Raising your kids in the East Village (why?!)

my husband's consistent response to most of my frenzied developmental/preschool questions is, "i'm in no hurry for them to grow up". they're little for such a short period of time; it's almost fleeting. it's so important to let kids be kids and, as a parent, to really enjoy it. whether it's going to museums or letting them swiffer the floor, it should be about having fun. the end.

somewhereelse
about 2 hours ago
"not having to drive, being able to walk places, recreational activities, not wanting to deal with the upkeep of a house and front lawn"

You know they have condos and towns and walking stuff in the 'burbs, right?

Where? What burbs are you speaking of? and don't the suburban kids that live in apartments or condos get looked down upon as "apartment kids" by the children that live in the big houses?

"definitely send them out in thunderstorms to play. or take them to those germ-infested indoor play-spaces to "socialize."

ar, i have to wonder why someone who is afraid of a little rain and germs would live in manhattan in the first place. seems like a prime candidate for the squeaky clean and car friendly culture of the burbs

My son is 23, graduated from Friends Seminary, and so I find it quaint and nostalgic to read all this energy from parents still-in-the-mania. The East Village is a SUBLIME place to raise kids. (Sarah Palin and other ignorant folk might not understand it ---- swine, pearls.)

The real question is when do you teach your kids to start blindly hating the teachers' union?

kspeak "I think these are all factors? it could reverse but as I always say on the board suburbs are a relatively modern construct and for most of history people have either lived in centralized areas, unless they were farmers. btw, sounds like you live in harlem, where"

There are a whole lot of ways in which are current society differs a lot than a hundred years ago. There have been a lot of technological changes.

One thing that has remained constant is that rich people try to avoid living near poor people. The car enabled people to live in suburbs, and because cars were unaffordable to poor people, living in a place where you needed a car ensured that there was a buffer between you and poor people.

The above is still true in most places in the United States where only poor people take public transportation (although changing in the direction of people being more interested in urban living then they were a generation ago). But as we all know, the commute from suburbs to Manhattan is nightmarish, so the most desirable place to live is in Manhattan. But only rich people can afford to live in a place where cheap housing is $1000 psf and it just goes up from there.

Me Harlem? I looked at the neighborhood when I saw how much more I could get, but Harlem didn't feel gentrified at all, it felt like some stupid developers put up some brand new buildings in the middle of a bad neighborhood. I wouldn't enjoy living there.

i'm not afraid of germs at all. i was one of the very few mothers who let her kid go barefoot at the germ-infested and oh-so-dangerous playgrounds. i always said the day i felt compelled to have my child wear shoes at the park was the day i'd move to the 'burbs.

i was just pointing out (rather indirectly) that on a nasty, rainy day having something in the alternative to do can be rather nice. most little kids like novel things, at least for an hour or so. as long as it's not a "lesson" going to look at some pretty pictures can be fun. as uwsmom point out, that's the point. what is horrible is when a parent thinks that because they've paid the cab fare and admission, and because it somehow reflects upon their parenting skills (not), that their child ought to be able to last three hours. and that's three hours through anything at the age of two, whether it's a meal, a trip to the bookstore, or time at the park. just doing stuff together is great, and the nice thing about many of the museums is that they are very close to playgrounds.

i wonder how many two year olds, though, think monet is another word for water lilies, and pollock means messy painting.

bjw, hopefully in the womb.

Dogismy

My son is 23, graduated from Friends Seminary, and so I find it quaint and nostalgic to read all this energy from parents still-in-the-mania. The East Village is a SUBLIME place to raise kids. (Sarah Palin and other ignorant folk might not understand it ---- swine, pearls.)

Funny you just knee jerk assume that the poster was a right winger disparaging the east village, when in fact it was some bicycle riding over the hill hipster who was the one who couldn't tolerate people different from himself in the neighborhood. oh, but your kid went to Friends Seminary, so I'm sure you pat yourself on the back for being so wonderfully progressive and tolerant

lucille, have you been to the indoor play areas? all the ones i ever went to were frightful.

kspeak: "you do realize that the concept that you need 3000 square feet to raise a family in is a post World War II concept, don't you. the spaces most manhattanites are cramming into are not small but longer, historic standards. a lot of people say - what does the extra space really get me ... more junk?"

Not addressed to me, but my answer is that I've seen how people live with two children in a 900 sq ft apartment in Manhattan, and it's not an enviable life. I'm sure people have lived in worse conditions in the past, but we are supposed to be a rich country. A truck driver in Oklahoma can afford to provide his family with more space than a someone making four times as much money in Manhattan.

