So I have to tell my kid to ignore a syringe on the ground at a muni stop once in a while - like dangers don't also exist in suburban and rural areas - but poop barely phases us... it's like some of these folx have never woken up to their kid having taken a diaper off and smearing poop all over the crib
But the necessity for exposure to "near-term dangers" is a very American thing to say and I believe that it is wrong.
Yes, children growing up in big cities are more mature. And cynical. And depressed.
The irony of the situation is that big cities are so dangerous nowadays that parents no longer allow their children to play outside unsupervised or to go anywhere by themselves until adolescence.
I grew up in a small city in the eighties and nineties (not in the US) and was walking home or to school, by myself, since I was 7 years old. The mentality back then for raising children was basically "make sure they do their homework and feed them once in a while". I now live in a big city and I couldn't do that with my son, because the environment is not the same. We live in a big city, but I still have to drive him everywhere, even though he's 9 years old.
Due to the mobility restrictions of the suburbs (everything can only reached by car) you as a parent are automatically managing more of the time of your kids: Picking them up at school, driving them to organized event 1 or 2 (sports for example) etc.
In the city it's easier for kids to do those things themselves: My kids went to school by themselves after a few weeks in first grade (school is only a few hundred meters away from home, though). This has a bunch of other consequences: They can autonomously meet peers earlier, so they have more free and unstructured time together etc. All in all less parental involvement, and the kids have to (and want to!) organize more by themselves.
Do you have any evidence? Or just a personal hunch?
> big cities are so dangerous nowadays
Big cities nowadays are dramatically safer than they were a few decades ago.
> parents no longer allow their children to play outside unsupervised
This is due to the parents’ paranoid fears, not the inherent danger involved.
You can't discount housing, because it's what gets you to live in a really small space, possibly in a dangerous neighborhood and with so much street noise that you can't sleep with your window open.
So yes, if you can't afford a nice place with plenty of room in a nice neighborhood, then SF is a terrible place to be raising a child.
Suburban playgrounds are way better than urban ones and the rest of your examples require a lot of money. I'm biased because I grew up in the suburbs, but playing sports outside for free like I did as a kid sounds much better than having to get job because the only thing you can do in the city outside of your house is pay for "culture" at "coffeeshops, more live music, more social clubs, more classes, more museums".
There is more of pretty much everything within a kid-accessible distance in the city, including tons and tons of free stuff. There are more and better parks and playgrounds. There are more publicly accessible athletic facilities. There are more and bigger free public libraries. The amazing museums have regular free days for residents, and zoo/aquarium/museum passes can often be checked out for free from the library. There are more free art exhibits. There are more cultural festivals. There are more special-interest meetup groups....
Plenty of city kids play pick-up (or organized) sports outside for fun for free every day.
Indeed, car-intermediated everything and complete dependence on parents is a much better description of suburban life for children than city life. I grew up in one of the most pleasant and active suburbs in the US, in a little college town, and it was still incredibly child-hostile. The city is IMO much friendlier to children.
In the city people can and do walk all over, with longer trips made by transit. There are more small shops of all kinds, more coffeeshops, more live music, more social clubs, more classes, more playgrounds, more museums, and in general more regular human contact of all kinds. Kids can be independent at a younger age, and can pursue a wider range of interests with community infrastructure and support.
> you have small children, this changes. Intellectual pursuits? They can't read yet, so your only option is parking them in front of videos.
I have one 3-year-old kid and one 5-month-old kid in San Francisco. Neither of them watches significant amounts of videos (occasionally we watch kids’ movies or old Mr. Rogers episodes together). The other kids we meet at the playground don’t seem to do excessive amounts of video watching.
Kids absolutely can do “intellectual pursuits”, but at their own level. First and foremost they play with all manner of physical objects – blocks, other construction toys, folded paper, empty cardboard boxes and yogurt containers, balls, sand, clay, water, their own bodies, ... Then kids love having stories told to them or books read to them. They love singing, using random household objects as percussion instruments, playing rhyming games, recognizing and naming objects, learning new words, counting random stuff, drawing with chalk and crayons, .... They love helping with household chores (not the most helpful at first, but they try), watching people do physical work of all kinds, play-acting all sorts of grown-up activities, ...
By far the biggest problem for small kids here in SF is the high cost of housing and childcare and the distance from grandparents. Many families we know have moved away to find places with cheaper housing (e.g. they were previously living in a rent-controlled 1 bedroom apartment and decided they wanted a 2-bedroom place, but couldn’t afford to pay current market rent for it) or more help with childcare.
> One false move and some yahoo in a steel contraption has killed them.
It would be great to ban cars from more streets, and get the remaining cars down to 15–20 miles/hour. This is not really a city problem per se; our whole society is built around cars, and suburbs are generally worse than cities at putting pedestrians in harm’s way.