Baby Boom Among New York’s Affluent

A map of birthrates by neighborhood compiled by the Health Department reveals a telling sociology — a picture of child-rearing as an entitlement of the very affluent and a managed burden of the poor.

..What is most striking is that low birthrates are found in predominantly white and solidly middle-class parts of the city — large swaths of Staten Island and portions of eastern Queens. In 2013, Bayside, in Queens, was the community district that could claim the lowest birthrate. One reason for this could be that the heightened expectations that working- and middle-class families have for raising their children are bumping up against the difficult financial realities of meeting them.

.. The main complaints have come from well-off people themselves, as they worry about overcrowding in affluent school districts and rising numbers of children attending private school, making admission even more impossible.

.. Two years ago the city’s Human Resources Administration issued a series of subway ads meant to drive down teenage pregnancy rates in poor communities. The ads showed babies lecturing prospective mothers that, for instance, their boyfriends would eventually leave them. Liberal critics considered them shaming, but Robert Doar, the former human resources commissioner, told me that in focus groups, the teenagers at whom the ads were aimed responded positively to them.