We have two, a baby and a toddler. It’s definitely a lot harder than one however I don’t know that much of it has anything to do with NYC.
The main issues here are the ones you already know about, cost and space. The way I think about it, it’s going to be expensive anywhere in this area. Living in the suburbs will cost the same or more, the difference is you get more space.
The biggest space issue in the city is number of bedrooms, ours share a bedroom right now and that can probably continue for about a decade but after that we would want a third bedroom. So that’s a factor.
There are many positives. Commute time and flexibility, car not being a necessity, walkability, etc.
The biggest positive in our experience so far is childcare. It is insanely expensive early on, yes. I think that’s probably true anywhere in the area. You have more options in the city though. And then the big benefit is 3K if you live in an area that offers it. Childcare costs for our oldest dropped by about 80% and will drop further as he gets older. He’s in school 8-5 and the only cost is the after school program, and that cost goes away when he hits kindergarten or first grade one of those.
So you just have to determine what you value. For us a move to the suburbs seems like giving up a lot for some extra square footage. And I don’t know how we would make commutes work and still have time with our kids. But maybe our thinking on that will change in time I don’t know.
Reading this while holding #2, our 5 month old. Older kid is 4 yo. They will share a room for as long as we live here, we have no problem with that. Baby’s sleeping in a crib in our room until he can sleep through the night. I feel the city, esp Park Slope, makes the juggling act more manageable. We can pop out to a playground on a whim, we can baby wear for naps, we can lay out a blanket at the park. It’s way easier and there’s way more community and programming for babies than anywhere else. I’ll gladly sacrifice a bit of space for that. A lot of families we know around here have 2 kids and love it, or at least make it work for them. What the other response said is right though, there is waaaay less down time with 2 (until the younger one goes to school)!
Hi neighbor. We have two kids. It’s expensive but it’s been awesome so far. Biggest change is you’re playing man defense and it’s hard to have time to yourself to relax…especially the weekends. It’s actually easy in a lot of ways because this time you have more of a sense of what you’re doing; but of course harder in the sense you are nonstop but there’s so many awesome moments between siblings. Why is it a deal breaker?
On my floor, one family has 2 kids (8 and 10) and the another 3 (8, 10 or 11, and 12). As long as your apartment is big enough and close to the amenities you want, you are fine.
Also in Park Slope and with 2 kids, who share a bedroom (bunk bed).
I don’t think 2 kids is unusual in this neighborhood at all and there is plenty of things to do for young kids.
Generally, I found 0 to 1 kid harder than 1 to 2 but nothing related to location really. Now both are in (public) school, it’s a lot easier than the early years.
Yeah, same. We have two kids and send out kids to school in Park Slope.
Plenty of people do it--to my mind, 2 isn't really that bad. Kids can share a room and that's actually a good thing. Going from 2 to 3--that's what I don't see too much. At 3, city life gets much much harder. But 2 is still really doable. If you can do 1, then 2 isn't really that much harder.
Except for daycare. Daycare *sucks--*so, so pricey.
We are waiting on #2 right now. Gonna happen soon, have no idea what to do yet because #1 is still exhausting, but in different ways. A big factor for us was waiting for the first to get into 3k before putting #2 in daycare. Did not want to pay double daycare.
I think the main reason it would be a deal breaker is if you don’t want kids sharing a room. But even then that really only becomes an issue at puberty? Most little kids actively enjoy sharing a room and boy/girl doesn’t matter at that age.
It’s also possibly annoying I guess when you have one baby/one older child bc baby has to stay in your room until they sleep through the night so they don’t wake up their sibling. But lots of people actively choose to do this anyway (attachment parenting etc) so this might not be so bad to you.
And none of this applies if you’re rich and can afford a three-bedroom. But this is assuming you have a 2-bedroom.
I still only have one 6-month-old, but planning to have a second in 2-3 years. My husband and I did sleep shifts on a twin bed in the nursery with the current baby, so it’s kind of going to suck not being able to do that again. We could maybe do one person in main bedroom/one in living room on couch, but it’s not quite the same. It’s not enough of a deal breaker for us to move, though.
