The Pearl District in the heart of this perpetually self-improving city seems to have everything in new urban design and comfort, from the Whole Foods store where fresh-buffed bell peppers are displayed like runway models to the converted lofts that face sidewalk gardens.
Everything except children.
Families with children are leaving the city in droves, even as cities buff themselves up for the trendy childless. Wrote a year’s worth of
Apt. 11d 
If this is you off your game, well there is not hope for pathetic bloggers like me.
There must be something going around. I posted on moving, so has Finslippy, Laid Off Dad and Phantom Scribbler. Is the blogosphere reflective of this larger trend?
Thanks for the link for the NYT article. I live in the Pacific Northwest and visit downtown Portland often. The Pearl District is lovely and fun, as are the surrounding neighborhoods. However from what I have seen most of the shops and restaurants aren’t terribly family friendly. I am usaully visiting with only adults, so I am not looking for kid places, but I rarely notice them. Frankly when I think about moving somewhere like that, kids are immediately stop me. Okay and real estate prices. We had to move out of the heart of downtown in a much smaller city to be able to afford a larger home. I expect that is what is happening most places.
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In DC, people flee the city because of the state of public schools. Neighborhoods like Capitol Hill are crawling with babies, but parents seems to move before kindergarten sets in. To stay put means you have to be able to afford pricey private school.
Also, space is a huge issue. Most people I know are willing to work with small spaces, but there is a limit. We’re getting ready to move out of our older, close-in, pedestrian suburban neighborhood because we got tired of having to regularly take things to Goodwill just to keep our house from drowning in stuff. And we were tired of every purchase we made coming down to product dimensions and whether or not it folded/collapsed.
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Child-free Cities
An interesting discussion over at 11D on why cities are difficult places to raise kids..
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“Families with children are leaving the city in droves, even as cities buff themselves up for the trendy childless.”
I don’t have children but my husband and I feel that if we do decide to have them, we need to leave Manhattan. It’s a shame. I always thought raising a child in the city would allow him/her diverse experiences he/she wouldn’t receive in the suburbs. However, in order to give our future kids the staples in life, food, shelter, clothing, we need to consider moving from this cultural mecca.
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On the different camps question – I’m a single childless person who has lots of nieces and nephews that I’m close to, and friends who are moms whose children I’m also fond of, so I personally don’t get the gap there. I’m not sure if it’s that single people don’t make enough allowances for people whose lives are more demanding and complicated, or if their married friends with kids withdraw into family life, and create the distance themselves.
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I’m not so worried about kids happening in cities as I am about their happening AT ALL; if you get out of grad school at 30 or so and then work-like-mad to get your debts down far enough that some bank will lend you on a house you are probably 36-38 and by that time the usual couple of gins and tonics and a failure of precaution is NOT GOING TO DO IT, you are off to the fertility docs and tens of thousands of dollars later maybe you have a kid.
One
I talked to my first son’s kindergarten teacher, in the leafy close-in suburb in which we live (where average houses have gone past the $700000 mark this year). In his class of 23, there were ten only children, ten from families of two, and he was one of three from a family of three or more.
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The call of the suburbs
The New York Times had an article Thursday on the disappearance of families with children from otherwise thriving urban areas. This topic certainly resonates around the blogs I read, from 11d to finslippy.
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“My Turn” in the current “Newsweek” is also about this question, a woman who lives in Manhattan talking about how great it is to raise her (one) child there. She says her daughter’s school is in the United Nations district– I’m assuming that’s a wealthy area?
As someone currently living in a city, with daughters who are growing ever-closer to the dreaded “School-age”, who thinks about this issue CONSTANTLY, yes, it worries me a lot. Part of what I love about the city is the diversity of experiences, but how long will that be true if the drastic income gap between famlies with children in cities continues to grow larger?
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Strollers
Buy Single Strollers and Double Strollers items from Find exactly what you want today.
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