Kids change mindset.
Kids love yards. They love the little creek that runs past.
I love the safety. Small neighborhood, we all know each other and look out for the kids that run around playing.
Kids love yards. They love the little creek that runs past.
I love the safety. Small neighborhood, we all know each other and look out for the kids that run around playing.
We moved from a big city to suburban hell a few years after having a kid. In those first years, we took our kid to museums, parks, playgrounds, etc. all over the city. Now there is jack shit to do in the suburb we're in except going to the mall, cannot walk anywhere, have to use the car 100% of the time to even go to a shop. A backyard is a sad place compared to something like Central Park. I feel so sad for my kid. If the prices keep going lower in cities and remote work becomes the norm, we're moving back. (Un)fortunately my wife hates it here too, and we've often talked about moving back to a city.
Personally, I prefer to take my car to the shop because I don't want to carry a car load of stuff home. And Central Park is something I like to visit, but I wouldn't send a young child to play there by themselves.
What's so bad about a nice suburb? By nice, I mean "with parks, and nearby mountains, and community centers", not just cookiecutter crap from horizon to horizon.
Sure, there's no live jazz around, but it's not like the city is so far away that I can't go and get some of that when I want it, and meanwhile I can leave my kid's bike on the lawn overnight and it'll be there in the morning.
Autonomous Zones are only going to make this worse.
Downsides are that it’s almost as expensive as the city (you can get a bit more space for your money, but not a lot more) and closer proximity to “urban” issues like grit, crime, homelessness, traffic that you can be more insulated from in the sprawl.
Back in the suburbs now and the kid would spend his Saturdays watching TV if I didn't stop him because the alternative is ... the one playground in driving distance? The movies? Target?
People really underestimate the volume of activity you can put in front of a young kid in a city.
- regular (meaning periodic) physical activity is essential, for the adults and kids. Sports leagues, gym classes, whatever. If you’re not into sportsy physical activity, you need a physical hobby like woodworking, gardening, or literally anything to get your blood flowing
- your weekly schedule looks totally different as the seasons change. Skiing in winter, hiking and camping in the fall, beach vacationing in the summer, etc
- regular domestic vacations to escape the boredom, and to make you long for home.
- regular home improvement, to make your life in your house 1% better every month
- regular visits with nearby close friends and family. At least one visit to a close relation every two weeks. Non negotiable, and ideally tied to holidays
- overdo your holidays. Birthdays are huge, winter holiday (Christmas etc) is huge. Thanksgiving is huge. It has nothing to do with the meaning of the holiday and everything to do with getting people together.
These kinds of things are less achievable in the city because you have less money, less space, less autonomy. Just my observations from happy suburban families, I’m curious to see others’ notes.
The idea is to expose your kids to a wide range of activities, and support them doubling down on an evolving handful of them. Avoid setting super specific constraints (you must play a team sport), and instead try setting goals (find a physical activity you enjoy and find motivating). From my perspective, parenting is about exposing children to their options, and making some choice recommendations where you have experience.
Parents can do that anywhere, and fail to do that anywhere. I do agree that if your parents aren’t doing a good job of that in a walkable city, kids are more likely to discover those options on their own.
For example, imagine that your kid wants to pursue rock climbing or small boat sailing, and your family lives in NYC. Or, you want to have a holiday gathering of 20+ people. The options exist but they're exorbitantly expensive.
I grew up in the suburbs. I loved we had a 2 car garage with tools. My dad had a radial saw and built all kinds of stuff. We ran a neighborhood haunted house in it. We also had a pool in the backyard, all our friends came over often. We had a 20x30ft family room that was build to be sound proof so my dad could practice drum playing. It was at the far opposite side of the house from my parents bedroom and they let us use it for slumber parties often. There was a collection of hobby stores a few minutes away by bike. One neighbor had a small farm in his backyard with 4 fruit trees and various stuff in between. I loved all the neighbors. One had a go-kart that we would ride from time to time. My parents entertained often including an 80person new years eve party every other year. Could walk or ride our bikes to school where we launched model rockets and watched people fly radio controlled gliders.
That said I'm not dissing the city. I can't really imagine what its like to be in NYC as a kid but many European cities seem like great places for both adults and kids.
I feel you. We did the same, but that's because our son has ADHD and public or private schools in the city weren't cutting the mustard. We all miss the city and our friends there, and I miss walking everywhere. It was an awesome place to raise a child, but circumstances forced our hand.
There's no natural law that says kids can't play safely in nature in an urban environment. Plus the added benefit of meeting and interacting with other kids from all different walks of life.
We just have to prioritize it - and unfortunately the "got my own piece of nature and I'll drive everywhere else" suburban mindset is part of what forces our cities (and suburbs) to remain dangerous asphalt wastelands.
