Is London really that bad for children?

[RancidOldHag]

Because the Evening Standard has been reporting in a survey which rates it at the worst place in the UK

www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-named-worst-city-in-the-uk-to-raise-children-a3539611.html

Main reasons are house prices and crime rates. The other factors they considered were access to green spaces, school rankings and average salaries. Not sure if they included other things, or how they weighted them.

Somewhat to my surprise, it said the best part of London to live in is Peckham. (or am I just hopelessly out of date?)

That article is written purely on property prices. Or if not purely, it's the most important factor.

The crime thing is misleading too. There's more crime just by virtue of being a huge city but I seriously doubt children are victims of crime more in London than Derby

I've been to Derby a fair few times and no disrespect but it's dodgy as fuck in a few areas, just like everywhere else.

That article looks like filler to me and not a real article where it's been researched

we think its the best place to raise children

What makes it so good for you, 1497 ?

I think a lot must be house prices, though there seem to be oodles of families in London and they must be living somewhere....

well, off the top of my head.... wildlife, green spaces etc, London children have far more access to parks and gardens, fields and woods than countryside children, the wildlife here is amazing, as good as anywhere, and far bolder so easier to see!

The history, the science, the dirt cheap transport - children are free -the educational opportunities, the culture, the mix of people, we know people from most countries in the world, I am sure! and every possible income bracket, we know millionaires and destitute beggars. The community. The sporting facilities, I need to rush off to work, but that is a couple of seconds worth of answer

We chose to raise our kids here and we think it's the best place! So much diversity and tons to do, also so many possibilities and options when they are older.

I grew up in Norfolk and I've lived in London for 20 years. I always wanted to give my kids the opportunity to grow up here.

I grew up in London (although the house price thing wasn't such a factor then) and had a happy childhood. No garden but we spent lots of time on Hampstead Heath.

I grew up in London and live in both north and south london and wouldnt raise my children in london and certainly not where i raised and lived. Too much gang culture and i can get so much more for my money a few miles down the road and there has been so much more for my dc to do. They can also get into west end by train and tube , which my dd 19 does all the time to go to theatre.

London children have far more access to parks and gardens, fields and woods than countryside children.

Not wanting to be argumentative User but that's a ludicrous statement. I agree London has some great green spaces (for a city) but how on earth do kids have more access to it than countryside kids?

There are lots of good arguments for raising kids in London, but that's really clutching at straw!

I live in the middle of the countryside and my kids will when they are older have more access to fields etc but right now we have to go in the car to the shops and to school and a park, walking is in the lane and so do have to be aware of cars (no pavement). In London we can go to any park close by, walk everywhere, it sounds ridiculous but in a way it's true (when they are young)

And I love London but do prefer raising children in the quiet countryside; there are clearly benefits of all but definitely not down to house prices etc in the article.

I'd be interested to see what the survey classed as "London" - I think if you took into account outer areas that perhaps fall into other counties but are still extremely accessible (e.g. we are 25 mins on train to central London where both myself and partner work but equally have the benefit of being in quite a villagey location where we live) then I suspect the results would be very different.
In any case, I don't think it is the "worst" place to live - it's just the bottom of a list of 35 places surveyed (apparently). The methodology is crude too - Newcastle may be all that's marvellous according to the survey but given the particular career path of both me and my husband, neither of us would have a hope in hell of getting a job in our respective fields there.

Furry I grew up in the countryside, really rural area and now live in London (hence the name). Here I can walk, tube or bus to loads of outdoor spaces - forests, marshes, meadows, parks, gardens. I walk miles every week and am outside for a huge portion of every day that I'm not working. I grew up surrounded by green fields on all sides, but spent nowhere near as much time out in them because unsurprisingly farmers are not at all thrilled about kids mooching around their cows and what not. If we spent time outside like you describe, we had to drive somewhere in the car. I am in a car now maximum twice a year. Not to be argumentative and I know that's not the case for the whole countryside, but honestly just because you're in a rural idyll doesn't mean you're out hiking and collecting leaves all day, and just because you're in London doesn't mean you're just surrounded by concrete.

What's quite awesome is if you search for London National Park City stuff in Twitter, there's a load of tweeters who tweet about nature and outdoorsy stuff in London, it's amazing.

If you can afford a house in London and not be overcrowded, perhaps by buying it 15 years ago, London is great and agree that there is plenty of accessible woodland etc around it.

If you have 2 adults and 2 kids in a 1-bed flat with no prospect of that changing, not so much.

I love London, it can be a great place to raise kids, they can have a lot of independence in their teens because the transport is so good and cheap, and the schools are much better than the rest of the country. But the child-on-child crime rates are a problem. All state London secondaries are to be offered metal detectors to check kids for knives.

