Would never dream of raising my kids somewhere like SF. If you want community, go somewhere it's valued. Everyone in the big city is a transient, only there to make money and find love before it's time to head for the suburbs.
If a smaller town works for you then great, but for most people it’s quite the opposite, or people would not have consistently migrated to cities over the last century. There are real drawbacks to the population density but it affords so many more opportunities for…everything.
My experience of living in small towns (100-20,000) was miserable. Extremely racist, homophobic, xenophobic, conservative, and so forth. Could I find a small town where that’s not an issue? Maybe but they tend to be this way. If you’re already someone who doesn’t fit into most crowds - you’re not always gonna find a welcoming scene in a small town.
My experience of big cities has also not been perfect either and I’ve lived in a few. (500k-8m) But the drawbacks of small towns are mostly gone. They’re replaced with other issues like insane competition on every front. (You’re always competing for someone’s attention and time - regardless of who they are) Cities segregate heavily even if they act like melting pots. The truth is - very little intermixing happens relative to how it should theoretically be. The upside of cities though is that there are likely more pockets of people to find a community to belong to. The downside is that it brings a lot of tribalism and exclusionary behavior. (Thus the segregation)
Overall, the USA sucks. It lacks community because we’ve decided to embrace late stage capitalism and the American identity is centered around getting fucked by the feds and capitalists. It’s no surprise that rich slave owners were writing the original rules the country would be founded on - when viewing how things are now.
Small towns come with a default community, because everyone knows everyone. It's great if you fit in, and terrible if you don't. Many people move to cities primarily to escape that community.
I don't think I've ever felt as liberated as I did while living in Tokyo, where everybody is a number and if you want to check out for a bit and steer clear of your usual circles, it's easy to do so. At the same time though, for practically anything I could possibly imagine wanting to do, there were people I could seek out to do it with.
In SF, if you seek it there is a strong parent community that feels like the other side of the fence to me - welcoming and inclusive. Everyone has different styles of parenting but we converge on keeping kids safe and supporting their play. The groups are far more diverse ethnically, economically and even politically here and I think that is healthy exposure for kids.
Yes, a few families move out each year but my son has a group of kids he has hung out with since he was 3 (8 now). The kids all go to different schools but as I have learned from people who grew up in SF, kids tend to make cross school connections and friendships pollinate across schools so high school parties can turn into big group hangs.
All this may be easier and more stable in the burbs, but the community/village mindset does exist in SF if you seek it. It's not that there isn't crime and some troubled kids here, but there are some incredible benefits to the city as well.
This may be specific to SF as we have an insanely low kid % in SF (like 5% vs. 14% most other cities).
I might be taking this bit of hyperbole(?) too literally, but while this might be a common trajectory for young professionals, it obviously doesn't cover everyone.
Definitely stealing this!