Las Vegas: The Threatening Issues to its Residents

Suspicions about a problem with local youth had long circulated in the resort city. National agencies confirmed the existence of trouble during the late 1950s and 1960s by recognizing the high rate of delinquency in southern Nevada. Residents at first found it hard to believe that they had a real juvenile problem, and then regretted that they had not built facilities to occupy their children.

Both the absolute number and the proportion of youths in the population had grown considerably over the 1950s, but expansion of facilities for juveniles--- schools, parks, recreation centers, and social services--- did not keep pace. It occurred to Las Vegans once more that in paying so much attention to adult tourists, they had perhaps neglected resident children.

Parents in Las Vegas Valley would have been pleased if solving the juvenile problem had simply been a matter of building more facilities, but in fact, delinquency troubled them at a deeper level. It illuminated the shortcomings of the hometown by dramatizing the pitfalls faced by children. Las Vegans began to question whether the family could ever coexist healthfully with the resort city.

The presence of casino gambling and its trappings--- extensive drinking, burlesque shows, carefree tourists, prostitution----clearly contradicted people's notions of a proper childrearing environment. Residents also recognized that the round-the-clock schedule of the city, and the large percentage of one-parent households resulting from the high divorce rate, reduced adult supervision of young people.

Parents concluded that family life was more difficult in southern Nevada and worried that raising children there was harder than elsewhere. Adults felt more powerless as parents. They held generally lower expectations for their offspring, according to one survey, and tended to raise children more permissively. At bottom, Las Vegans feared that they could not convey proper moral standards to youth and that their city had thus undermined one of the central functions of the family.

Whereas adults might survive and prosper in the permissive city, children seemed terribly vulnerable living in Las Vegas. Although perceptions of family breakdown were perhaps exaggerated, wide-open gambling appeared to work against the interests of stable domestic society. It formed the basis of a tourist industry that catered to adults and gave Las Vegas an orientation that diverged from ideals that shaped most American communities during the postwar era.

The suburban trend of the mid-twentieth century gave an unprecedented amount of attention to children as the principal focus of community organization. Las Vegas parents felt the same impulse to build a hometown that would nurture and protect their children, but they also felt less optimistic about their chances for success. As the city grew and grew after 1940, long-term residents lamented the passing of the stable, cohesive, and friendly town they had once known.