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It has become part of my identity  to navigate life knowing I have to work harder being a woman.

I have the life perspective of being a woman which affects my empathy.

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Jessica Chastain Lauds Working With Female Directors

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Growing up in a working class family made me appreciate things I had and understand what my parents worked for better.

I think where I was raised really helps me understand where most people come from.

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Both the mode and the cost of transportation will vary between cities and suburbs.

Transportation varies depending on the city. Residents in major cities like New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC, use public transit systems, while suburban families are generally forced to drive cars for commuting and everyday activities.

A Vox report emphasized that traveling with a child in non-driving situations allows for multitasking, like reading or talking with them without fear of getting distracted. Additionally, raising children in the city usually entails more walking, which can help keep families healthy.

There's a monetary component as well - transportation can also be cheaper in cities if you decide to take public transportation, avoiding costs like car maintenance and fuel. Gas is a major hidden cost of living in the suburbs.
Read more: 6 of the worst hidden costs of living in the suburbs
Finally, smaller suburbs might not have access to other modes of travel such as Uber and Lyft. As children grow older, the opportunity for independence is greater in bigger cities as they begin to use these modes of transportation on their own.

As a result of transportation, children often have a greater sense of independence living in a city.

Some parenting blogs mention independence as a key difference between city and suburban living. Without the need for parents to drive them places, children learn how to become self-sufficient much sooner in an urban environment.

This independence in cities is often without choice: Schools and friends are located across town and children learn at an earlier age to travel alone. Opportunities for independence certainly exist in the suburbs, but driving restrictions greatly affect this.

City schooling and suburban schooling is a big difference.

Unless parents opt to send their children to private schools or receive special permission, schooling in the suburbs is generally determined by geographical district.

Therefore, young students will usually attend schools with children in their neighborhood, oftentimes with those who live just a few houses away. Meanwhile, in the city, students attend schools with kids from all over the metro area.

This has pros and cons - while city schooling allows kids to make friends from other neighborhoods, it may be harder for clubs and other after-school activities. For parents, too, forming communities is easier in the suburbs, since most parents in a neighborhood will send their children to the same school. In the city, the neighbors across the hall could attend a school in a completely different area, despite having the same address.

Schools in the city can also be more competitive, especially when enrolling a child into preschool and kindergarten. Still, while schooling can be difficult, there is a much wider selection than in the suburbs.

The cost of childcare is higher in the city.

For parents who work, someone needs to watch the children after school hours. The cost of childcare in a city is much higher, including full-time daycares.

"Average childcare costs are astronomical," economist Elise Gould told Curbed. "The majority of families with kids have both parents working. In states that lack infant and child care, the cost of childcare has a massive impact."

Hourly rates for babysitters are higher as well.

"I soon learned, post baby's birth, that I was about six months too late to the waiting-list game for daycares, and while adding my daughter to waiting lists in the city, I was baffled to learn the cost of childcare mimicked that of a second mortgage," Jayani Perera wrote for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The house or apartment your kids will call home varies greatly depending on location.

The old notion that moving to the suburbs is cheaper for raising a family isn't necessarily true. In some cases, it is actually cheaper to live in a city's metro area than it is to move to the suburbs - many of which have become extremely unaffordable.

However, the size of a family home is always bigger compared to a city apartment for the same price.

Due to the housing crisis in many major American cities, many millennials are forced to move to the suburbs. Even without the cheaper housing market, some parents would prefer to have a spacious two-story home over a cramped apartment. Especially depending on the number of children, storage becomes a major factor for family city living.

In many cases, a good compromise is living in a mid-sized city: families have access to all the benefits of a metro area, while also finding plenty of options for affordable and decent-sized housing.

Parental tasks like laundry, back-to-school shopping, and grocery shopping can be harder in the city.

Doing laundry in a laundromat for yourself is one thing, but the task becomes much harder when you factor in baby clothes, school uniforms, and soccer jerseys. While this is a minor difference in city versus suburban living, it's a convenience many parents would like to have.

In many cases, having in-unit laundry is an amenity reserved for suburban homes.

Other small tasks include back-to-school shopping or even the weekly grocery run. Without an easy way to load up a car in a parking lot, parents have to be strategic about what and where they buy things in order to make it home on the subway. Otherwise, parents are forced to spend more time making multiple trips in order to stock their family home.

All that being said, in a pinch, city stores are open later - even 24 hours sometimes - while many suburban shops close in the evening.

Diversity is a major difference between urban and suburban areas.

Perhaps the biggest difference for kids growing up in the city versus the suburbs is diversity. As cities draw workers from all over the world, children are more likely to spend time with students of different ethnicities, religions, and upbringings.

