This often comes up, and I'm genuinely curios, is space really that much more important when it comes to kids? I grew up in an apartment sharing a bedroom with my sister, and tons and tons of kids grow up in an apartment all over the world; all the older European cities, Asian cities (Mumbai, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc).

Netherlands has the happiest kids in the world, where in Amsterdam a lot of kids would be growing up in an apartment. The flip side is, they get their freedom where they can go to places without needing their parents to drive them everywhere.

In the States that seems to be the case. I surmise that's due to our strong sense of individualism in our culture. Hard to see whether prosperity causes individualism or the other way around.

Define prosperity though. If it's strictly financial prosperity, then sure. But various studies have found people in western countries to be lonelier and less happier than their asian/european/south american counterparts where sense of community is higher.

The U.S. doesn’t generally build a lot of multi-bedroom apartments suitable for families. The emphasis is on single bedrooms and studios.

Furthermore, people also prefer the suburbs for raising a family because that’s where all the nice schools are built. For better or worse, inner city schools are avoided like the plague for parents with the means to buy a house in the suburbs.

> Until they get married/have kids and do the same thing their parents and their parent's parents did...move to the suburbs.

My parents moved to the city when they had kids. Specifically to enable a better life for us. More access to friends, better schools, more independence, better extracurriculars, more family time because no commute, etc. It was pretty great.

Living in the city also made college affordable because we could just live at home and walk to school.

I do notnthink suburbs are better for kids or parents. They can't go anywhere unless being driven, so they are either stuck at home or parent have to drive then around. There are less other kids to play with, kids are limited to backyard. Same for after school activities, much less is going on.

Unless you are talking about literal toddler, it is nit that awesome.

But how much time you have to spend in traffic each day?

Possibly none because WFH is a thing.