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I’m raising a child in NYC right now. What is this dystopia you are describing? It’s the opposite of my personal experience. NYC is such a kid friendly place to

• rootusrootus 7y ago
  > They must be so bored… Your preconceived notions of what suburban living is like are just as inaccurate as the perceptions of city life of the person you responded to.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • joebadmo 7y ago
    I grew up in suburbs, and couldn't go anywhere without a car, so I was very bored and watched a lot of television (though I read a lot of books, too). Currently raising two kids in an urban center, and I'm excited for them to have way more opportunities than I had.
    • rayiner 7y ago
      We raised our daughter from 0-5 in big cities, and there is definitely a huge appeal to that. But on the flip side, kids don’t need to “go anywhere.” They just need other kids around. When I grew up, we just roamed the neighborhood causing trouble. That element is missing in most cities today. You can’t just count on having a mess of kids on your block. Parents are the minority, so they have to more consciously get together and schedule activities with other parents.
      • bobthepanda 7y ago
        At least in NYC, growing up, there were always playgrounds and parks full of kids. And I could go there by myself and meet my friends there. If we got bored of the nearby park we could always go use public transportation and go to a different one. And when I got older I could go to restaurants by myself, or go to museums and shows by myself, etc. There isn't that much within safe walking distance of a suburban home. Especially now that anchor tenants and the attached malls are starting to thin out. Anecdotally when I went to college, the kids from the suburbs definitely drank and did drugs much more heavily, and I suspect it was because that's all there's left to do if you get bored of video games and whatever little is actually at your fingertips.
    • rootusrootus 7y ago
      I am glad you are giving your kids more opportunities than you had. I did not have the same experience growing up in a suburban environment, and my kids aren't the least bit lacking for activities, so to each their own. My suburban neighborhood also has transit service, so there's that.
  • stouset 7y ago
    I grew up in a suburb and was bored shitless. I had one friend that lived within walking distance, and everyone else was too far away to get to without a car, which meant that I didn't get to see my friends unless it was convenient for one of my two parents (who both held full-time jobs). Cycling anywhere outside of the local neighborhood was out of the question, since the roads connecting neighborhoods were full of fast-moving traffic and no bicycle lanes or pedestrian walkways. There were "woods" between the endless maze of houses, but all of them were just parts of other people's property. And who was I going to play with in them, except for my one nearby friend? I ended up just playing a lot of video games. For all that urban centers are supposedly "hostile places" (according to the GP), I look at the adults and children I know in cities and I see mostly fit, healthy, active people with multiple hobbies and interests. I look at the adults and children I know in suburbs and I see overweight, sedentary people who spend so much of their life commuting between work, school, and home, that they barely have time for more than one day of a week of something fun like an organized sport. The rest is just spent at home watching TV or playing video games. If I do decide have children, I definitely know what kind of place I want to do it in.
    • eitally 7y ago
      There is an alternative. Don't live in a big city! There are plenty of 2nd & 3rd tier cities where you can get both a house and land for a reasonable price and still have good schools and a vibrant cultural environment. Of course you won't have some things (international airport, professional sports teams, top rate museums), but you'll make up for it in "free" QoL for your family. I grew up in a city of 75,000, in a house currently worth about $150k (purchased new in 1976 by my parents for $38k and sold in 1993 for $120k), on 2.5 acres. It was about 30% lawn, gardens & sports area and 70% wooded (with a creek, even!). I only had 1-2 good neighborhood friends but I did have a younger brother & sister and we were constantly outside doing something. I think you need to think about how you define "city" and "suburb" a little more.
      • Karrot_Kream 7y ago
        For a lot of people, the city is automatically Manhattan or downtown Chicago. They can't fathom anything but that or a suburb, and to be fair America is very bad at making anything else.
  • eeeeeeeeeeeee 7y ago
    Then why do people from suburbs flock to the cities for their entertainment? Or build their suburbs right on the edge of cities? Suburbs are boring. I grew up in them and much of my family still lives in them. I understand why people live in them — cost and space for raising kids, but they are definitely boring. And most of the people I know that live in them wouldn’t disagree, it’s a necessity driven by cost.
    • rootusrootus 7y ago
      Nobody I know flocks to the city for anything. Sometimes we drive in to the urban center, most of the time we do not. There are lots and lots of things to do without going downtown. Lacking for entertainment, or being bored, neither is something I've ever had a problem with. I think a lot of people here think suburbia is some vast wasteland of houses as far as the eye can see. Sure, that exists in some places, but a lot of us live in vary diverse suburbs with mixed residential, retail, commercial, etc. I also have to say I have not met anyone who lives in my area because it's cheaper :). If anything I could save a few bucks by moving closer to the urban core. Again, I'm sure the cost thing is true somewhere but America is a pretty big place.
