Anyone grow up in the city/raising teens in the ciy

[helena101]

Originally Posted by Avondalist

Sure, if your parents are rich and can afford to live in Lincoln Park and send you to Latin you will have a great childhood. But a home in Lincoln Park can cost over a million dollars and Latin costs over $35,000 per year. A tiny percentage of people have that money. I guess the secret to raising a child in the city is simple: you have to be rich to do it right for the kid.

For the unwashed masses, the suburbs are better, and definitively better judging by outmigration rates as young families who start in the city move to the suburbs. You say Chicago has some of the best schools in the country, and you named about all of them. They're vastly outnumbered by the mediocre or failing schools. It's not even close that suburbs have better schools than the city in the aggregate. Suburbs are also way safer than the city. I don't buy the good suburb/bad suburb is equivalent to good neighborhood/bad neighborhood line. I think that's a false equivalency meant to muddy the waters.

If what you're saying is true and Chicago is a great place to raise children, why do so few people do it?

If by safety you're talking about chances of injury/death, as suburban people spend a lot more time in cars than city people and a car accident is probably what will kill or badly injure you if you're young and otherwise healthy, I don't know if it's true that your child is safer in the suburbs than in a decent area of Chicago. And I say this as someone living in the suburbs. Parents tend to stress way too much about things like violent crime and kidnappings, both of which are extremely unlikely to happen to your child unless you're living in one of the most dangerous parts of the city.

[UrbanCheetah]

Originally Posted by helena101

If by safety you're talking about chances of injury/death, as suburban people spend a lot more time in cars than city people and a car accident is probably what will kill or badly injure you if you're young and otherwise healthy, I don't know if it's true that your child is safer in the suburbs than in a decent area of Chicago. And I say this as someone living in the suburbs. Parents tend to stress way too much about things like violent crime and kidnappings, both of which are extremely unlikely to happen to your child unless you're living in one of the most dangerous parts of the city.

Exactly.

Drunk driving and teens getting killed in those accidents is more prevelant in the suburbs. In the city, most kids don't even have cars. Also, while there was drug use in high school here in the city, it wasn't nearly as bad as in the suburbs. Kids in the suburbs get bored and sometimes can't really due much due to lack of mobility, unless they have a car. In the city we didn't need cars, and we spent more time doing things in the city. Pretty much the equivalent of adults in the suburbs to the city. City dwellers tend to be more out and about than suburban people do.

[EffortPoaster]

Originally Posted by Avondalist

If what you're saying is true and Chicago is a great place to raise children, why do so few people do it?

Overprotective helicopter parenting, increased neuroticism/anxiety/prescription drug use in Gen X/Y parents (with the most affected demographic being white women, so we can see how this plays a role), white flight, housing costs for a "good" neighborhood (goes in-line with white flight), societal perceptions of city living and the fact that many new parents over the last couple decades are city transplants and not natives.

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by helena101

If by safety you're talking about chances of injury/death, as suburban people spend a lot more time in cars than city people and a car accident is probably what will kill or badly injure you if you're young and otherwise healthy, I don't know if it's true that your child is safer in the suburbs than in a decent area of Chicago. And I say this as someone living in the suburbs. Parents tend to stress way too much about things like violent crime and kidnappings, both of which are extremely unlikely to happen to your child unless you're living in one of the most dangerous parts of the city.

Total Teenage Vehicular Deaths All of the US --

Fatality Facts

2011 _______3,033
2012 _______2,837
2013 _______2,543
2014 _______2,623

Chicago Shootings:
Shootings -- Crime in Chicagoland -- chicagotribune.com

JAN. 1, 2016 - APRIL 22, 2016
1,081

JAN. 1, 2015 - DEC. 31, 2015
2,988

JAN. 1, 2014 - DEC. 31, 2014
2,619

JAN. 1, 2013 - DEC. 31, 2013
1,864

[UrbanCheetah]

Originally Posted by chet everett

Total Teenage Vehicular Deaths All of the US --

Fatality Facts


Chicago Shootings:
Shootings -- Crime in Chicagoland -- chicagotribune.com

How many in those shootings are teen? The thing is drunk driving happens everywhere, bad or good neighborhoods. Shooting are really for the most part limited to the dangerous parts of the city.

[King Harold]

I don't think overprotective parents are why people move to the burbs.
Parents just want more space. That is the prime reason. Parents will say its for school and the kids safety but the main motivation is for space. If the best school was downtown and the only requirement was you had to live in a 800ft 2 BD high rise across the street, few Americans would do it. With the richer people, you'd have parents lying about living in that building and really living out in the burbs, which I believe already happens in Chicago, even with government officials.

Or maybe i'm just bitter because my parents moved us from Chicago to the middle of nowhere MN which had a very terrible school system.

[helena101]

Originally Posted by chet everett

Total Teenage Vehicular Deaths All of the US --

Fatality Facts


Chicago Shootings:
Shootings -- Crime in Chicagoland -- chicagotribune.com

How many of the Chicago homicides involved a middle to upper class kid from a good family? I assume in this thread we aren't talking about raising our kids in dangerous areas. Like I said, most parents stress way too much about violent crime and kidnappings and those are very unlikely to happen to your kid, as you don't live in the ghetto. Your biggest concern should be car accidents. And your death stats are only for teens, not for your children age 0-13 or your children age 20+. On top of that, the death stats from car accidents don't include the people who are in a coma, lost limbs, are paralyzed, badly burned, blinded, have chronic lifetime back problems, etc from a car accident, which are far greater than the death stats.