Cities with No Children

[Anonymous]

Apologies if this has been posted before. The Atlantic ran a long story on how the fabric of booming cities doesn't include children any more. This fits well with what I see around DC. The city is growing and improving but most of this improvement is explicitly NOT designed for families with children. Small apartments, bars and restaurants over playgrounds, scarcity of good childcare options. It's interesting to see the stats behind that.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/where-have-all-the-children-gone/594133/

"Since 2011, the number of babies born in New York has declined 9 percent in the five boroughs and 15 percent in Manhattan. (At this rate, Manhattan’s infant population will halve in 30 years.) In that same period, the net number of New York residents leaving the city has more than doubled. There are many reasons New York might be shrinking, but most of them come down to the same unavoidable fact: Raising a family in the city is just too hard. And the same could be said of pretty much every other dense and expensive urban area in the country."....

"In high-density cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., no group is growing faster than rich college-educated whites without children, according to Census analysis by the economist Jed Kolko. By contrast, families with children older than 6 are in outright decline in these places. In the biggest picture, it turns out that America’s urban rebirth is missing a key element: births."

"It’s a coast-to-coast trend: In Washington, D.C., the overall population has grown more than 20 percent this century, but the number of children under the age of 18 has declined. Meanwhile, San Francisco has the lowest share of children of any of the largest 100 cities in the U.S."

[Anonymous]

Interesting considering there was a baby boom just prior to that in NYC, which spawned more than one documentary about how hard it was to get into Kindergarten there. (2008 time period)

[Anonymous]

There are plenty of children of all ages in NYC: in the parks, on the sidewalks walking into you because they are looking at their screens, screaming/ running/ touching exhibits in the museums, on the buses in unsupervised groups, in their double strollers with moms with headphones on. Plenty. Too many.

[Anonymous]

Eventually those college educated whites will.have children. Some may be able to stay. Most lower income people will not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are plenty of children of all ages in NYC: in the parks, on the sidewalks walking into you because they are looking at their screens, screaming/ running/ touching exhibits in the museums, on the buses in unsupervised groups, in their double strollers with moms with headphones on. Plenty. Too many.

Yes, that means all the research presented here is wrong
It can't possibly be because there are 8 million people in the city so even though there's a decline in births and young children, there still are many children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are plenty of children of all ages in NYC: in the parks, on the sidewalks walking into you because they are looking at their screens, screaming/ running/ touching exhibits in the museums, on the buses in unsupervised groups, in their double strollers with moms with headphones on. Plenty. Too many.

Yes, that means all the research presented here is wrong
It can't possibly be because there are 8 million people in the city so even though there's a decline in births and young children, there still are many children.

I didn't say it was wrong. This is clearly only my own opinion.

[Anonymous]

People are going to dispute objective data, because at the end of the day they like living in cities that have become playgrounds for single white adults, rather than cities that have playgrounds for kids of all backgrounds.

[Anonymous]

I spent time in San Francisco from about 2008-2010 on and off and was always struck by how few children I saw. I didn’t even see many teens. It was all post-college 20s and up. On one of my trips, I took my grandmother, who was born and grew up in San Francisco and she noticed it too compared to her youth.

Still seems like there are a lot of kids and families in DC in comparison, but once you get out of preschool age, they seem to be mostly concentrated in the less desirable areas.

[Anonymous]

I love it. No kids because I can’t have any, but I’ve come to terms with it and embrace it now. I don’t want to live near daycares and playgrounds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Apologies if this has been posted before. The Atlantic ran a long story on how the fabric of booming cities doesn't include children any more. This fits well with what I see around DC. The city is growing and improving but most of this improvement is explicitly NOT designed for families with children. Small apartments, bars and restaurants over playgrounds, scarcity of good childcare options. It's interesting to see the stats behind that.

The fabric of smaller cities and rural areas also doesn't include children anymore. Fertility rates are down everywhere in the US. The author of that article completely ignored that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People are going to dispute objective data, because at the end of the day they like living in cities that have become playgrounds for single white adults, rather than cities that have playgrounds for kids of all backgrounds.

I would not object to the data, but I think there is a major logical flaw. Birth rate has steadily declined in the US over the past 10 or so years, this isn't a cities phenomenon. I would like to see a comparison on how cities are fairing relative to rural areas, today vs. in the past.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People are going to dispute objective data, because at the end of the day they like living in cities that have become playgrounds for single white adults, rather than cities that have playgrounds for kids of all backgrounds.

I would not object to the data, but I think there is a major logical flaw. Birth rate has steadily declined in the US over the past 10 or so years, this isn't a cities phenomenon. I would like to see a comparison on how cities are fairing relative to rural areas, today vs. in the past.

Rural areas are very aged. Almost exclusively the elderly at this point. It’s a huge problem because rural areas are underserved by hospitals, police and fire, utilities ... but I think the article made the point that a few generations ago, many families lived in cities. Now many families live in suburbs, and not just the suburbs of the major cities - they’re completely moving to cheaper suburbs of cheaper cities. That’s why the South keeps growing in population.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People are going to dispute objective data, because at the end of the day they like living in cities that have become playgrounds for single white adults, rather than cities that have playgrounds for kids of all backgrounds.

I would not object to the data, but I think there is a major logical flaw. Birth rate has steadily declined in the US over the past 10 or so years, this isn't a cities phenomenon. I would like to see a comparison on how cities are fairing relative to rural areas, today vs. in the past.

You can't possibly make an argument that birth rates in Manhattan have declined by 15% in what, ten years?

If you think birth rates have declined over the past ten years, that would explain the dwindling number of babies but not children aged 10+.

[Anonymous]

More educated people ( that have fewer kids) means fewer kids. Got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People are going to dispute objective data, because at the end of the day they like living in cities that have become playgrounds for single white adults, rather than cities that have playgrounds for kids of all backgrounds.

I would not object to the data, but I think there is a major logical flaw. Birth rate has steadily declined in the US over the past 10 or so years, this isn't a cities phenomenon. I would like to see a comparison on how cities are fairing relative to rural areas, today vs. in the past.

You can't possibly make an argument that birth rates in Manhattan have declined by 15% in what, ten years?

If you think birth rates have declined over the past ten years, that would explain the dwindling number of babies but not children aged 10+.

Birth rates in US have declined by 15% over last 10 years, so Manhattan decline is average and NYC (at 9%) is significantly better than average. Brooklyn has been en vogue the past decade and many families migrated there.

I have no idea where you got the stats for the dwindling number of kids 10+. Anecdotally, I just visited NYC 3 weeks ago with my kids and was amazed at the number of playgrounds and how cool (read high end) many were.