    • NoMoreNicksLeft 7y ago
      > Then why do people from suburbs flock to the cities for their entertainment? In ages past, this had more to do with shopping than entertainment. I suspect that it will become obvious that Amazon has negated this need, partially or wholly. The only they don't sell (mostly) is groceries, which for the large part were and are available locally.
• mrep 7y ago
  > Museums, zoos, aquariums I don't know about you, but those are things I'd go to at most once a year so taking the train/driving downtown for those rare events wasn't a big deal for me growing up. > free events for kids, concerts just for babies, more details? > parks My friends and I used to play basketball, american football, and ultimate frisbee all the time growing up. Now I live downtown and the parks I walk past never have enough free space to play those kind of sports. Not to mention the walking parks and playgrounds in the suburbs are usually way bigger and less crowded. > swimming pools Suburbs have these too and one of my friends growing up even had their own backyard pool where we would play sharks and minnows, use the pool basketball hoop to play 21, or use the diving board. Playing the former 2 are much harder in a packed city pool then a suburban pool due to crowds, let alone a private backyard one. > little league, soccer league, skate parks, Had all these in the suburbs when i grew up and again, those require a lot of space which is in short supply in the city so there's almost always more available options to do these in the suburbs.
  • jpindar 7y ago
    Just for the heck of it, and because I have a thing for Google Earth, I counted the number of baseball diamonds (easy to spot from the air) within the city of Boston but gave up once I got over one hundred. Not counting Fenway Park :)
    • flexie 7y ago
      https://www.statista.com/statistics/189841/number-of-ball-diamonds-per-10-000-residents-by-city-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/189841/number-of-ball-di... I’d bet that most towns and suburbs with 10,000 inhabitants have 2-4 of those, or more :-)
  • asveikau 7y ago
    > driving downtown This is your problem. In a city you don't need to put yourself and your family in a deadly metallic stress machine to get places. And as a result you will feel happier and more connected. Even in a city I am sometimes very shocked at what we put ourselves through to use a car. People constantly honking and flicking each other off with various insults and me on the sidewalk wishing they'd all calm down. (And when I used to drive too much, I was angry like them, and weighed substantially more.)
• maxsilver 7y ago
  > I can’t fathom how people raise kids in the suburbs. Well, the vast majority of families could never afford to raise a child in NYC or any other 'dense urban' area, so the decision is mostly made automatically.
  • asveikau 7y ago
    > the vast majority of families could never afford to raise a child in [any] 'dense urban' area, You're missing qualifiers like "in the United States in recent times."
• notzuck 7y ago
  We both earn large professional salaries but decided to go to the suburbs for kids. We have 2 beaches within 20 minutes of us, we have parks, cinemas, out door water parks, outdoor pools, skate parks plus half an acre of garden and a big house where the kids can have a music room, a playroom, separate room for computer games and we get a very nice home office. I don't know why anyone would want to stay in the cramped city making their kids live indoors. We used to do apartment living, it sucked, especially when the neighbours kids started learning instruments.
  • alltakendamned 7y ago
    so forgive my ignorance as this might be a cultural difference, but why have separate rooms for each play function? I mean, isn't a play room and a computer game room and even a music room just overlapping ?
    • ralusek 7y ago
      The music room is for music. Why would you play computer games in the music room? Computer games are played in the computer games room. Hope this helps sweetie, I know a lot about rooms.
      • dang 7y ago
        Please don't be like this on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    • chha 7y ago
      Depends on the number of kids and what they do. Playing drums in the same room as someone trying to focus on a high-adrenaline multiplayer FPS would never work (at least not very well). Separating into multiple rooms also allows kids to bring friends over and do stuff without disturbing the other kids. Also; kids needs time to be alone, multiple rooms allows them to do stuff by themselves without having be with others.
    • notzuck 7y ago
• flexie 7y ago
  Museums, zoos and events are for once a month or once a week at the most. A garden or a suburban park is for once every few hours.
• CalRobert 7y ago
  Annnd asphalt ribbons of death just outside your home everywhere you go. Kids used to be able to play in the street in the city.
