Why City Life & Raising a Family Are Not Incompatible

Photo Credit: kaysha

Kathy Keller, longtime resident of New York City and assistant director of communications for Redeemer Presbyterian Church, shares her thoughts in a recent post on The Gospel Coalition site on why she thinks a big city is a wonderful place to raise a family.

Here she comments on the perceived darkness in the city and its effect on children:

"In the city your kids see sin and its consequences while you are still with them and can help them process it. Eventually they're going to encounter it for themselves, usually when they leave the protected environment of home for the big wide world---just when you are no longer around to discuss things. 

I have had parents counter this suggestion by saying that, as valuable as processing the ugliness of this broken world with your children might be, there is such a thing as seeing too much, too soon. Possibly so, but my daughter in law (with degrees in education from Vanderbilt and Harvard in both primary and secondary education, and experience in teaching both) pointed something out to me---if children are really that young, too young for some sights, they simply won't see them, or understand what they're seeing. 

Children find a great deal of the world inexplicable to them, so the very young are not usually in danger of being damaged by fleeting glimpses of the sordid world. By the time they are old enough to notice what they're seeing, it's time for parents to be talking to them about it, anyway. And it's usually way younger than you thought!"

To read the rest of the post please click here.