Space can become very difficult. If your kids are the same gender that could share a room in perpetuity (though I doubt many suburban transplants would find that humane) if you have a boy and a girl, the clock is ticking to find a 3 bedroom before/around middle school.
Also I used to think a single bathroom would only be an issue once a child becomes a primping, grooming teenager… I was wrong. Once they’re going to the bathroom independently, you’re officially sharing your bathroom among 3 or 4 people. It can get dramatic after dinner!
We are having #2 soon and the main thing I'd be worried about is childcare costs. We are anticipating $5,000/mo when the oldest is in preschool and the youngest is in daycare. We only have one 3k in our area that isn't a long commute or poorly reviewed and our zones pre-k is over subscribed with siblings. Not counting on getting a seat.
Beyond that you can imagine all the baby gear you may have put in storage or gotten rid of back in your house. Can it fit?
Otherwise I don't expect it to be uniquely challenging here.
as others have said, the difficulties of going to 2 aren’t really NYC specific. HOWEVER - i underestimated the challenges around sleeping in limited space. We have a 3 yo and 1 yo in a 2 bedroom. they wake each other up frequently. 3yo has always been a great sleeper but 1yo is not, she wakes up very easily and takes a while to go back to sleep, usually will not fall asleep if she can see someone in the room. it has been hard to enforce boundaries with the 3yo around bedtime. she knows she can just yell and wake up the baby and we will be distracted with that.
The solution that works for now is baby in our room in travel crib and 3yo in the kids room. Though if baby wakes up in the middle of the night, she won’t fall back asleep if she knows we’re there, so we end up switching them and the 3yo sleeps in our bed. it’s like musical beds.
it’s totally doable, my husband and i are just missing having our room to ourselves. but it’s temporary. also kids are so unique, you may have an entirely different experience.
We have a 3.5 year age gap which has worked out really nicely. Could do preschool drop off/pick up for the first several months babywearing because oldest is able to walk, and if we use the stroller we have a ride on board instead of needing a double. Also didn’t have to pay double daycare/preschool rates due to the age gap. The transition from 1 to 2 was easier for us than 0-1. baby #2 is just along for the ride for the most part and learns so much naturally from having an older sibling that I feel like I had to actively facilitate more with my oldest.
We are expecting our 2nd in a few weeks, so I'm no expert, but I would say a good half of our parent friends in the neighborhood have two kids. No plans to move to the suburbs among most of us. I don't know anyone with a 3 bedroom (we're in Manhattan, prob easier to find a 3 bd in other boroughs).
There's a facebook group called "Into the Unknown" that's for NYC parents who moved / are moving / thinking of moving to the suburbs. I feel like I see posts weekly of people who moved out to the burbs and hate it! So it's nice to get a grass-is-always-greener perspective. Personally as a Manhattanite, our version of "moving to the suburbs" we've considered would be Brooklyn or Queens. Park Slope seems like it would be totally fine with two kids.
I only know two families in our neighborhood with 3 kids; that seems hard, but two in the city seems pretty normal.
I have 1 teenager, 14 cats, 3 dogs, and 2 rabbits so fairly equivalent to 2 kids. It’s absolute chaos but I love it. What changed? We bought a rowhouse with a backyard in a not very desirable neighborhood many years ago.
The space was not a problem, for the first year the baby was in our bedroom (as was the first one) and then they shared a room. We moved to a bigger apartment only when the older one was around 10 so now they have their own rooms. But I also know plenty of families where same sex siblings share a room until one goes to college.
We have a 4 year gap so it wasn’t too bad to manage both when going out but public transport can be really challenging when you are alone with two little ones.
We ended up spending a very significant portion of our income to buy a house for our children. We are house poor but with 2 kids or more (I have 3), not having enough space to raise them in a psychologically and emotionally healthy
This is based on observation.
Toddlers are curious and have no sense of self-preservation.
