Many families are questioning the advantages and disadvantages of living in city or country side. Some inhabitants would prefer to stay in a convenient and hyperactive city. Although some people might be keen on nature and they would like to stay in countryside and spend their whole day in a calm and peaceful environment. Certainly, city life and country life have their benefits, but based on the children side, city could be more beneficial to them.First, the major benefit for children to live in city is it could provide better education system compared with countryside.
For instance, rural students are significant disadvantaged because of inadequate educational system, shortage of teachers and schools. According to Educational opportunity in Australia (2015), Australia government is facing a harsh situation to provide high quality education to remote areas as education materials such as textbooks and teaching aids hard to delivery to rural areas. Consequently, students in remote areas has been demotivated to attend schools and they have less positive dispositions toward schooling.Secondly, it could be more convenient to live in the city as they can access medical care easier, which is important for children to secure their health and lives. In comparison, residents in the countryside find it hard to reach the hospital when emergency treatment is needed, such as heart disease, stroke and unexpected injuries. Based on AHA Hospital Statistics (2017), there are only 1829 of community hospitals in United States countryside while 3033 availabilities of hospitals in US urban areas.
In addition, according to the data from U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2018) showed that there are higher rates of babies in rural area who could not been through their first birthday in comparison with the infant mortality rates in city.Furthermore, children who stay in city are likely to be more independent compared with those live in the countryside. Most of the parents in city have to work six days a week to bear the expenses of the household. As a result, their children need to learn to travel to different locations for participating in extracurricular activities by themselves. For instance, the study of Kytta et al.
(2015) acknowledged that independent mobility of children in Finland urban area is higher than children in rural area.Another advantage for raising children in city could be the benefits for their future development as city provide more job opportunities. According to the data from the United Nations Statistical Yearbook (2010), the poverty rate of 2009 in rural area is extremely higher than urban, which is due to higher unemployment rate in the countryside as numerous of industries choose to develop and invest their business in city. Therefore, subsist in metropolitan area would be the optimal choice for the young generationNevertheless, there are some disadvantages to reside in city such as the life in the urban areas make it difficult for inhabitants to obtain security, compared with rural areas. For example, higher levels of crime have become a serious social issue in metropolitan areas. In accordance with the data from Statistical digest of rural England (2012), average crime rates are higher in urban areas than rural areas. As a result, children have to be more cautious or under stress living in the city.
Air pollution also is the top concern for children to be brought up in city as the number of vehicles and industries has increased rapidly in the urban areas. Those harmful pollutants which are hidden in the atmosphere could be detrimental to children. The WHO (2016) found that children are most susceptible to the harmful effects of air pollution as their immune system is immature. For additional example, there are about two million of children who reside in Delhi have irreversible lung damage, while other of them have some health issues such as frequent eye irritation, frequent headaches and heart palpitations due to serious air pollution. In comparison, children in rural areas of Uttarakhand and West Bengal has lower rate of health issues (Ghosal & Chatterjee, 2015). To sum up, because of less commercial activities, air quality in countryside could be better for children to obtain their health.
ConclusionIn conclusion, there are pros and cons living in the city and the countryside. Despite of these, there are more advantages for children to be raised in the city instead of countryside. However, parents might discuss with their children to show their respect and take their point of view into consideration in terms of the environment that they would like to have for their childhood
