More daycare options at a variety of price points, all of them unaffordable.
A super accessible subway station with an elevator that will get you all the way down to the mezzanine. The tracks are just two flights of stairs below that.
Playgrounds that are so packed you’ll wait in the bathroom line for forty-five minutes. That’s how much kids love our jungle gyms. Please bring your own toilet paper.
Restaurants with kid-friendly meals that considerately still charge adult prices, so you get both experiences. Bet you’ve never tried $24 buttered noodles before.
Completely adequate public schools. As in, most of the kids are vaccinated.
Enough minivans with “Honors Student” bumper stickers that you can be confident Harvard recruiters will visit every fall. Saves you a trip. Your child is two, but still.
A booming waiting room at the pediatrician’s office. This is a great way for your child to make friends and also get the flu. Immunity Power!
All the city’s best retail stores: Lands End, Ann Taylor, Walmart, Target, another Walmart.
Free plyometrics classes, if you count dodging kids on scooters as plyometrics.
Stop signs at every intersection. All of them. And also sometimes in the middle of the street. You cannot drive more than three miles per hour. Children live here!
Tons of super fun activities. If you’re a child. If you’re an adult, don’t worry, the library has a monthly Mommy & Me karaoke night.
No judgment when you breastfeed in public. In fact, it’s likely another parent will approach you and ask you to breastfeed their kid, too. Why do you have two breasts, after all? If not to be neighborly, in your child-friendly neighborhood!
High taxes.
Divorced dads coming on the Hinge market in droves.
Sidewalk chalk art everywhere. It’s so ubiquitous, in fact, that you’ll forget that there are no actual museums within a 10-mile radius.
Coffee shops that close at 2 p.m., so you can finally kick that pesky caffeine habit. What is there to be awake for, anyway? It’s not like there’s anything to do after your kids go to bed. Not unless it’s The White Lotus season.
A very active Facebook Buy Nothing group. You’ll never have to buy expired formula ever again. These parents are so enthusiastic about their Buy Nothing groups. It’s almost like they’ve reached new levels of boredom or something?
Also, an active Nextdoor group. If you ever fail to clean up your dog’s #2, they’ll know. Again, a lot of enthusiasm about poop, considering the participants are grown adults who are presumably busy with their kids? This neighborhood is so child-friendly, after all.
An easy way to explain why you moved so far away from everyone and everything fun.
Frequent invites to wine clubs. Free wine! Plus, everyone there will already know everything about you, your husband, and your kids. Like, everything. So you won’t have to explain yourself.
A generally slower pace of life. This affords you plenty of time to browse Zillow and think about where else you could be living.
You won’t be the only mom crying in the Key Foods.