"Where? What burbs are you speaking of?"

Pretty much every burb I've been to, including the one my folks live in.

"and don't the suburban kids that live in apartments or condos get looked down upon as "apartment kids" by the children that live in the big houses?"

I think you're projecting Manhattan insanity onto the burbs.

I've never seen any of that. Perhaps in some of the super high end suburbs, but in the more sane ones that I know of, nope.

This thread rivals the legendary "Found boy's hat in Park Slope" thread that Gawker reported on a few years back. What astounds me is the apparent belief by some people here (and presumably some who don't even have children) that having your child play outdoors with other kids AND learning about Monet are mutually exclusive. Yikes.

bjw, if it had been andy warhol, maybe even jasper johns, it probably would have been ok. even better, highline area galleries. although that probably would've pissed off stick_man, because the kids likely don't belong there either.

bjw2103: "What astounds me is the apparent belief by some people here (and presumably some who don't even have children) that having your child play outdoors with other kids AND learning about Monet are mutually exclusive"

It's about making sure your kids learn upper class value. If they grow up in the suburbs, they won't be exposed to other upper class kids, and when they show up at boarding school, they will be ostracized by their peers who know Monet.

lol

ar, i know you're not. i was talking about the same hypothetical parent you were.

i like many suburban towns. the old ones have cute downtowns with a train station, where you can take a clean comfortable train to midtown in 30-45 minutes. i don't know where all these people who praise manhattan's commute live and work. the only truly amazing commute i've ever had was 72/bway to midtown, 1 stop on the express. anything longer than that on the subway during rush hour is frankly unpleasant. and it is just so stupid for people to say the burbs are homogenous. the ny metro area is incredibly diverse, the suburbs just as much as the city, does anyone really believe that all these people are eating at applebee's? insane. but not as insane as someone saying (or typing) with a straight face that manhattan is a place of wealth. it's just laughably stupid. with the exception of a few areas, manhattan was always, ALWAYS, a city of immigrants and the workng class. anyhooo, rant over

I took my 2-year-old to last night's debut of Le Grande Macabre, and boy did it have some nasty things to say about how some of our fellow audience members were dressed. It's hardly as if you need train childrens to have disdain for burbers. Add to that the way it booed the conductor, who was fat, and I can't tell you how proud I am of it.

My 2-year-old just insisted that I clarify: Grand, no "e", and it was merely the New York debut.

bob_d i like your style

"Not addressed to me, but my answer is that I've seen how people live with two children in a 900 sq ft apartment in Manhattan, and it's not an enviable life. I'm sure people have lived in worse conditions in the past, but we are supposed to be a rich country. A truck driver in Oklahoma can afford to provide his family with more space than a someone making four times as much money in Manhattan"

well, it's only fair, since a truck driver in oklahom likely has about 4 times as much common sense as someone making 4 times his salary in manhattan.

lucillebluth: "the only truly amazing commute i've ever had was 72/bway to midtown, 1 stop on the express. anything longer than that on the subway during rush hour is frankly unpleasant."

The reason why it sucks to live in Queens. Imagine how much longer the subway ride is from the very end of the E line.

Even worse is living in a place in Queens where you have to take a bus to get to the subway sation.

alanhart, you only have yourself to blame, making the poor thing sit in 3rd tier with the suburban peasants. much too young to be exposed to that.

omg - the hat spat! lol.

but is the 2 yr old wearing the new demin diper while id'ing those hanging in Moma and at the met?

“At what age do you teach the kids to look down on the suburban counterparts?”

Day 1.

“It's about making sure your kids learn upper class value. If they grow up in the suburbs, they won't be exposed to other upper class kids, and when they show up at boarding school, they will be ostracized by their peers who know Monet.”

LMAO

"over the hill "

I'm not old a hole. and i never said i was a hipster. im just me and I just find it curious that people choose to have kids in the east freakin village of all places.

the east village at the moment is a great place to raise kids!!!!!! And there are oodles and oodles of them there, and they and their parents are happy and thriving ---- just walk around and LOOK at them!

printer --- some "hipsters" could actually hold teabag notions. "Hipsterdom" covers a lot of territory even tho the sartorial presentation may be limited .....
Actually, it seems that Stick man just hates kids.

romary, you're silly. the two-year-old is toilet trained and is wearing day of the week underwear, which of course it can accurately pick out itself, with the assistance of a handy calendar.

LOL. My 5 year old loves her day of the week underwear. Please, color me pretentious.