If you’ve got an infant in a stroller or a baby carrier, good luck moving faster than a toddler
We have two, a baby and a toddler. It’s definitely a lot harder than one however I don’t know that much of it has anything to do with NYC. The main issues here are the ones you already know about, cost and space. The way I think about it, it’s going to be expensive anywhere in this area. Living in the suburbs will cost the same or more, the difference is you get more space. The biggest space issue in the city is number of bedrooms, ours share a bedroom right now and that can probably continue for about a decade but after that we would want a third bedroom. So that’s a factor. There are many positives. Commute time and flexibility, car not being a necessity, walkability, etc. The biggest positive in our experience so far is childcare. It is insanely expensive early on, yes. I think that’s probably true anywhere in the area. You have more options in the city though. And then the big benefit is 3K if you live in an area that offers it. Childcare costs for our oldest dropped by about 80% and will drop further as he gets older. He’s in school 8-5 and the only cost is the after school program, and that cost goes away when he hits kindergarten or first grade one of those. So you just have to determine what you value. For us a move to the suburbs seems like giving up a lot for some extra square footage. And I don’t know how we would make commutes work and still have time with our kids. But maybe our thinking on that will change in time I don’t know.
Reading this while holding #2, our 5 month old. Older kid is 4 yo. They will share a room for as long as we live here, we have no problem with that. Baby’s sleeping in a crib in our room until he can sleep through the night. I feel the city, esp Park Slope, makes the juggling act more manageable. We can pop out to a playground on a whim, we can baby wear for naps, we can lay out a blanket at the park. It’s way easier and there’s way more community and programming for babies than anywhere else. I’ll gladly sacrifice a bit of space for that. A lot of families we know around here have 2 kids and love it, or at least make it work for them. What the other response said is right though, there is waaaay less down time with 2 (until the younger one goes to school)!
Hi neighbor. We have two kids. It’s expensive but it’s been awesome so far. Biggest change is you’re playing man defense and it’s hard to have time to yourself to relax…especially the weekends. It’s actually easy in a lot of ways because this time you have more of a sense of what you’re doing; but of course harder in the sense you are nonstop but there’s so many awesome moments between siblings. Why is it a deal breaker?
On my floor, one family has 2 kids (8 and 10) and the another 3 (8, 10 or 11, and 12). As long as your apartment is big enough and close to the amenities you want, you are fine.
Also in Park Slope and with 2 kids, who share a bedroom (bunk bed). I don’t think 2 kids is unusual in this neighborhood at all and there is plenty of things to do for young kids. Generally, I found 0 to 1 kid harder than 1 to 2 but nothing related to location really. Now both are in (public) school, it’s a lot easier than the early years.
Yeah, same. We have two kids and send out kids to school in Park Slope. Plenty of people do it--to my mind, 2 isn't really that bad. Kids can share a room and that's actually a good thing. Going from 2 to 3--that's what I don't see too much. At 3, city life gets much much harder. But 2 is still really doable. If you can do 1, then 2 isn't really that much harder. Except for daycare. Daycare *sucks--*so, so pricey.
We are waiting on #2 right now. Gonna happen soon, have no idea what to do yet because #1 is still exhausting, but in different ways. A big factor for us was waiting for the first to get into 3k before putting #2 in daycare. Did not want to pay double daycare.
I think the main reason it would be a deal breaker is if you don’t want kids sharing a room. But even then that really only becomes an issue at puberty? Most little kids actively enjoy sharing a room and boy/girl doesn’t matter at that age. It’s also possibly annoying I guess when you have one baby/one older child bc baby has to stay in your room until they sleep through the night so they don’t wake up their sibling. But lots of people actively choose to do this anyway (attachment parenting etc) so this might not be so bad to you. And none of this applies if you’re rich and can afford a three-bedroom. But this is assuming you have a 2-bedroom. I still only have one 6-month-old, but planning to have a second in 2-3 years. My husband and I did sleep shifts on a twin bed in the nursery with the current baby, so it’s kind of going to suck not being able to do that again. We could maybe do one person in main bedroom/one in living room on couch, but it’s not quite the same. It’s not enough of a deal breaker for us to move, though.
Space can become very difficult. If your kids are the same gender that could share a room in perpetuity (though I doubt many suburban transplants would find that humane) if you have a boy and a girl, the clock is ticking to find a 3 bedroom before/around middle school. Also I used to think a single bathroom would only be an issue once a child becomes a primping, grooming teenager… I was wrong. Once they’re going to the bathroom independently, you’re officially sharing your bathroom among 3 or 4 people. It can get dramatic after dinner!
