Baby Boom Hits Brownstone Brooklyn

It’s not your imagination: The birthrate is soaring in affluent areas of Brooklyn — the brownstone belt — and decreasing in less well-off areas of the City, according to recently released statistics from the City’s Health Department analyzed by The New York Times. As New York City becomes increasingly expensive and inhospitable to the middle class — another twist on de Blasio’s tale of two cities — the birth rate is highest among the well-to-do and the very poor, with middle-class areas registering the lowest birth rates. As the Times put it:

New York has turned into a playground of the more literal kind, with a child-centric ethos bearing well-established variants of urban nuisance: stroller gridlock in gentrifying areas, car services that cater to five-year-olds, sidewalk whining that in some cases becomes its own source of noise pollution.

Brownstone Brooklyn, lower Manhattan and the South Bronx have the highest birth rates in the city. Brooklyn Heights and the Upper East Side lead the city in multiple births. Bayside Queens has the lowest birthrate.

Although we doubt the Times meant to include Bed Stuy in its definition of “brownstone Brooklyn,” it may register in future years. Bed Stuy has been experiencing a notable Park Slope-like baby boomlet in the last year or so, as parents and soon-to-be parents of young children have bought houses and moved into the neighborhood recently, joining other young parents who grew up in the area or have lived here longer. Open houses are teeming with parents and children, as are playgrounds, and local businesses.

Coffee seekers can hardly wade through the crowds of toddlers playing at the Georges-Andre Vintage Cafe on Halsey on a Saturday morning. The owner, Karine Petitnicolas, herself a mother of a two-year-old, recently turned her Superfrench vintage clothing and furniture store across the street into an exercise and art center with classes catering to young children and their parents. Above, a summer block party on the 600 block of MacDonough Street in Bed Stuy.

Baby Boom Among New York’s Affluent [NY Times]