My 2-year old was potty-trained at two weeks, and from the age of two months it would only use a commode, by which it means that thronelike piece of furniture that encloses a terlet.

interesting thread. I'm not a parent, so I realize this will sound insensitive, but as someone who grew up in the 'burbs I couldn't imagine forcing a 'city life' on my kids. All kids are kind of gangly and awkward (just like a puppy before it's grown into its paws) but city kids seem in general to be a little worse. Picking up on their parents neuroses and issues, lacking ROOM to actually just be kids.

I wasn't even good at most sports compared to friends but some of my best memories are wiping out riding my bike down the biggest hills I could find, playing football in the street (where my parents didn't have to worry about me being run down by some cabby from Calcutta), rollerblading around the neighborhood at night, having friends over to play marco polo in the pool day or night in the summer, etc. I still spent plenty of time self-entertaining indoors, reading, teaching myself to draw and paint, identifying artists that inspired, etc. I came out very cultured for being from the 'burbs.

Two days ago I saw a father trying to teach a son and daughter how to ride their bikes on a small west village street. The little boy wiped out b/c the street was too narrow with cars parked on one side to do a full U-turn, and he hit the curb and fell into a tree, or more specifically the metal edging surrounding the tree's plot in the sidewalk. Reminded me of when I was 10, rode my bike as fast as I could down a hill and onto a ramp me and my friends built and then busted my ass when I landed, except his fall was MUCH less fun and really just kind of pitiful.

WV7, that is insensitive

you from jersey?

wv7, that kind of rational and sensible talk has no place in a conversation about new york parenting. get a clue!

gottabrain, prices in hoboken have come down a lot, it's almost within your reach!

since this thread has already crashed and burned i'm happy to add a few more flames. do kids growing up in nyc work? my husband and i always worked (not optional), junior high - grad school. i strongly believe one can learn a plethora of life lesson from hard work. it builds character, teaches responsibility, pride, and humility just to name a few. my sense is that city kids (and perhaps their suburban upper middle class counterparts) don't need to work (families are financially secure) and/or don't have time to work (too many extracurricular activities and hours of homework each night). what do older kids do during the summer? jet set? i have mixed feelings about all of this. at a minimum, i think community service should be required but i just don't think it offers quite the same value.

and by "kids in nyc" i'm referring only to the middle and upper middle class brats that we're all raising.

Had no idea EV was family friendly now. Must start looking there.

WV7 - thanks for not going any further with your suite of indoor "self entertainment" options. BTW my kid can 3-card-monte that stupid u-turning bike from yours and have it up on ebay in 15 minutes.

"prices in hoboken have come down a lot, it's almost within your reach"

lb: prices have always been low in that crap hole and, no, don't want to be your neighbor

well that's just mean. i'm a great neighbor! i always separate my recyclables and keep my mouth shut when the cops come around. and anyway, aren't we all neighbors on this crazy and beautiful journey? love thy neighbor, gottabrain. LOVE HIM. tenderly.

"since this thread has already crashed and burned i'm happy to add a few more flames. do kids growing up in nyc work?"

Absolutely NOT. First of all, times have changed a lot since you grew up. Now, we have Mexican immigrants to do the work that teenagers used to do.

Manhattan kids do charity/volunteer type work, or do summer activities that you have to pay for. They do stuff which will look good on a Harvard application.

Spin, it's not all that kid friendly since most of the housing stock is sans elevator. I don't know how people do it and always felt bad for the family that lived on the 4th floor (below me) with a young child. They had to carry the stroller and kid, several times a day; don't know how they managed groceries. But if you can find an elevator building and are arts-inclined it can be a great place to raise a kid.

Me, I moved out of the EV after seven years because of all the bridge&tunnelers who showed up Friday-Saturday and vomited all over my doorstep - remind you of the OP, perhaps?

This thread is very funny, in a completely New York sort of way (bridge&tunnelers vs. hipsters, bachelors vs. breeders, Jersey MacMansions vs. walk-ups, is that all the cliches we can muster?). Special mention for the Monet reference-it's all about the Monet around here. If the OP listed the reasons he likes the East Village, he could answer his own question.

"moved out of the EV after seven years because of all the bridge&tunnelers who showed up Friday-Saturday and vomited all over my doorstep"

weak. if you were an authentic badass new yorker you'd have followed them home and vomited all over THEIR doorsteps, like charles bronson.