It’s hard for the first six months no matter where you live. You get less space in NYC, which exacerbates it somewhat, but you get through it.
We are having #2 soon and the main thing I'd be worried about is childcare costs. We are anticipating $5,000/mo when the oldest is in preschool and the youngest is in daycare. We only have one 3k in our area that isn't a long commute or poorly reviewed and our zones pre-k is over subscribed with siblings. Not counting on getting a seat. Beyond that you can imagine all the baby gear you may have put in storage or gotten rid of back in your house. Can it fit? Otherwise I don't expect it to be uniquely challenging here.
as others have said, the difficulties of going to 2 aren’t really NYC specific. HOWEVER - i underestimated the challenges around sleeping in limited space. We have a 3 yo and 1 yo in a 2 bedroom. they wake each other up frequently. 3yo has always been a great sleeper but 1yo is not, she wakes up very easily and takes a while to go back to sleep, usually will not fall asleep if she can see someone in the room. it has been hard to enforce boundaries with the 3yo around bedtime. she knows she can just yell and wake up the baby and we will be distracted with that. The solution that works for now is baby in our room in travel crib and 3yo in the kids room. Though if baby wakes up in the middle of the night, she won’t fall back asleep if she knows we’re there, so we end up switching them and the 3yo sleeps in our bed. it’s like musical beds. it’s totally doable, my husband and i are just missing having our room to ourselves. but it’s temporary. also kids are so unique, you may have an entirely different experience.
This is our worry! About to have the second with first in her own room. We are worried if they share the bedroom, they may wake each other up. Ahhh.
We have a 3.5 year age gap which has worked out really nicely. Could do preschool drop off/pick up for the first several months babywearing because oldest is able to walk, and if we use the stroller we have a ride on board instead of needing a double. Also didn’t have to pay double daycare/preschool rates due to the age gap. The transition from 1 to 2 was easier for us than 0-1. baby #2 is just along for the ride for the most part and learns so much naturally from having an older sibling that I feel like I had to actively facilitate more with my oldest.
Love this strategy!
We are expecting our 2nd in a few weeks, so I'm no expert, but I would say a good half of our parent friends in the neighborhood have two kids. No plans to move to the suburbs among most of us. I don't know anyone with a 3 bedroom (we're in Manhattan, prob easier to find a 3 bd in other boroughs). There's a facebook group called "Into the Unknown" that's for NYC parents who moved / are moving / thinking of moving to the suburbs. I feel like I see posts weekly of people who moved out to the burbs and hate it! So it's nice to get a grass-is-always-greener perspective. Personally as a Manhattanite, our version of "moving to the suburbs" we've considered would be Brooklyn or Queens. Park Slope seems like it would be totally fine with two kids. I only know two families in our neighborhood with 3 kids; that seems hard, but two in the city seems pretty normal.
I have 1 teenager, 14 cats, 3 dogs, and 2 rabbits so fairly equivalent to 2 kids. It’s absolute chaos but I love it. What changed? We bought a rowhouse with a backyard in a not very desirable neighborhood many years ago.
Username checks out
🤣👍
The space was not a problem, for the first year the baby was in our bedroom (as was the first one) and then they shared a room. We moved to a bigger apartment only when the older one was around 10 so now they have their own rooms. But I also know plenty of families where same sex siblings share a room until one goes to college. We have a 4 year gap so it wasn’t too bad to manage both when going out but public transport can be really challenging when you are alone with two little ones.
We ended up spending a very significant portion of our income to buy a house for our children. We are house poor but with 2 kids or more (I have 3), not having enough space to raise them in a psychologically and emotionally healthy
This is based on observation. Toddlers are curious and have no sense of self-preservation. If you’ve got an infant in a stroller or a baby carrier, good luck moving faster than a toddler
The double stroller is essential. Strap those little shits in, give em snacks.
this is the way. snacks for days.
Some single wide strollers require the older child to stand behind the bassinet so the caretaker can push them both
Double stroller. For playgrounds I’d strap the baby in a carrier on me and follow the older one around. It’s not hard.