[dagw]

I raised a child in the middle of a city from age 0-8 and it was great. So much to do! Parks, botanical gardens, playgrounds, museums, swimming pools, fun fares, concerts and so on, all within walking distance or at worst a short bus ride.

[bluGill]

The things you can do in a city are different from the things you can do in the suburbs, are different from the things you can do in rural areas. There are pros and cons of each.

Sadly in the US many dense cities have abandoned the things that kids like to do, leaving those who like city things to the suburbs as the best compromise.

I know someone who started a children's museum, when she started the city tried to get her downtown with some nice incentives. She didn't though because there are zero kids who live downtown, and the next ring (in city limits) is either rich no kids, or too poor to afford a to visit. That means everyone who might go is going to drive from the suburbs and so a location with free parking in the suburbs was better able to attract visitors, even though it means half the potential customers will find it too far to drive, the other half will find it more convenient and thus come more often.

I don't know how cities can solve that, but it is a problem repeated in most cities. It didn't used to be that way, cities used to have a lot of people with kids. In general cities have abandoned families as families moved out (you can find lots of people pointing blame as to causes here - I'm not going to speculate), and it will be hard to bring them back. Not all cities have done this as much as others.

[bart_spoon]

Yeah, American cities are actively hostile to young families. It doesn’t have to be this way. I lived in Japan for several years and it seems like a much healthier urban environment for children and their parents. But in the US, it’s hard to justify in most cases the cons of living in dense urban area with young kids, even if you as an adult would enjoy it more.

[leetcrew]

in my social circle, the number one reason why families leave the city is the abysmal public school system. it's not a big deal to the wealthier families, since they can just send their children to private schools. middle income families usually can't afford that, but they can afford to hop over the county line and send their children to the very good public schools out there.

at least in my area, I wouldn't say the city has "abandoned" families. rather, it has focused mainly on improving public education for children from poor families. this is a noble goal, but it imposes tradeoffs that the middle class families are mostly unwilling to accept. since they have the ability to leave, they do.

[dagw]

in my social circle, the number one reason why families leave the city is the abysmal public school system.

That is true. If my daughter hadn't gotten into a good charter school in the city, I wonder if we hadn't looked a lot harder at moving. However after we did eventually hop over the county line my daughter still 'commutes' back into the city because she doesn't want to change schools.

[lotsofpulp]

It’s not the school system that is abysmal, it’s people not wanting their kids to mingle with kids from lower income/less wealthy families. Cities might have various socioeconomic classes living near each other, and so the schools have a more mixed population.

Suburbs can restrict their schools to those that can afford to live there, so those public schools can have very few kids from lower socioeconomic classes, and a greater proportion of kids from people who are in higher earning professions.

[anonfornoreason]

I am a parent of a kid who starts kindergarten in 6 months. Moved to a smaller mountain town in the same state six months ago, primarily because of the schools. Our old local school (4 block walk) has a 1/10 rating. The city just put in a homeless camp literally across the street from the school. I would do a needle sweep before letting my kid play on the playground there, and would regularly find needles on the playground (school grounds aren’t aloud to lock up outside of school hours due to federal laws).

I grew up middle class in a upper middle class school district, with attentive and loving parents. My mom stayed at home and raised us. I was still exposed to skipping class, drugs, and alcohol in middle and high school. I almost didn’t graduate myself, due to poor choices. This is in a school with a 92% graduation rate. I understand from intimate personal experience that the more opportunities your kids have to interact with peers making poor life choices, there is a higher chance your kid gets caught up in it despite what you do as a parent. This isn’t sheltering (I certainly wasn’t sheltered), it’s just repeat exposure to exciting but bad choices leads some kids to temptation.

I could have moved to a more expensive neighborhood in the city but the same fundamental problem exists. I don’t care about how much money people have, I care whether in aggregate, the parents in my community try to raise their kids with intention. There’s a shocking lack of that in 40% of the families in the schools in the city we moved from.

[leetcrew]

the city school system is indeed abysmal by pretty much any metric you could choose to evaluate (test scores, high school graduation rate, violent incidents, odds of imprisonment, etc).

I'm familiar with the argument that the cohort of students matters more than the quality of instruction. in fact, that is what I'm getting at here. the city has an explicit policy of mixing students from different backgrounds across the school system, the goal being to break the cycle of poor students going to poor schools and staying poor. it's a good goal, but it seems kinda pointless when all the students they are trying to mix them with are fleeing to the county.

[hnal943]

Wrong. It's the school system that is abysmal. Compare test scores any urban public school district to a middle class suburb.

[AnimalMuppet]

We lived in a middle- to upper-middle-class suburb, served by a middle- to upper-middle-class school district. Our elementary school tested in the bottom third of the state.

Sometimes it's the school, not the school system.