Last weekend felt almost comically Chicago. On Saturday morning, I took my two young kids and our dog to our closest neighborhood park, then walked over to Mindy’s for coffee and a raspberry pastry. (Worth the line!)
Later, a friend texted. Her parents’ friends had a boat, and did we want to come out on Lake Michigan? A few hours later, we were swimming off the boat and eating cheese and charcuterie as the sun set over the skyline. After dark, fireworks lit up the sky.
The next morning was the Bucktown Arts Fest, a few blocks from our house. My daughter spotted her kindergarten teacher dressed as Mother Goose and sat down to hear her read stories. The kids got glittery dogs painted on their faces. Our neighbors offered to watch them so I could explore for a bit; I wandered through booths of crafts, maps, and jewelry, and bought a few prints of cheese plates.
By Sunday evening, I felt a rush of gratitude for this life we had built.
A year earlier, none of it existed.
Courtesy of Hannah Howard
We already had the things families are supposed to want
My husband and I were tried-and-true New Yorkers before we had kids. In the first weeks of the pandemic, when New York was the epicenter of COVID, we left the city thinking we were only escaping for a little while. Our daughter was born that April.
Months later, what had started as a temporary retreat became something more permanent: we moved to that small rural town in New Jersey and began building our family life there. At the time, the quiet and space felt like exactly what we needed.
Five years later, that baby was getting ready to start kindergarten, her 3-year-old brother was headed to preschool, and the world had changed.
When my husband got a job in Chicago, city life suddenly became possible again. I work for myself, so my work could come with us.
On paper, moving seemed backward. We had a house, a yard, quiet streets, and plenty of space — all the things families are supposedly chasing.
But our town had one coffee shop, one playground, and only a handful of families with young kids. If everyone was busy, which felt like all the time, that was kind of it.
I realized how much I missed the energy of city life: walking out the door without knowing exactly what might happen, having choices, seeing people. There was plenty of physical space around us, yet my own world felt smaller.
So we moved to Chicago.
Courtesy of Hannah Howard
I worried city life would make childhood feel smaller
We did give things up. We don’t have a backyard anymore. There’s more noise, and parking can be annoying. (Ironically, our Chicago house is actually bigger than the one we left.)
But what feels most different isn’t the amount of space. It’s how much more life is packed around us.
We walk to school, the library, playgrounds, coffee shops, restaurants, and friends’ houses. There are usually kids playing in the alley, often my own. We take walks along the 606, Chicago’s elevated rail trail. On Sundays, we scooter to the Wicker Park farmers market to buy flowers, then get tacos and spicy margaritas at Big Star. Sometimes, I join an impromptu mom hang on a nearby patio after bedtime.
We can hop on the 73 bus to the free Lincoln Park Zoo, and my kids consider riding the bus an attraction in itself.
If one plan falls through, there are 10 others.
Courtesy of Hannah Howard
Their world extends beyond our front door
I assumed raising children in a city would require me to keep them closer.
Instead, I’ve watched them become more capable. They know the route to school, the library, Aldi, and the fancy specialty store. They’re learning how to cross busy streets, wait for the blue line, and navigate public spaces alongside all kinds of people.
They recognize neighbors and the people who work at our regular spots. We bump into classmates, teachers, and other parents on the sidewalk. Their world isn’t contained inside our property line. It stretches through the neighborhood and beyond.
That COVID baby is now a first grader walking into our neighborhood elementary school. Her little brother just started pre-K in the building next door.
There’s one vision where childhood freedom requires acreage. But I see another kind of freedom in knowing how to move through a community.
My definition of a good place to raise kids changed
I used to think a good place to raise kids was one that offered a certain kind of abundance: more yard, more quiet, more room to spread out.
Now I think abundance can look like something else entirely.
It can be three playgrounds within walking distance when the first one is inexplicably “boring.” It can be a library we pop into without planning ahead, a bus arriving just as everyone’s legs are getting tired, or deciding at 4:30 on a summer afternoon that we might as well go get ice cream because it’s right there.
It can also be other people.
People we run into. People my kids wave to. A neighborhood where our lives overlap with other lives all day long.
I don’t think Chicago is a better way to raise kids. It’s just a much better fit for us. A year in, I don’t miss the quieter version of family life I thought we were supposed to want. I feel like we found our way back to ourselves.
