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A High-Rise Is Not a Home For Children, the Experts Say

By Daniel Goleman

Sept. 10, 1987

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September 10, 1987, Section C, Page 1 Buy Reprints

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LIFE for Mary and her 3-year-old son in their high-rise apartment was like living in a
prison. ''He was like a confined animal in the apartment,'' she recalled. ''He broke every
appliance we had; he tore the wallpaper from the walls of his room. He would run out into
the hall and it would take me a half-hour to coax him back in.''

As Mary, who said she preferred not to give her last name, and her husband soon learned,
living in an apartment with a child can be difficult. While play dates, preschool centers and
playgrounds can provide a social life for toddlers, living high above a cityscape often defeats
the spontaneous play and exploration that young children thrive on.

Mary and her husband eventually moved from the Upper West Side to a house in
Westchester County, where their son, Adam, has easy access to the outdoors.

Many experts in child development and urban psychology say that life in a high-rise
apartment can present hurdles to a toddler's psychological growth, particularly to the young
child's need to develop a sense of autonomy. And high-rises are exactly the kind of buildings
that have sprung up throughout New York City in the last decade.

''Young children learn to achieve a gradual independence by going out on their own and
then returning to the safety of their parents,'' said Roger Hart, director of the Center for
Human Environments at the City University Graduate Center in New York. ''At first it may
be wandering just a few feet away on the playground. Later it means going out to play by
themselves. That's much easier when a mother can look out the window and see the child
playing outside than it is in an apartment.''

The British psychoanalyst John Bowlby has examined the connection between a young
child's explorations and psychological growth. He said that between the ages of 2 and 7, a
child needs to make excursions into the world with the security of being able to return to the
safety of the caretaker. During this interplay between autonomy and dependency, Dr.
Bowlby said, the child gradually develops a sense of competence and independence.

Living in a high-rise apartment can interfere with the smooth flow of this process, Dr. Hart
said.

''High-rise housing denies both caretaker and child the opportunity to see, hear or
otherwise contact each other at will when the child is outside and the caretaker inside,'' he
said. ''This results in an all-or-nothing approach. Either the parents relinquish care and let
their children play anywhere they wish, or they take the overprotective route of keeping
them inside the apartment all of the time.''

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Access to the outdoors usually does not become an issue for parents until their child asks for
the first time, ''Can I go out to play?'' ''One study of children living in New York City high-
rises found that most were not allowed out to play by themselves until they were 10,'' said
Kim Blakely, who works with Dr. Hart in the Children's Environments Research Group,
which has studied children living in apartments.

The isolation of young children in high-rises can be compounded by the loneliness of parents
who, before their children were born, might have held jobs outside the home. Those who
give up their jobs for a time to stay home with the child often have not cultivated friends in
their building who would be their natural companions during the day.

''There is less neighboring contact between women in high-rise apartments than those in
low-rise units,'' said Michael Conn, a graduate student who has studied the patterns of
sociability among apartment dwellers in his work with Dr. Hart. ''This isolation can result in
depression for some young mothers, who simply are not used to the isolation. And since
parents have less contact, so do their young kids.''

The problems that living in a high-rise can create in a family have been studied extensively
by behavioral scientists in Europe. Their findings have affected not just social policy, but
building codes. ''In most countries of northern Europe, high-rises are not allowed for family
housing,'' Dr. Hart said. Research in Europe has led to the consensus that families with
children do better in apartments that are no higher than three stories. From that height, a
parent can watch the child from a window or hear the child's calls. But at higher levels, the
link becomes more tenuous.

One exception is a seven-story apartment complex in Barcelona, Spain, that has a central
courtyard where children can play. ''The building insulates the courtyard from the sounds of
the city, so kids can yell up to their mothers as high as seven stories,'' Dr. Hart said. Recent
studies in Europe and the United States have shown that families who live in apartments on
upper floors cannot easily supervise their children when they are playing. As a result, these
parents tend to keep their children inside more often than parents who live on lower floors,
and far more often than parents who live in single-family houses. Mary, recalling life in her
West Side apartment, said: ''It used to be that when I would take Adam outside, the logistics
were a major challenge - the stroller, getting him dressed, the elevator. Now when he wants
to go outside to play, he just opens the door. I can watch him from the house.''

One solution for families who must live in apartments might be to find a building with a
protected, on-site playground, said Elizabeth Mackintosh, a city planner in Queens.

Dr. Mackintosh studied families with children 2 to 10 years old in two apartment complexes
on the Lower East Side: Stuyvesant Town, with 13- and 14-story buildings, and East
Midtown Plaza, with buildings 9 to 28 stories high. Both complexes have on-site
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playgrounds. These families were compared with families in nearby high-rises without on-
site play areas.

In general, the children on the lowest floors in all of the apartment buildings fared better
than those living higher up, according to Dr. Mackintosh. Of the families living on the first
through fifth floors, 92 percent of the parents said they could see their children from their
windows, while only half of those on higher floors had such visibility.

More parents on the lower floors allowed their children to play alone outside when
compared with parents living on the upper floors. And more families living on the upper
floors said that tensions ran high in their apartments when the children were inside.

Far fewer children in the high-rise apartment buildings were allowed to play outside alone
when compared with children living in Stuyvesant Town and East Midtown Plaza.
Moreover, the children in the high-rises without playgrounds usually were older than the
children in Stuyvesant Town and East Midtown Plaza before they could play outside alone.

''Hopefully, real-estate developers will start to take into account the unique needs of young
families in designing new buildings,'' Dr. Hart said.

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