Everything about the loud, busy, entertaining, overwhelming city makes parenting easier

According to new research by the Education Policy Institute, London is losing its children. As of this year, there are 15.9 per cent fewer children in Westminster than there were in 2015, 9.5 per cent fewer in Wandsworth and 12.4 per cent in Southwark. In real terms that means there are several thousand fewer children living in each borough compared to a decade ago.

I’m smug to say that I already knew about this phenomenon, because if you currently have kids and live in London, it’s all you ever seem to hear. I’m currently in the process of picking the shortlist of primary schools for my daughter, ahead of a nerve-wracking wait to see whether we get a place at any of our preferred choices.

On every school tour I take, the head laments the dwindling numbers in London. I had hoped this might mean more easily getting a place at a preferable school, but in fact it can mean the opposite. Increasingly, primary schools which have two form entry (60 kids total) are being asked by councils to reduce down to one form entry (30 kids) to prevent other, underfilled, schools from closing down, making getting a spot at your preferred primary even harder.

But why does London have fewer and fewer kids? According to research from the Education Policy Institute a combination of falling birth rates, Brexit, working from home and cost of living are the main culprits. One factor that the EPI doesn’t point out, but which I encounter time and time again, is the social pressure to leave London once you have children, as if escaping the city is the de facto conclusion of having a kid.

I find myself asked on a regular basis when, rather than if, I plan to move out of London, and since getting pregnant with a second child the expectation has doubled. “What’s the logic behind living in London?” a well-meaning friend asked me at a barbecue over the summer.

What’s the logic? Behind raising children in what I believe to be one of the best cities in the entire world? Let me count the ways. Pushing a pram around Richmond Park in the autumn, taking Baby Sensory classes at the National History Museum and music classes at the Royal Opera House. Weekends exploring Hampton Court, the Tower of London, the Tates Modern and Britain.

Libraries and baby classes within walking distance of my house, the choice of dozens of nurseries offering different educational ethoses. Food and essentials delivered via Uber Eats or Deliveroo within minutes, short commutes into work when the office beckons meaning more time at home in the evenings.

The variety of food, drink, theatre, cinema, the number of languages and cuisines on our local high street. The fact that people are so fundamentally self involved that they barely notice your child having a tantrum on the street. Everything about the loud, busy, entertaining, overwhelming city makes parenting easier, as far as I’m concerned.

Leaving London for rural living is nothing new – I spent much of the late nineties and early noughties waving off friends whose parents prefered a life in the country, but the trend for leaving London for the country became even more common during the pandemic. Inner London boroughs saw a 41 per cent rise in migration and outer London a 24 per cent rise. Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, Surrey and Buckinghamshire recorded the largest influxes of pupils from London and continue to see a consistent rise in school applications throughout primary school years.

Anecdotally there’s another aspect to the London Leavers which the research doesn’t represent – guilt. Specifically a kind of guilt stemming from a belief that children require a bigger house, a bigger garden in a way that only the suburbs and countryside can offer. Chatting to another mum in a soft play a few weeks ago, she told me she was moving to Surrey because she just didn’t feel like she made the most of living in London, and she wanted a “nicer” life for the kids.

I looked around the tastefully decorated soft play, and at the perfect oat flat white the barista had made me while my child played with wooden Montessori learning toys and privately wondered what Surrey could offer that was “nicer” than this. Yes, green space is lovely, and children should be able to run around, but that’s what your local park is for, and I’m the one paying the mortgage, surely how “nice” it is for me should be factored into the equation too?

Country versus city will, I think, always remain one of those unsolved arguments, because neither is objectively better and both have their abundant downsides as well as compensations. My only real sadness is when people who, like me, love city living with their whole hearts, are forced to leave their home city for the suburbs or countryside because of their economic situation.

Just as cities are wonderful for families, families are wonderful for cities, and the mass exodus of children from London will (to my mind) deprive kids of the joy of an urban childhood, but will also end up eventually depriving London of the magic of being a city which is a young, vibrant, busy home to children.