San Francisco has 80,000 more dogs than children.....

Childless or Child Free?

Maybe it's because Child Free people prefer to live in large cities.

How many times have you heard people saying "The city is no place to raise a child"?

I've heard it many times.

I remember at some point people making a huge exodus to the suburbs in order to raise their family, not wanting to do so in a city. Many of the bread winners chose to continue to commute into the city.

No one is forcing people to live in a city where the cost of living is higher.

Another example how you can make numbers say anything you want.

Why thumbed down?
What I said made perfect sense.

Maybe that person would be better served by putting that thumb somewhere else.

If you don't agree, at least present your reasons why not, and not just be a douche with click fever.

The fact is that a city requires a robust and varied population.

"The city is no place to raise a child" is not the same as saying "The city should be no place to raise a child". The problem is with the city, not families.

I'm not asking the figures to say anything they don't already say: SF has an abnormally low child population.

Nah, I should just toss around insults and question your insight regarding what a great thing a childless environment is and then question your intellectual motives for posting an article from a good source without clicking the link and at least reading the study.

Hold yourself to the same standards you accuse me of missing, at least.

Um, I didn't thumb you down.
As a child, I enjoyed cities, and still do all this time later. We lived in the Bronx, in Los Angeles (many years), and in a near Chicago suburb, Evanston.
Eventually I lived in a small port town in northern California - that I liked too, except.... what was weird about that area was there were very few blacks or hispanics. My niece (mother from Africa) visited me several times there and people would stare at us walking down the street together. She's an L.A. Woman now, but can deal with weirdness from traveling a lot with her dad to small town places.

Anyway, I've been following changes in San Francisco for decades now and some problems are concerning - it's almost not inequality now, as even middle class has trouble subsisting there, with the moneyed tech revolution going on.

I read the link bob. Don't know why you think I didn't.

Yes I insult someone who will just thumb any person down without saying what their issue is. That's a cowards way. You take insult that I object to being thumbed down, when I don't know by whom, or why? Frankly I was guessing it was one of those jerks that go around just thumbing down everything and anything.

Am I just supposed to agree with an article because it's from a " good source"?
It's not possible I may have insight?

There are many reasons people choose not to have as many, or any children if they actually live within the city.

I differentiate between childless and child free because one has the connotation there would be a child if possible, the other does not.

Maybe you were thumbed down because of talking about the way households have changed in two major American cities you decided to make it all about you. The article wasn't an attack on childless couples, and I don't think anyone is that interested in your choices let alone your need to attack imagined slights.

Btw, I didn't vote you down, (or up.)

I live in a city, I think it's a great place to bring up kids, if nothing else they've got a far greater understanding of other ethnicities and lifestyles. And, more importantly, they don't sound posh.

How did I make it about me? Because I happen to not have children? Don't pigeon hole me. I also have 2 cats, but wouldn't categorize my self as someone who has cat stuff decorating my house. I'm many things, but bob didn't say anything about it out those in his post.

I brought it up because it was in response to bobs initial post. And yes I know the links story was about much more than that. I was addressing specifically what he chose to say.

Anyway, where have I even mentioned in any of my posts on this thread that I don't have children, besides in this post?

Just so I'm clear I what I'm allowed to talk about..... Bob writes 4 paragraphs, 3 of which talk about children and the city, provides a link, specifically mentions children in the title of the thread, but I can't talk about 3/4's of the paragraphs he wrote. Do I have that right?

I didn't realise I could take your rights away so easily. You can post what you want, but you're not the only one. I don't think Bob's post was an attack on childless couples but you went on the defensive.

Personally I think all communities benefit from a broad mix. You've only got to look at Frinton on sea to see how damaging the dominance of a single group can be.

I don't see the predominance of singles as a problem. Of course densely populated areas are going to favor single-person households. My apartment is 400 square feet. A family of 4 can't live in it. If there's anything disturbing about the opening statistic, it's that so many singles are choosing to keep pets in these cramped quarters. Dogs need living space too!

No, I didn't.

I presented information stating the author, and he stating things a particular way was not accurate.

It wasn't an attack on anyone. It was clarifying that the words childless and child free are different, and one shouldn't automatically assume one is childless. If anything, I was raising awarenss so that people could realize the term they choose to use could be looked at as pitying, rather than liberating. There are childless people, those that want them but don't, and child free, those who don't want them, and don't.

Then there are parents, who run the gamet from wanting, being able to provide material and emotional needs, and do....to those who don't want them, don't take care of them, yet have them.

You chose to see it that way because I didn't go on with herd mentality, and that rubs many people the wrong way.

Proff abundant here.

I quite agree Kolyo.

I don't think it's fair to keep an animal like a dog that evolved to be in open spaces, part of a pack, in a place where it's alone a lot, and in a small space. Although in some breeds it seems that has been bred out of them.

In small town America I thought there are still homes that house multiple generations of the same family. There is no stigma either. However, the urban social mores seems to be a take-off on the original British social mores of "rugged individualism" whereby each generation of a family is to be independent, living in their own quarters. And, the dissolving of inner-city families exacerbated that situation.

That's why I like the type of movie where the main characters all live under one roof. In effect, this country always had people that needed to be with family to survive. Only after the Second World War, with the ensuing prosperity was there the promulgated myth that the American Dream was what everyone should aspire to: house, station wagon, wife at home, two/three kids, and a dog. It did help the economy, and create jobs. And, we bought it lock stock and barrel, as we departed from our family to follow our bliss. Bring back the family.

My parent's house in Phoenix (Tempe) has had up to four generation at the same time.

I believe that cities really do require a generous mix.

Holidays must have been especially enjoyable; in fact the whole year was likely a wonderful place to be a child.

There's a 20th century American painter, Edward Hopper. He painted urban scenes that showed the loneliness of urban life. One painting where an apartment building overlooks a bridge, a woman is by the window just looking out. One can almost feel the loneliness, isolation of urban living.

Back to San Francisco -
I never lived there but have had over the years dozens of friends who lived in the city or the Bay Area nearby the city. I used to read the SF Chronicle daily; it was my main paper when I lived 25o miles north of there. Now it has no free views, so I switched to the San Francisco Examiner, online every day. It tends to take the pulse of what is going on in the city. I also read San Francisco Weekly off and on. I don't pick up that the problem is so much about families versus singles or couples, but a long gatherimg influx of relatively wealthy tech people, and their big buses to get to work in Silicon Valley. A lot of the middle class that was there has been being priced out, and so have others on the lower end of income. People have lost their apartments because of some early on, and possibly now, fiddling for building owners to get rid of renters to make room for airbnb customers. It's complicated, as most things are, but it is about more than one's number of children, if any.

Find out which bitches are responsible.

The brunettes.

Ok, here's a page from a San Francisco Examiner columnist -

nope, I can't link it. You can look it up though. Title is
San Francisco is dead: Long live San Fran