Sunday, March 26, 2017

Raising Kids in the Boburb



I am studying how what I call "boburbs" - bourgeois bohemian city neighborhoods - compare with suburbs.  Right now I am trying to figure out what the distinctive ideals of each kind of neighborhood would be.

The suburban ideal is driven by the nurture of children.  As such it is fundamentally an honorable ideal. 

Bohemias and boburbs are primarily for childless people, and their neighborhood projects are adult oriented.  

Still, there is an ideal of human development as "cosmopolitan citizens" that leads some parents to include children and child rearing into the boburb project.  They are not just finding a way to raise kids in the city, they embrace it as a better way for the kids.  This is especially true for adolescents.  

This is a higher risk, but higher payoff, form of adolescent rearing.

6 comments:

Mac said...

Interesting. I am troubled by the sentence: "Bohemias and boburbs are primarily for childless people, and their neighborhood projects are adult oriented."

Is it really good for children to put them into a community that is "primarily childless" and where the neighborhood is "adult oriented" (sic)? This seems to me to be an excuse for people to subordinate the interests of a child to their desire for the carefree singles or childless couple life they once had. If you are "grown up" enough to decide to have children, you need to realize that that entails putting the kids first.

And, no, I am not saying those who decide to remain childless are not "grown ups". Rather, they are the other side of the coin--they have decided that the childless life-style is what is more important to them and are honest and mature enough to say that.

Gruntled said...

My point is that parents in the boburbs want their kids to grow up in a more mixed world than the suburbs offer. This is a childrearing ideal.

(By the way, what is wrong with "adult oriented"?)

Mac said...

For an 8 year old? Everything.

Gruntled said...

I mean, what is wrong with "adult oriented" as a phrase? Why did you mark it as a writing error with (sic)?

Mac said...

I am never wrong.....but my 70 years have been filled with times in which I was orders of magnitude lees right than I should have been There is absolutely nothing wrong with the phrase "adult oriented" and I have not the slightest idea why I added the "sic". I would love to blame my new trifocals, but that excuse is wearing thin after three years. Pleases accept my apologies.

Gruntled said...

All is well. :-)