longer in small towns. So far, so good—but many of the people Wuthnow interviews have long commutes in order to get to their jobs and don’t have the kind of leisure they might like to wander around town stopping in at the local diner for a cup of coffee and chatting endlessly with the waitresses.
No, despite the slower pace of life, people don’t actually spend the whole day drinking coffee and gossiping. One man Wuthnow interviewed grew up in a small town and graduated from college, planning to attend law school and move somewhere else. But after graduation his father became sick. He went home to help his mother with the local newspaper that his parents put out each week. After his father died, he stayed on to help his mother. Eventually he married and settled down, continuing to run the paper with his wife. The two also run the local post office. Their workday begins at 6 AM and often doesn’t end until 10 or 11 at night. Still, he and his wife take a lot of time for their family. “I guess we’re old fashioned,” he says. “Believe it or not, we actually have sit-down meals with meat and vegetables. And we have a garden. Our kids actually know what vegetables are.”
The stability and “rootedness” that many small-town residents describe are certainly attractive. But Wuthnow reminds readers that the rug can be pulled out from under them very easily. Not only is farming on the decline but when plants or factories close, they take hundreds of jobs with them. Small towns don’t have much in the way of economic diversity.
And to the extent that there is a broader economic base, it is one that is funded by tax dollars. As Wuthnow notes, “The service class in small towns is increasingly supported through government programs, subsidies, and transfer payments.” He notes the sharp rise of health care facilities, whose workers “depend heavily on patients who receive government-subsidized retirement and welfare benefits.”
From economic development specialist to pollution management expert, the jobs available in small towns are not what they used to be. But the growth in public sector jobs may not sit well with other small-town sentiments: “Townspeople also say that big government cultivates dependence rather than allowing people do things for themselves.” As one community leader told him, “You encourage people to think they deserve something instead of doing things on their own and finding their own solutions to problems.” Like most Americans, small-town residents have contradictory feelings about the government. Whether they like a government program or not seems to depend, in part, on how much they themselves benefit from it.
It is true, though, that living in a small town does tend to give people a better sense of who would be helping them if the government weren’t. That is, there are many more voluntary organizations per capita in small towns and everyone knows who gives their time and who doesn’t. Many of the wealthier people in town and even the elected community leaders feel a special obligation to volunteer. One doctor interviewed in the book served 22 years on the town’s civic commission in addition to serving his patients.
Small towns have more churches per capita too, but, just like everywhere else, attendance has been slipping. Surveys show that “36 percent of inhabitants in nonmetropolitan communities of fewer than twenty thousand residents claim to attend religious services weekly or nearly every week.” That’s about 5 percent higher than the national average. And, Wuthnow notes, there may be more social pressure to attend in small towns. Overall, Wuthnow’s picture of churches in small town is reflective of churches nationwide. Mainline churches in the town centers are not filling their pews, while newer evangelical churches on the outskirts are finding a more responsive audience, including among immigrant populations.
Continuing a long trend, the population of small towns is declining. Children of small towns who go away to get a college education are much less likely to return. The only real population infusions tend to come from immigrants, who come for low-skill jobs and lower-cost housing.
And yet there are so many aspects of small-town life that Americans say they want these days. They want to know their neighbors, to unplug from technology, to allow their kids to roam more freely, to get out of the rat race, to “eat locally,” to live in walking distance from stores and restaurants and churches. But for most of us it is simply not feasible. Or perhaps it’s that we refuse to willingly place those boundaries around our aspirations.
Whatever the reason, after finishing this book, the reader in a big city or suburb will likely mourn the loss. “Perhaps the security of small-town life is all the more precious for this reason,” writes Wuthnow. “It cannot last. The community is a good place to raise children and then they depart.”
Naomi Schaefer Riley is the author most recently of ‘Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America, published earlier this by Oxford University Press.
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