Also, they raise plenty of kids in other countries where they haven't oriented life around suburbs.
Also, this was more true in the United States before white flight, and the US raised plenty of healthy kids then.
So I don't think the kid thing makes as much sense as they say. But the state of US school systems does make the urban kid raising thing needlessly expensive for many.
Still, I think more of an effort should be made to improve US urban public schools. I don't know what the answer is. It's surely very complex. I am not a specialist.
I might as well just copy your last paragraph.
Additionally, we love the parks, the playgrounds, the gardens, we walk to childcare, walked to work before this whole pandemic thing. We all have memberships with the museum and the zoo that give us unlimited visits. And since the pandemic, my son often rides in a Thule transport behind my bike. we've got a creek along the bike trail, and one in one of the gardens. we've even got a children's farm down the road.
Culturally many Australians are like Americans: the refrain is "you need to move to suburbia once you've got kids" and "kids need a back yard to run around in" and "you can't raise a kid in an apartment". To the point that half of them never move into the city in the first place or reflexively move out without an actual thought or goal. And it IS frustrating to lose friends (so far everyone I've talked to that has moved out regrets it or at least looks back wistfully) , and knowing that this belief is the viscious circle that stops people improving cities.
But while I will admit that rural areas have something we can't replicate in the inner city (we all have trade offs after all), I WANT my child to have the opportunities afforded in the city and will actively fight the forces trying to set suburbia as a default. judging by the number of childcare centres, prams and scooters showing up in my neighbourhood, we might finally be on the verge of a generation that will try to stay.
the pandemic has changed things, but as I've said to my wife and has been echoed by other posters, maybe this will clear the way for people who want to be here...
I grew up in one of the small, very coastal Australian towns that stayed beautiful but got expensive and boring (alternative seems to be: grew big and turned awful, not much middle ground here).
This was a ride your bike to school at 6 years old, spend one third of your life in the ocean, "just try to be home for dinner" town.
Then I spent some time in some of the nicer, central suburbs of a second tier Aussie city.
Then some small, blue collar northern European industry towns, then a major southern European city.
Of those, and given the chance/choice, I'd raise children in the tiny coastal village and the dense European city (within 100m of my apartment - pedestrian streets - there were two small playgrounds, a market, a school, a library, a park, the beach was a 15min walk). Anywhere between those two extremes and adventure turns into a thoroughly planned outing, with a strict time limit on the paid parking if you got lucky and found a spot.
The moderate densities are (or become) sprawling nothings with one coles/woolies/liquorland/bws/bunnings "hub" and long commutes to anywhere. Like you, many of my friends who plan to become young families seem to gravitate towards these starter-package lives, and although I'm probably listening for it, I hear the same regret and resignation from them that you do.
Older relatives live in more expensive versions of the same thing, with a better quality finish on the bathroom and a glass fence on the pool they never use, and an 80k SUV for the just-as-long commute. There might be a flashy bowls club filled with pokies instead of a shitty tavern filled with pokies.
Keep fighting the good fight. We build these 5 bedroom homes in the suburbs so that we're comfortable staying home. Because there's nothing to do outside, because we spent so much energy building nothing suburbs.
Technically this is policy and not law but you could rack up huge fines if you do not supervise your kids. Often times parents trade off and coordinate but it’s still a hassle.
Many HOAs have rules that require children under the age of 13 to be supervised by an adult when outside the home.
We can walk to many things. We are still considered suburban.
Further out and walking to shops is less plausible. But then you have lots of nature to wak around
Your description sounds the exact opposite of suburb to my experience.
A suburb area is optimal for young kids as they can go everywhere. Parks, playgrounds, forest trails, movie theaters, everything is within a 10 minute walk or 3-5 minute bike ride. That's what the suburb experience means to me and the life we live right now.
In a city (SF/NYC) I couldn't possibly let my <10yr old go anywhere without extreme supervision given the crime, drugs, abusive cops, prostitution, crazy homeless, etc in every corner.
Maybe it’s just a “grass is always greener” thing, but I always wonder why people assume kids really want the suburban life.
Crime stuff in cities, nice family comedies in the suburbs.
Walking to school requires school/daycare/extracurricular center in walking distance walkable city. The spread in suburbs means that distances are higher then in the city.
But parks? In the NYC suburbs (maybe exurbs is more accurate) where I grew up, I had like 5 beautiful state parks within walking distance from my house. I could walk through my friend’s backyard to a pair of beautiful lakes where we could swim, fish, kayak, whatever.
It’s interesting. I’m not trying to be argumentative, but when I go to the city (any American city, at least), I find it to be really dirty, loud, and I find the people to be generally rude. I also don’t like the complete and total lack of outdoor space that isn’t public. Nothing beats a backyard to me.