Nah, I'm not vindictive like that, Lucille. Had enough and left, which is actually much more the NY approach than what you advocate. This is why no one has much sympathy for the old-timers who complain loudly about the city changing around them: in most cases you have plenty of other options available to you. And it's not like I had to go far: I still live in downtown Manhattan, and now I thoroughly enjoy being the b&t-er who visits the ol' hood from time to time. I do refrain from vomiting all over my former neighbors' doorsteps, however. I have more class than that.

lots of complaints from people who are now priced out of there apartments.

Priced out of buying or priced out of their rentals?

Well, my two year old corrects people who use their/there/they're incorrectly.

This thread is great. I can't wait to have a horde of brats in the city. The only thing I dread is carrying the stroller up and down the subway stairs.

does he know his mommy/daddy is a douchbag who likes to correct usage mistakes? that must be where he/she learned it. pretty poor start to life.

although i have to agree with the op. the ev is one of the last places in the city for a kid. i have a family, and live in a family friendly hood.

wishhouse, I'd be proud to have your 2-year-old as my 2-year-old's spouse.

jim_honless, it's "douchebag", not "douchbag".

alan, you must be friends with wishhouse. is "dick head" one or two words? as in you're a dickhead?

or is it "your a dick head"?

It would appear to be two words separated by an underscore.

Two names separated by an underscore, to be precisely precise.

i usually don't like to give credit to anyone here, but well done.

I would like to ask the OP who do you think lived in the EV before the hipsters, even before the drug dealers? Yes, that would be families. When I was a kid (late 60s/70s) there were plenty of kids in the EV; primarily Latino but with plenty of remaining , Italian and Jewish families. These were not children of privilege but guess what, they WERE kids. And they played basketball, baseball, hide and go seek and hooky...just like we did on the (equally non-privileged) west side and just like I imagined they did in the burbs.
Honestly, I think for some (affluent) families, raising kids in city vs burbs is a very personal decision which can be argued to death without resolution. Time saving is a huge advantage for the city although I do know that these days, with telecommuting, many suburbanites are able to leave the office at 5, work on the train and then finish after kids bedtime so they do get "face time" with the family. Also for people who grew up in the 'burbs the "grandma factor" is often a huge pull back--you feel more secure leaving your kid to come into the city if Grandma is right there in an emergency (or as a regular caregiver0. I tend to see more of the "stay in city" parents be people who are not from the Tri-State area. (Of my childhood friends, hardcore street rats that we were, none are raising kids in the city. It was not an affordable option once Mitchell Lama started to privatize.) One thing I will dispute that the "diversity" people tend to talk about as a rationale for choosing a city upbringing. These same parents often make sure that their kids live in a neighborhood and attend a school, or a "school within a school" such as G&T program that demographically might as will be a classroom in Great Neck or Greenwich. It can almost be argued that greater diversity is found at the expensive private schools that actively recruit students of color for some racial balance (but then you are paying for college for 16 years instead of 4).
I agree with AR (as usual, especially when it comes to kid related issues) that there is nothing wrong with taking your young child to look at "pretty pictures" and if that later leads to an appreciation of art, great. A six year old differentiating artists and artistic styles on the other hand represents a level of pretension that makes me hurl. Now in fairness, any theoretical spawn of mine would by his/her 8th birthday or so be expected to name the starting lineup for the 1977 and 1998 Yankees (as well as today's team) and probably the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers in my father's memory. But somehow that seems different....

Exactly, Liz. Also worth noting that prior to the 90s the term "east village" didn't even exist. Historically, south of 14th st was all the Lower East Side, and yes, it was teeming with children. RE agents and landlords figured out that they could charge higher rents for the areas that had gentrified by playing off the success of the West Village, so they rebranded it even though the two areas historically have little in common. But yeah, if you've seen films from the late 70s-early 80s, the East Village looked like a war zone. It was very dangerous and OP wouldn't have set one delicate little toe anywhere near it. So I for one am perfectly happy if people feel safe enough to raise kids there again.

Ukrainian families.

But the term "East Village" dates from the 60s.

Alan is correct. The "East Village" term came into use about the time "hippies" started flocking to the area and the media was dubbing it Haight East. And yes, somehow the word Ukrainian got deleted from my post. Some say I'm a good writer, none doubt I'm a atrocious editor.

Interesting. I didn't know that. My downstairs neighbor at the first apartment I had in the ol' EV was born in the building in the 1930s and claimed that term came into use much later, but I doubt she was on the scene much, so to speak.

Oh yeah, and she had raised her sons in that building, too. So it's hardly a new phenomenon.

It is GORGEOUS outside, guys, leave the computer for a sec, and go for a walk.