There is a common narrative that, when it comes time to start a family and have kids, you should probably consider moving to the suburbs. Sure, you'll have a painful commute, but you'll get more space for your money, and maybe you'll end up with better kids.
I don't know, obviously not everyone agrees with this. I certainly don't.
But it is something that commonly happens and, in many cities, it is now happening more often. Here is a map from the Centre for London showing the change in the proportion of households with at least one dependent child from 2001 to 2021:
There's an interesting debate happening online right now. A recent article by Derek Thompson (of the Atlantic) made the claim that today's urban renaissance is great for young college graduates, but not so good for kids.
Here’s a quick synopsis:
Cities have effectively traded away their children, swapping capital for kids. College graduates descend into cities, inhale fast-casual meals, emit the fumes of overwork, get washed, and bounce to smaller cities or the suburbs by the time their kids are old enough to spell.
Raising a family in the city [New York City] is just too hard. And the same could be said of pretty much every other dense and expensive urban area in the country.
Michael Lewyn (of the Touro Law Center) responded to this argument with a post titled "the myth of the childless city." While it is true that the US fertility rate is at an all-time low, the numbers -- at least some of them -- suggest that cities aren't all that childless: