Reply to Boston, NYC, DC - Best place to raise kids?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The problem with all three of these places is that the more money you have, the easier it is to raise kids there, and also the more insane and bad-for-kids the culture becomes. People don't always even engage in the behaviors intentionally, there's just this fear of being left behind and it's so toxic. It is sad to me when we see friends we selected specifically because they are down-to-earth and reasonable engage in the competitive, cut throat behaviors with regards to school (public or private, the well of families at both can be nuts), kid's activities, travel and conspicuous consumption.

Some kids do fine in it anyway, but some kids are more sensitive to some of the competitiveness and ostentatious behavior you see in these places. My oldest is this way, and we are actually moving from the DC are back to the midwest city near where my spouse grew up, because I think it will be a better environment for DD and she is less likely to absorb some of the worst behavior we see there. We also know the city well and that helps us be extra careful about where live and send our kids to school. I know we'll still run into a lot of the same behaviors, but it's not as amplified as it is here, and the expectations are not as dramatically high, especially for stuff like college outcomes.

I have never raised kids in NYC or Boston, but I'm guessing it's similar. You need a lot of money to raise kids in these places with choices and not to be financially stressed all the time (and just to access good schools), but then having a lot of money and being around people with a lot of money creates new problems.[/quote]

EXACTLY THIS first paragraph.  I find DC to be great in so many ways, but agree that everything is stifled by what school you go to/what clubs you play for/which pool you belong to/whether you have a nanny... and it just gets worse when you have more money because you end up living in a HCOL neighborhood with less socioeconomic diversity and so on.  I see the ways this weighs on my kids and we do everything we can to remind them about our family values.  Keeping them in public school, limiting activities, maintaining family time, giving back to others, etc.

I think NYC is even worse, and Boston it depends where you live.[/quote]

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