The kids return

Thirty-two years ago, I moved from the historically-Scandinavian Seattle neighborhood of Ballard to my present home, just south of the University of Washington.  My new home was in a quiet and dignified neighborhood.  Most of my neighbors were well past the first bloom of youth, many of them professors or in other staff positions at the university.  When I saw children outdoors, it usually meant that someone's grandparents were being visited.

In the past ten years, however, there's been a change in the 'hood.  Younger homeowners, many of them high tech workers -- employees of Microsoft, Amazon, and many smaller companies.  Furthermore, they began having kids.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, more and more houses now have tell-tale basketball hoops out in front.  I see more and more kids out on bikes -- earlier, in the company of doting and protective parents, but within the past five years, often alone or in the company of their age peers.  The 1950s revisited!

These changes aren't just my imagination.  The Seattle Times ran an article today reporting that as of 2017, the Seattle population under the age of 18 had risen to 115,000 -- the first time it exceeded 100,000 in decades.  Admittedly, the kid population in 1960, fueled by the Baby Boom, was 167,000.  Those were the golden days of kiddom.  The schools were crowded.  Seattle neighborhoods were quite similar to suburban neighborhoods, both in appearance and in the number of children present.  The city was so focused on the rearing and education of the next generation that I well recall -- I moved to Seattle in 1963 -- the Seattle Times printing the name and photo of each Boy Scout as he achieved Eagle rank. 

Then -- nationwide -- came the great hollowing out of the cities, as the middle classes, especially the white middle classes, fled the urban areas and their schools.  By 1980, there were only 87,000 children under 18 in Seattle, and Seattle had closed two of its more prominent high schools -- Lincoln and Queen Anne (Lincoln re-opens this fall, another sign of the times).

The tide has been reversed, but you still won't see photos of Eagle scouts in the newspaper.  Only 15.8 percent of Seattle's population, even now, is under 18.  (In 1960, that percentage was 30 percent.)  Seattle has the third lowest percentage in the nation of its population under the age of 18 (only San Francisco and Boston have fewer).  We still remain an expensive city in which to raise a family, and we would have fewer kids even now if our median incomes weren't so high.  The median income for a married couple with children is $161,000. 

Will the trend continue?  Will we have gangs of kids roaming the streets, doing wheelies on their bicycles?  Who can predict?  But not all couples seem to require children, when suitable substitutes are available.  We may have 115,000 children -- but we also have 150,000 dogs. 

Cats?  Cats refuse to speak to the census workers.