• saiya-jin 7y ago
  No worries this is a common topic - city folks can't comprehend what the heck is so great in non-city life, and folks that grew up close to nature, open places and good old lack of concrete everywhere can't see an appeal in living in city. I'd say look for a cross-section of both if you can - city so vibrant that it offers 10x (or 100x) more culture, events, activities, jobs etc. than you can possibly cover, while having walking distance to amazing swimming (at least in summer), great nature and mountains within quick drive distance for the weekends, or where traffic jams mean usually at most 1 bottleneck street getting slow a bit twice a day for an hour. Those places are rare but they do exist.
  • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    >city folks can't comprehend what the heck is so great in non-city life, and folks that grew up close to nature, open places and good old lack of concrete everywhere can't see an appeal in living in city. And all the "muh school district" types can't see that the inner suburbs are the worst of both worlds (IMO).
• chrisseaton 7y ago
  > Museums, zoos, aquariums, free events for kids, concerts just for babies, parks, swimming pools, little league, soccer league, skate parks, etc… You have to have all these things, because the children in a city can't just run off on their own and have to be marshalled and entertained at every step. Living in the suburbs I used to just go out every day and play in the woods and hills with my friends and we entertained themselves. Hardly boring!
  • lrem 7y ago
    You seem to be describing countryside, not the sea of free standing houses and small gardens most people associate with the word "suburb".
    • chrisseaton 7y ago
      Most suburbs I've seen have areas of countryside around them. That's what makes them a suburb rather than an urban centre. It's kind of by definition.
• lumberingjack 7y ago
  I had all that and I could pretend I was doing any of it in my backyard at any time with my imagination and the free space to roam I was given. Kids need to pick up sticks and pretend they are tools or imaginary things, kids need to run free and climb trees unsupervised.IMO
• credit_guy 7y ago
  I second your experience. 3 kids, NYC. Outside of the building a street with light traffic. The back exit leads to a little park, with a nice slide and sandbox (actually 2). Within 200 meters we have literally everything: school, grocery store, cinema, pharmacy, restaurants, shopping mall, bookstore, caffe, 2 libraries (one public, one privately funded, but open to public), a ballfield, a larger park with a pretty serious playground, some quite impressive gym that has a semi-olympic pool, and where the kids can also take music lessons (piano in our case), etc, etc. Oh, and our kids have hundreds of other kids to play with.
• fatnoah 7y ago
  My wife and I did the unthinkable by moving back to the city (Boston) when our son was about to start kindergarten. Our friends and neighbors acted like we were moving to the moon. Parents we connected with in the city prior to moving looked at us like we were idiots for even considering NOT moving to the city. It all depends on your perspective.
• amyjess 7y ago
  Growing up, I had several of those in the suburbs in the suburbs too. And even then, my parents would take me into the city on weekends to visit the zoo and museums (I don't remember going to the aquarium, but we had one too). But then again, where I grew up is very different from NY. My parents are both from NYC, and my cousins are both raising kids in the NYC area (one in the city, one in the suburbs), but my parents moved to Dallas a few years before I was born, and I grew up in Dallas but still got to visit my family in NY. NYC's strength is also the most aggravating thing about it: everything is in the city. This means that the suburbs are just bedroom communities with nothing to do. Visiting my family in Westchester has always felt like spending time out in the country. Dallas, on the other hand, is distributed and spread out. Except for a teeny tiny urban core, we're all suburb. We have edge cities everywhere instead of concentrating everything on one place. The suburbs where I grew up are also much denser than the suburbs where my cousins grew up, which helps. One interesting study though is with my cousins in NY. They have three kids each, and both are fairly wealthy (honestly, they make more in a year than I'll ever see in my life). One of them lives in a swanky apartment on the Upper West Side, in walking distance of both Central Park and Lincoln Center. The other lives in a large house in Westchester, not far from where she grew up. I can say that, for my cousin who lives in the city, her kids have access to everything you mentioned, and she and the kids are very happy with where they live. But she's also filthy rich and is able to afford a very large apartment in a prime location. Not many people in Manhattan have that kind of privilege. Before she moved to the suburbs, my other cousin used to live in a teeny tiny two-bedroom apartment in Battery Park City. When she had twins, there was pretty much no space for anything, and as soon as she got pregnant with her third kid, she and her husband immediately began looking for a house in the suburbs, and they moved right after she gave birth. It's a giant house with six bedrooms, an expansive basement, and a backyard that won't quit. She told me that while she misses her short commute, it's all worth it to give the kids a perfect environment to grow up in. And the kids certainly have no lack of anything to do: when I visited last year, the kids were all involved in multiple sports leagues and other activities. Everyone is happy with where they live.