WaPo’s Marc Fisher responds to my response:
That’s all quite reasonable, but it doesn’t entirely respond to my
point about Florida’s ranking of the District as a relatively lousy
place for families with children, or his comments about how Washington
flunks his “Trick or Treater Index,” a shorthand measure of a city’s
suitability for families with kids based on how many or few kids come
around on Halloween.He and I certainly agree that each family has to make its own
choices based on its own values and ideals–and what it can
realistically manage. But I don’t think Florida has really answered the
point about what he found lacking in the District. Rather, he simply
states how much he loves the District, which I know is true, but which
doesn’t seem to cover all of his feelings and thoughts about the city.
He also goes on to say some nice things about me and my work’s influence on his own. Like I said, I very much admire Marc’s writing.
But I have to wonder if he stopped reading Who’s Your City? after the “trick-or-treater index” passage that got him so worked up. On p. 262 I rank greater Washington DC as the No. 1 place for families with children in the USA. I also rank it is No.2 for young singles (only San Fran does better). And in the new edition of the Advocate I say in my estimation it’s also the best place for gays and lesbian (especially single gay men in the country.). The trick or treater index was not meant to say that DC is a bad place for children – Rana and I were planning to have kids and raise them there that’s why we bought the house in the neighborhood we did – but simply to show that parents in cities outside the US do not fear as much for their kids safety. That section of the book quotes several parents saying as much. It is very clear to me parents worry more about their kids safety in DC and virtually any US city and most suburbs than they do in Toronto. But as the book says, greater DC remains the best place for familes with children in the US according to our rankings.
I’ll say it again: Rana and I love Washington DC. Like I said, we moved for the one reason that Marc identifies – the opportunity to run a well-funded think tank. Furthermore, I believe Greater DC has just about the biggest upside of any US region. Not only because of federal spending but because it is attracting talent and business as the most livable and relatively affordable node in the great Bos-Wash mega-region. The region does face some issues and threats – among them traffic congestion, sprawl, income inequality, and housing affordability. But it has the resources and trajectory to cope with all of them, and our Gallup survey shows that people are very positively attached to the region and find it to be incredibly open-minded, tolerant, diverse, and to offer a high quality of life – and that includes all races, ethnicities, income and education levels across the board. I actually have an oped sitting with the WaPo which expresses my
thoughts on greater Washington’s very positive future in a little bit
deeper fashion. Hope they decide to run in, and I’d very much appreciate Marc’s comments on it.
April 10th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Parents with a choice will pick a neighborhood that is safe for children. I find it fascinating how even those of us who live in safe places still fear for our children’s safety. I was allowed to walk to the library in our neighborhood center when I was 8 years old. I feel uncomfortable letting my 12-year-old daughter walk 3 blocks alone to a friend’s house, and so do all the parents of my daughter’s friends. Recently I realized that if I keep on protecting her from the dangers of walking by herself, she won’t develop the street smarts to be able to walk alone. I have to think about how to help her develop street smarts – safely. Is that an oxymoron?
Contrast this attitude with that of Australia, a nation in many ways similar to the US. Recently a friend calculated that about 1/3 of all Canberra children break an arm on the playground sometime during their elementary school years. More specifically, the injury commonly comes from falling off the monkey bars. Which are mounted on asphalt. You probably could reduce the number of broken arms simply by replacing the asphalt with sawdust (or one of those spongy surfaces made from recycled tires). Nobody worries about it.
It’s not that the schools are neglectful. Australians are terribly concerned about skin cancer, and know that the odds go up when light-skinned people suffer a serious sunburn in childhood. That asphalt playground is shielded from the sun by a ‘roof’ made of net. And the kids aren’t allowed to play outdoors unless they are wearing a brimmed hat.
Both the USA and Australia are proud of our history as frontier nations populated by folks who dared to move away from settled civilization. So what could account for our different attitudes toward taking risks with children’s safety? I wonder if it has to do with the fact that Australians have a fairly strong social service system, whereas the USA generally does not. If an Australian kid suffers injury s/he is more likely (than an American) to be covered by decent health insurance. If a US child becomes seriously handicapped, the initial medical treatment is only the beginning of the financial hit that the family will suffer. Perhaps your state’s social service system will pitch in to help that child minimize a handicap – as long as the child is under 18. If the kid at 18 is unable to live alone, the chance of placing him or her in a supportive living environment is uncertain enough to cause debilitating worry. Beyond the money issues, parents despair that they never will be free of the burden of being the primary caregiver, and they fear what will happen to the child after they die. I wonder if Australia’s stronger social service system offers families more long-term insurance against the consequences of a bad injury. It would be rational to let children take larger risks – and thus produce kids who are better prepared to take care of themselves as adults.
So – when thinking about where to live with kids, maybe we should compare states (or municipalities) on the relative strengths of their social service systems.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:20 am
I agree social service comparisons would be interesting, but I have another data point on playgrounds specifically. A few years ago the Toronto school board closed (!) all its school playgrounds until they could be upgraded to new safety standards, including softer surfaces. Health coverage for Canadian kids is more similar to Australia than the U.S., so I don’t think that’s the answer. The local children’s hospital is excellent and did a study on the project: http://www.sickkids.ca/mediaroom/custom/playground05.asp. We’ve taken after the U.S. in lawyers per capita, so a cynic would say that’s the link.
But I’m not sure you can compare playground safety to kids walking around the neighbourhood independently. The wandering kid runs a very low risk of a very horrific outcome. Worst-case scenarios tend to skew reasoning, in the same way the best-case scenario of a lottery ticket lures people into a lousy deal financially.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
You can trace the worry back to the media’s obsession with stranger violence and molestation. I doubt that these are any worse than they were in the 1950’s, but any case, especially involving white middle-class kids, gets major and often national press. The missing kids on milk cartons, many of whom were abducted by a non-custodial parent, not unimportant but not a reason to worry about your kid walking down the street unless you have a crazy ex-spouse.
The roots of this media coverage are several, but one is broadcast deregulation and acquisition of the TV networks by non-media companies. The new owners saw large news bureaus as costs rather than sources of pride and cut them severely. Without the resources to do international or investigative reporting, TV news became increasingly focused on crime — cheap to cover and sensational. No matter that it raised the public’s fear level and distrust of their neighbors.
April 11th, 2008 at 11:45 am
It goes beyond fears of sexual predation. People in public feel an implied responsibility for young children on their own, but with liability concerns they find it an undue burden. Even though the risk of harm is small, our local library does not allow 8-year-old children to there alone. Local businesses don’t want them either. A friend of mine at the art museum with her 11-year-old daughter left the girl to sketch in one gallery while she wandered in others. The museum guards called around on walkie-talkies till they found her, and forbade her to leave the girl unattended. The girl was well-behaved, sitting in a room with a guard present. The safety concern was pretty small, but the implied responsibility was greater than the museum was willing to bear.