In defence of city kids

Rarely does an op-ed truly offend me. But David Brooks, in "The New Red-Diaper Babies," boy, has he done it. He tells of the new exurban family, with plenty of money, plenty of kids, and none of the crassness or debauchery NYC kids are exposed to. He implies throughout the piece that parents who choose to raise a large number of kids in the exurbs somehow care more about their children, that the lack of anything else going on means that their focus is primarily on their children, unlike those horrible city parents who are more interested in doing lavish things like seeing movies at the Film Forum than in "try[ing] to shepherd their kids through supermarket checkouts lined with screaming Cosmo or Maxim cover lines."

They [exurban parents] are having three, four or more kids. Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do. Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies, restaurant dining and foreign travel, let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling.

OK, yes, I'm offended by Brooks' premise, which is that the more kids a person has, and the fewer non-parenting activities the person has going on, the more he or she cares about being a parent. I am an only child, and growing up was exposed to sophisticated movies (including one I remember seeing when I was little, at an Israeli film festival, in which an actor playing Ben Yehuda coughed up blood, turning his white wine red. Left quite an impression.), some restaurant dining, and, yes, some foreign travel. Does the fact that my parents chose to spend money on these things and did not have four more children mean that they were uninterested in being parents? Some parents value exposing their children to obscure films, restaurants, and, when possible, other countries--their interest in these things does not have to come at the expense of their children.

The people who are having big families are explicitly rejecting materialistic incentives and hyperindividualism. It costs a middle-class family upward of $200,000 to raise a child. These people are saying money and ambition will not be their gods.

Um, how? Why are the couples raising one- or two-child families in places like Manhattan necessarily money-hungry and wildly ambitious? Can't it be that parents who themselves value the cultural resources and diversity of the city want to raise their children in an enviroment they consider optimal? My parents both grew up taking public transportation and going to large public high schools in the city, and, having done the same myself, it gives us a connection through shared experience that we would not have had my parents picked up and moved to one of Brooks' beloved exurbs.

I take Brooks' point, though, that few people can afford to raise 5-child families in Manhattan. But Brooks seems to be discussing those who could presumably afford to raise one or two kids in the city but prefer to raise larger families elsewhere, noting that "when people get money, one of the first things they do is use it to try to protect their children from bad influences." Yet, for some parents, life in an exurb would constitute a "bad influence," and those parents spend their money accordingly. Furthermore, living in the city is expensive, but it is also cheap. I never once thought to ask my parents for a car--they don't have one, either. This "restaurant dining" Brooks scoffs at include trips to Chinatown for meals that cost less than one would spend at an exurban Denny's. People choose how they spend their money depending on what they value, and those who value living in a place like Manhattan will almost always have to make certain sacrifices.

Like most Americans, they wonder how we can be tolerant of diverse lifestyles while still preserving the family institutions that are under threat. What they cherish, like most Americans, is the self-sacrificial love shown by parents. People who have enough kids for a basketball team are too busy to fight a culture war.

Sorry, but all I can say is, gag me. This "like most Americans" phrase, repeated again and again, suggests that there's an evil minority of Americans, living in liberal urban centers, who don't give a damn about self-sacrificial love for their children. Brooks' exurbians may "wonder how we can be tolerant of diverse lifestyles," but city kids take the subway, don't ponder it, but ride it, don't theorize about gay marriage, but have classmates with openly gay parents, and learn not to tolerate diverse lifestyles but to love living in a city where choosing your own path is encouraged.

In celebrating the couples who choose to steer clear of the scary city and all of its crude ambition, Brooks is showing the scary, anti-cosmopolitan side of conservatism, surprising, coming from the liberals' favorite conservative. It's fair to say that not everyone can or wishes to live in upscale, liberal urban enclaves, but to imply that those who choose to raise their children in such an enviroment are somehow more selfish and worse parents is unnecessary, untrue, and mean-spirited.