I don't have kids and won't have kids, but I definitely didn't have those things growing up in a suburb. It's not at all required unless you're homeschooling.
This is a case of lifestyle inflation and then complaining about lifestyle inflation. Public school is good enough, your kids aren't better than the rest of the people in SF.
> But I also live in the bay area now, and have kids, and can confidently say that it's a different experience for kids than what you are talking about.
The different experience is that you make more than your parents did at your age and thus have lifestyle inflation.
The IT guy for a car dealership in Milwaukee is allowed this kind of "lifestyle inflation" no problem. The point of Silicon Valley is that high level and differentiated computer skills can make you rich. Part of that might be slumming it a bit during the early stages of your career or startup, hence the commandment against lifestyle inflation. But in a career role, your Silicon Valley TC better give you a better lifestyle than what’s generic computer guy gets from a non-tech business in a normal metro area. And given prices here, that’s a big number.
Obviously Bay Area amenities are worth something. Are they worth descending an entire social class? Maybe to some. But I think most rational people will go fix the computers at that car dealership, and put their kids on the travel team. You are not obliged to live an austere life just because someone offered you a (locally) mediocre job in the Bay Area.
I grew up on the Peninsula and my parents were not paying for any of this stuff. Public school parents organized soccer games and park days and other times we just road cheap bicycles around and went to each others houses and occasionally caused trouble.
Felt relatively safe and of course once we got older we would just hop on caltrain for super cheap and head up to SF. Told our parents we were going to "the movie theater". New Years in San Francisco at age 13 was definitely interesting