Is raising kids in the city better? (population, environment, rural)
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I think city life is what they wanted as kids and they assume their kids will want the same thing. So in that sense, they are being somewhat self-centered, even if they are well-meaning in their intentions.
It would be self-centered only if we were living in the city for us, even though we thought the suburbs would be a better place for the kids. To live in the city because one wanted that as children is not self-centered. In a way, don't we all assume the best place for our kids is where we think we would be happy as kids?
Btw regarding the title of the thread - it is posed as a question, not an assumption.
I don't think I can put it any better than you just did. For some people, I think city life is what they wanted as kids and they assume their kids will want the same thing. So in that sense, they are being somewhat self-centered, even if they are well-meaning in their intentions.
I think you could say that about many major decisions we make for our children. We try to put them in a position to have a good life, but that is based on what we think is best for them, and there are no definite right or wrong answers to these questions. Is raising kids in the city better? Maybe, maybe not. Good arguments on both sides and this thread has not changed my view.
I loved growing up in Chicago in a neighborhood heavily Irish with strong Jewish, Greek and Italian presences. Bohemians too. I learned how to skitch behind cars down snowy streets, sneak smokes in gangways, drink quarts of Meister Brau in the alleys, hang around on street corners, play 16" softball in the alleys and fast pitching in the schoolyards and pool in the local poolrooms. I cut class and took the EL down to the Loop to catch 9 AM movies. When I was 17 years old I was served beer at the bar in an Irish tavern in the neighborhood. Across the street I could get a kosher hot-dog and a basket of fresh cut fries for a quarter.
In high school I worked after school for a tailor. I took the suit patterns he'd cut on the Lake St El down to the pants makers, coat makers and vest makers in the lofts on Wells St. I'd pick up the sewn goods as well as cloth from the cloth merchants on Franklin St. I got a good deal on wool sharkskin and the patterns and sewing and so had several pairs of tailor made sharkskin continental trousers that looked great with Italian knit shirts and shoes from the House of Italian Shoes on Chicago Ave. Tough enough.
@semiurbanite-You don't know teens until you've raised teens. Trust me. Having been a teen, observing teens, you still don't know until you're in the driver's seat, so to speak. You've got that all ahead of you! Actually, it was fun (most of the time)!
@Irishtom29-There was plenty of ethnic diversity in the Pittsburgh area mill town where I grew up.
@semiurbanite-You don't know teens until you've raised teens. Trust me. Having been a teen, observing teens, you still don't know until you're in the driver's seat, so to speak. You've got that all ahead of you! Actually, it was fun (most of the time)!
@Irishtom29-There was plenty of ethnic diversity in the Pittsburgh area mill town where I grew up.
It's not like there aren't teens in certain cities already. I mentioned before how when I was in Chicago I saw highschool aged teens walking around the city. Also a few times I asked directions to such and such thinking the kids were my age, but they'd be like I go to blank high here in the city. I wasn't going out of my way to ask them, they looked like college kids from in the city.
Yea if only we all had $1mil to spend on a house in Arlington and North Cambridge to live near our work and the intellectuals.
I bet you would not be playing such a rosy tune if you only could get a $175k loan and were living in Roxbury or Mattapan.
Yea, the OP seems to have ignored the price factor completely. Though, there are some relatively affordable "inner-ring" areas. Malden comes to mind, maybe parts of Medford? I think there are some relatively inexpensive parts of Somerville, where I think the OP lives, especially if she's fine with splitting a 2 family house.
I loved growing up in Chicago in a neighborhood heavily Irish with strong Jewish, Greek and Italian presences.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiana
@Irishtom29-There was plenty of ethnic diversity in the Pittsburgh area mill town where I grew up.
Where I grew up in Long Island had a similar ethnic mix to your Chicago neighborhood (though a bit more Italian-American than Irish-Americans), and perhaps equally diverse in that sense to a Pittsburgh mill town. But 50 years later, "white ethnic" identities are far weaker so it's not really the same. Also, neat to hear your story of an old city neighborhood.
@Irishtom29-There was plenty of ethnic diversity in the Pittsburgh area mill town where I grew up.
Well you gotta like a town with a neighborhood called Polish Hill. Boilermakers from Pittsburg came to work out of our Chicago local's hiring hall and were smart hands with a great work ethic, the kind of people who'd fit right in here.
So many mass shootings and school shootings in suburbs like Aurora Colorado, Littleton Colorado, Newton Connecticut.
80 percent of America's 21 worst worst mass killings took place in suburban towns or rural areas including each and every one of the five worst school massacres in U.S. history. More than 2/3s of all 61 mass shootings that occurred between 1982 and 2012 took place in a suburban or rural location.
Suburban areas can be seen as breeding grounds for the most extremely violent and sociopathic outbursts. That's not to say there isn't violence in urban environments, of course there is. But to think of the suburbs as being immune from this just defies all evidence to the contrary. The most explosive and dangerous criminal acts tend to occur in suburbs, not cities.
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