We're expecting DC1 and made the decision to stay in London (we're moving to the nice end of a bit of Zone 2 that has a terrible reputation). The schools are properly (not just Ofsted) outstanding, the community is diverse, there is lots to do, lovely local parks etc. I grew up abroad having to be ferried everywhere and I'd like my DC to have something different.

We moved out of London because I didn't want to raise my kids in a polluted city. But we could afford a big enough home with garden so it's great. If you're well off.

Housing is obviously a massive issue, and important for DC. I really wanted to raise a family in London but moved out because of housing costs, also poor quality childcare (in our experience) and huge pressure on all kinds of services. Since we left and visited also realised how polluted it is where we lived.

user the countryside thing? That doesn't make any sense!

We are in a rural village. Fields and green areas are just part of the environment in which we live.

That said, schools where we now live are really polluted too, motorway nearby! Didn't think that one through!

I was brought up in London & even back then the crime was appalling ( the 70's & 80's ) but we stayed because we wanted our children to have the best job opportunities & to experience life in a big city. Funnily enough, now they're all adults, they dream of living by the sea or in the country. All those years of massive mortgage payments for nothing

We left london because we didn't want to raise DS there. We moved to the coast and have a 3 bedroom house and garden for less than the cost of our small flat. Schooling was our other consideration - nurseries where we lived before were so oversubscribed you had to be grateful for whatever you could get. Here, there's an outstanding one at the end of our road. In London we lived up the road from one of London's best state primaries but it and others in the area are so over-subscribed DS would most likely have ended up in a sink school several miles in the wrong direction from my work. There are 8 primary schools within 0.8 miles of our new house and all are good or outstanding. Lastly, the changes in London itself made us want to leave. When we moved to the area we lived in, it was all people in the arts and media, and had a really villagey, community vibe. As the prices went up the area was colonised by stockbrokers and lawyers and the community died. (Nothing wrong with being a lawyer or stockbroker, but for example they work longer hours so things like the weekly evening film club and local pub quizzes began dying off a stone people weren't around to go.) Again, the type of mum you'd find changed too. From ordinary people to very expensively highlighted women clad head to toe in lululemon yoga gear pushing Chelsea tank prams and clutching soya lattes, on their way to Horatio's baby mandarin class.

I love London and loved living there.

Moving out is still just about the best decision we made though. Nothing would make me move back. Feels so overcrowded and polluted on my visits back.

*as there, not a stone!

I grew up in Central London (SW1). Apart from access to museums, history, theatres, concert halls, sports facilities and so on, the extensive public transport system meant I was pretty independent once I got to secondary school. (In fact, we were allowed to travel independently on the tube once we were 8, but this was the 1980s. Not sure if even my super-liberal parents would allow that now). Now (rural W Yorks) I just see years of driving my dc everywhere ahead of me. Not because they are special, but because buses are minimal here!

My primary school faced the Natural History Museum and my secondary school was 10 mins walk from the original Tate Gallery. Both schools used these to support work we were doing.

And big schools may put people off, but if you grow up in a capital city, large groups of people is what you know. Whilst my academic achievements at school were mediocre at best (I improved dramatically at university), the social and cultural mix of children I went to school was was amazing. My secondary school had pupils with 46 first languages between them; with pupils including a hereditary heir and some from the biggest sink estate in Europe at the time, and every socio-economic increment in between. I probably have the most cultural and racial understanding and compassion of anyone I know, because it's what was my "normal" from the beginning. I knew sane sex couples as friends of my parents, went to tea and celebrations with Jewish, Muslim and Sikh friends. My best friend was African. I'm not saying that multiculturalism is unique to London, but London is a huge and diverse city, which exposes its residents to experienced my own dC just simple do not come across in their day to day life. (I am also not saying that this is a good thing, and it is something we are working on with our country mixe).

And the point about green space/wildlife has done validity. I live in rural W Yorks now, in the middle mixed farmland. All we can see for miles is green rolling hills and woodland, but we can access very little of it! Nothing like the hundreds of acres of Richmond Park I grew up with, Battersea Park that I cycled through to get to school (moved house when I was 16), Streatham Common where we rode, Hampstead Ponds where we swam. And there was plenty of wildlife - rabbits, deer, badgers, foxes - in all of them.

It could be that they are Yorkshire folk, but my dc are never happier than when they have a plate of meat and 2 veg with gravy. No wandering Brixton market for hot patties and plantains for them!

So, house prices aside, I've never quite understood this horror of raising children in London.