An Initial Attempt At An Urbanism/Pro-Family Dialogue

People who love cities and people who love kids need to talk (more)

One of the reasons I write this newsletter, and write about these broad urbanism topics, is to “translate” these ideas to a regular audience: to try and convey that despite sounding like arcane bits of public policy wonkery, this stuff is really about how our everyday lives work. It affects all of us. And additionally, I try to dispel the idea that it’s about elitism or telling people how to live. In other words, I’m not just writing about what I think, I’m writing with an eye towards communicating and articulating ideas in a different way than they usually are.

In this piece I’m doing two things: thinking about how to resolve some of the apparent tension between families and family-friendly places to live, on the one hand; and urbanism (as an idea/movement) and cities (as places) on the other. In some way, these things are often seen as being at odds.

I’m also thinking about the approach of ecumenical dialogues, and how they are designed to force participants to see both their opponents’ views and their own views in a different light: shorn of the typical language, implied assumptions or premises, etc.

First I want to give you an example. This is not from a dialogue per se, but it’s an ecumenical document, attempting to harmonize or find convergence between the Eucharistic doctrines of Catholicism and Methodism. There are a lot of fine points of theology here, of course, and for this piece none of that matters.

What I find interesting about this kind of endeavor is way in which, by coming at a question from a different angle, you can bypass a lot of the stock phrases and preconceived ideas people on both sides hold, and, if not find actual agreement, find ways in which the received ways of talking about things obscure a certain amount of agreement which really is there. This is not ecumenism as indifferentism, or glossing over real differences. It’s an exercise in challenging those we disagree with, and also ourselves, to figure out what they really think about a thing.

One interesting example of this approach from the Catholic-Methodist document is the idea of the Eucharist as a “propitiatory sacrifice,” a Catholic concept that Protestants typically reject. The author writes of this doctrinal disagreement:

Catholic reference to the Mass (Word and Table) as a propitiatory sacrifice looses much of its offense in light of the fact that the eucharist (BEM), or Word and Table (UMC), entails confession, repentance, and pardon. What could Methodists imagine occurs at Word and Table other than that the Lord—through his promise at the Supper—reconciles a community of believers estranged to him by sin through repentance (itself at least an intellectual work) and grants communion with him? And what could this communion be? Followers of Wesley can say that the propitiatory sacrifice is the eternal intercession of our High Priest in which he grants sacramental communion with him through his real presence in the bread and wine, a communion which is a participation in the propitiation of the cross….

Again, I’m not interested in the doctrinal dispute per se, but in the way this approaches it differently, by asking what the term really at bottom means and what the objection really is.

The author is basically asking the Methodist side something like, Is the confession/pardon in the Methodist service just a symbolic ritual you kept around because you inherited it from the Anglicans (who inherited it from the Catholics)? Or do you actually believe that pardon occurs at the service as the words of the liturgy suggests it does? And if it does occur at the service, what exactly is that but the fruits of a sacrifice which actually forgives sins? Is this really as far off from the Catholics’ “propitiatory sacrifice” as you are accustomed to thinking it is?

It breaks the circular logic of the in-group/out-group—“We don’t believe that because those other people believe it and we’re not like them”—not by saying “You should like them” but by finding that actually, you are much more like them than either you or they realize.

Now you can obviously take this a bit too far, and it begins to seem like clever debating rather than actual analysis. I’m sure that a learned Methodist could explain why the Catholic idea of “propitiatory sacrifice” is distinct from whatever Methodists believe occurs in their service. And likewise a more theologically schooled Catholic than me could explain exactly why the Catholic view is distinct from the Protestant view.

But the point is that this exercise can change not just your perception of the “other,” but of yourself, because we are not accustomed to interrogating our own views, or asking ourselves what precisely we mean by a certain term, or disentangling all of the premises and assumptions in our heads which may or may not be sensible.

So I want to offer some of the arguments about kids/families/cities/urbanism in a way that might help people more in one camp or the other to think through these things and how there may not be much distance between them.

The most basic split here is over the related ideas that 1) cities are difficult or non-ideal places to raise children, and that 2) urbanists do not understand or prioritize the particular needs of parents/families.

Now as some of the following observations would suggest, there is overlap between “family people” and “city people,” but there is nonetheless a definite division. While having children is not a political or ideological signifier, making it a part of one’s identity or politics is typically right-coded. Urban living, and certainly advocacy for it, is typically left-coded.

American politics “un-bundles” these two issues in ways that can make it difficult to synthesize them, because of the distrust between left and right, and the mutual suspicion that each cause is a Trojan horse for a more radical cause: “pro-family” as pronatalism, seen as returning women to the home and kitchen; urbanism aligned against the suburban American way of life.

So “having kids” and “living in cities” are often seen as distinct if not unrelated causes or areas of interest. The purpose of this exercise is to cut through the assumptions and premises at play and try to identify and evaluate the essential core desires, motivations, and beliefs of those in each camp.

Some of the objections against cities from parents/pro-family commentators/etc., include:

• Parents often need to go places quickly or on a moment’s notice—a hospital visit after an accident or injury, early pickup after an incident at daycare or school, etc.—and only automobile travel, even with the uncertainty of traffic jams, is flexible and fast enough for these situations. Public transit, with fixed routes, long headways, possible delays, and often no 24-hour service, cannot be relied on for these occasions.

• Cities are, or are perceived to be, too chaotic and dangerous for families with young children.

• The on-average smaller size of city dwellings puts negative pressure on birth rates/number of children, and in any cases forces growing families to leave the city.

• Cities lean culturally liberal and, more importantly, are largely geared towards the preferences of young people. City life is an extension of college and quasi-adulthood, and is a phase of life from which you “graduate.”

• The issue of public school quality is another major factor, though it is less of a land use or cities versus suburbia issue per se, and is beyond the scope of this piece.

On the other hand, pro-family considerations in favor of urban life include: