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YIMBY sentiment on this forum has (I think) been mostly focused on increasing the density of existing residential zones. However, it may be worth noting that there is an alternative: converting existing agricultural or unused land to low-density residential use (i. e., continuing to "sprawl"). In this article, a former employee of the libertarian Cato Institute accuses that organization of focusing exclusively on high-density housing, and of smearing as racist people who are not interested in long-term high-density living and clamor for more single-family houses. (In his view, upzoning imposed from the top down is not libertarian, because the existing owners have a sort of property right in the zoning of their neighborhood as a substitute for deed restrictions that could or should have been used instead of zoning codes.)
I've lived in many suburbs in a few states. This describes zero of them. My son's friends are right down our walkable suburban street. A really nice and large park is a few minutes walk away. It even has a large dogs-only section. It conveniently lacks a drug den/homeless encampment, so I can actually bring my young son there.
As a lifelong suburban dweller, I'm not suffering from childhood social and physical isolation. Suburbs are overrun with children who visit each other's houses and go to local parks. Most houses in my neighborhood have kids.
The bank and the Starbucks are indeed too far to practically walk to. The high school is much too far away for walking. I'll gladly bear that burden.
I grew up in a "suburb" that was less walkable than even the one @ResoluteRaven describes. Literally zero destinations in walking distance other than single-family homes. Maybe a few dozen of those in walking distance at most depending on how you count and exactly one of them had a child my age; only a handful of others had children at all. "Walkable suburb" is an oxymoron to me; I'd just call that a single-family zoned urban area, but I think I'm the one with the wrong definition here.
I think what's going on is (1) there's a lot of different densities of all single-family home zoning that get called suburbs, with newer ones or ones closer to the city center being a lot denser, and (2) new suburbs are pretty uniformly families with children because when there's a lot of new houses for sale at once, that's who's buying them. But as they age, they don't necessarily immediately move out and sell to another family with children, so over time, there's a lot more older families mixed in with the younger ones.
Since @wlxd mentioned the Seattle metro, I think there's also a bit of East Coast vs. West Coast difference here: the West Coast seems to pack things much more closely to the cities or go so spread out no one is going to come up with "suburb" instead of just calling the area rural. The East Coast is a lot more evenly spread out with suburbs just going on forever. Some of them happen to be close enough to a city to actually be somewhat walkable, but a lot of them aren't.
For what it's worth I mean West coast suburbs only. Outside of various major West coast cities I grew up walking and biking to schools, friends houses, jobs and college. What an independent and enabled free range childhood I was privileged to live in those various suburbs. And I'm not some old timer. I'm in my 30s. I may be so enormously biased in their favor because they were so great for me. There's some correct way of organizing walkable bike-able suburbs. A child with a cheap bike is empowered in them. I've never not lived in a "15 minute city"; and I've never lived in the city.
I have heard that people in certain Arizona suburbs had very different experiences. They got driven to yet another repetitive strip mall or they went nowhere. They couldn't walk or bike anywhere given the distances and temperatures involved. I don't have actionable solutions for them.
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