Apologizes to a Family for Going Where It'snone Ofyour Business
Internal Dissent: Should parents enhance their kids in the hood?
In an article in Wednesday's comment section, a father of two kids described his experiences raising immature children in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. An informal email debate followed, with National Post editorial board members and columnists arguing about the wisdom of parents buying homes in rough urban neighbourhoods. An edited version of that conversation appears beneath:
Barbara Kay It'south too bad that narrative about bringing upwardly kids in the Downtown Eastside is in the Mail because if it were in another paper I would criticize the guy for privileging a cheap condo in the city at this price to his children's quality of life over a make clean and wholesome environment at a distance. Am I overreacting?
Jonathan Kay Probably.B. Kay Says the dad who's bringing upward his children in the most child-friendly neighbourhood in Toronto.
J. Kay Yep, but I besides realize that some of my friends take their kids to Costa Rica for vi months, or to S Africa, or they put them on ski racing teams at the historic period of six. Or they bulldoze them around in their midlife crisis death trap convertibles. These are all risky for the kids. But I don't write near how they are endangering them. I merely say it behind their back at dinner parties.
Matt Gurney I had the same response to the piece as Barbara, but with less enthusiasm. It was a bit weird, considering when you boil it down, the author's essentially saying, "Yeah, my kids are luckily oblivious to the human debris littering the streets outside our house, only man, did we ever get a great deal on it!"
Marni Soupcoff I empathize his thinking. This was their just hazard to ain, which in the long run probably gives the kids more than security.
Gurney I understand his thinking. I also understand why Barbara thinks he'southward wrong.
J. Kay Then every Jewish and Italian and Chinese and Greek immigrant in Toronto who came over a century ago was also incorrect. They besides made choices to buy homes in terrible neighbourhoods, as opposed to hire tenement rooms under the factory floor — because they wanted to build equity. And because they came from cultures that rightly viewed real estate ownership as pathways to middle-class success.
This guy in Vancouver is taking the same path. In 10 years, he will be surrounded by yuppification, and be able to sell at a large turn a profit and buy a big snowboarding hacky sack chalet, or whatever people in Vancouver do with money.
B. Kay You lot could not be more than incorrect. These immigrants all lived in very poor areas, merely they did not alive in junkieville and did not accept to step around homo carrion in the street. Don't equate poverty with dysfunction. They were poor, but their lives were human. They were families; they had standards of human being dignity, or as much as possible nether the circumstances. Their children ran effectually the streets in safety. That is simply a ridiculous comparison.
Chris Selley Well, where is the guy supposed to alive, Surrey? Blech. Zilch he described in that piece sounded worse to me, in terms of overall quality of life, than bourgeoisie. Simply that's why we all go to make our own choices.
Soupcoff And at least those kids have a clue what the real world is like.
Gurney Will you soon exist taking your son and daughters on walking trips through the worst parts of Toronto, then?
Soupcoff I do endeavor to have them beyond where nosotros live. It's important to me that they're aware at that place are people sleeping on grates and that non all kids' idea of a bad day is a s—-y Rainbow Songs session.
B. Kay Which is why I took my kids to see Bambi, and so they'd know sometimes terrible things happen to moms. But that's different from living in a forest so the child can lookout man animals killing each other all solar day long.
Soupcoff Actually encountering struggling human beings tends to exist a bit more than effective in broadening a kid's horizons than watching Disney movies.
B. Kay So the Downtown Eastide is the real globe? And in that location's a virtue in having kids grow upwardly in information technology? Well, how about they nourish the Kim Jong Il Daycare heart and learn about the "real world" in a gulag? People, you don't practise social experiments on the backs of your ain children. That is rule #1 of parenting.
National Post
Source: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/internal-dissent-should-parents-raise-their-kids-in-the-hood
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