6sqft interviewed parents on why they picked city living over the suburbs, and several called attention to wanting their children to grow up in a diverse environment.

"We both really value the diversity that our children are being raised in," one parent from New York City told 6sqft. "We ride the subway with people from all over the world and their friends come from all kinds of families. And that is all normal to them."

In addition to hearing different languages on the subway, children in cities are exposed to different types of foods and meals they may otherwise never encounter until they are older and move to a city on their own. That's not to say parents in the suburbs can't try to expose their children to different experiences, but it makes it much easier in a city where there are streets full of different dining options.

There are different types of safety concerns in both environments.

No parent will ever stop worrying about their child's safety, but safety concerns vary depending on where you raise your kids. Michelle Woo of Lifehacker wrote that while homicide and crime rates are often higher in cities, car crashes are far more deadly and far more common in suburban areas.

A parent's report for Vox also said that car accidents are among the leading causes of death for young people. While city parents may worry about their children walking home, suburban parents worry when their children get their driver's licenses.

Families have better access to cultural events and entertainment options in the city.

As a parent, you won't be as spontaneous as you were when you were before children - regardless of location. But in the city, it's nice to at least have access to cultural events and entertainment, whereas living in the suburbs makes it hard for a quick outing.

Matthew Yglesias wrote for Vox about the variety of activities available to families in major cities: "One recent weekend when my wife was out of town, my son and I went with various groups of friends to the National Building Museum, a WNBA game, and a brunch-hour children's musical performance at a hipster cider distillery (don't ask)."

Finally, a previous report from Realtor shows that entertainment is actually cheaper in the city.

Spending time outdoors is different depending on where you live.

Finally, a key factor in the city-versus-suburbs argument is the space children have to be outdoors. In cities, outdoor playgrounds and parks replace backyards and cul-de-sacs for bike riding and pick-up hockey games.

Despite more open spaces, it may actually healthier to live in the city due to the sheer amount of walking outdoors. While suburban parents may have larger backyards, you'll have to make a conscious effort to make sure you are using the space regularly.

More: Features BI-freelancer Suburbs Cities

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11 differences between raising kids in a big city versus the suburbs

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Both the mode and the cost of transportation will vary between cities and suburbs. Transportation varies depending on the city. Residents in major cities like New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC, use public transit systems, while suburban families are generally forced to drive cars for commuting and everyday activities.

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My European heritage affects my life because of my family and culture.

I have knowledge of life outside of the U.S. and can use that in discussions.

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Without organized religion in my life, I find myself having different perspectives on politics and social norms.

I did not grow up in a religious household and I think without that structure comes a lot of my identity and opinions when it comes to religious freedom.

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Emily Freeman, a writer in Montana, grew up unaffiliated to a religion - culturally Jewish on her father's side, a smattering of churchgoing on her mother's. She and her husband Nathan Freeman talked about not identifying as religious - but they didn't really discuss how it would affect their parenting.

"I think we put it in the big basket of things that we figured we had so much time to think about," Emily joked.

But then they had kids, and the kids came home from their grandfather's house talking about Bible stories.

Nathan acknowledges that this came from a good place, and his father was acting in concern. "He feels like these lessons encapsulate a blueprint for how to move through life. And so of course, why wouldn't we want our children to have those lessons alongside them as they travel through the world?"

But while Nathan and Emily wanted their kids to learn about love and compassion, they didn't want them to hear Bible stories. When the boys were so young, the certainty of those stories felt like indoctrination.

"They trust everything that you tell them," Emily observed. "About how their body works, about how the world works. How a cake suddenly becomes a cake from a bunch of ingredients on the counter - everything!"

Emily and Nathan ended up having some pretty difficult conversations with the grandparents, who were worried about the kids.

Parents need to figure out how to talk to their kids about a lot of things - including religion. These conversations are not new. But according to the Pew Research Center, a quarter of Americans now don't affiliate with any religion at all. The numbers are even higher for those under 30 - which covers a lot of people becoming parents.

Typically, there was what sociologists called a "life cycle" pattern to religion, according to professor Christel Manning, who studied unaffiliated parents for her book Losing Our Religion: How Unaffiliated Parents Are Raising Their Children.

People often, as you may expect, would leave religion during the rebellious teenage years - Manning says the baby boomers were the first generation to do this in fairly large numbers. But about half of them went back after they got married.

"If I'm single, and I have a certain spiritual or secular outlook, that's my personal thing," Manning explains. "But when I form a family, then there are other people who become stakeholders in this process."

In addition to the spouses themselves, there are often parents and other family members who want influence, and kids who want answers. These are some pretty big questions - kids are asking about life and death, right and wrong, and who are we?

The answer to these questions was often found in religion. But this isn't holding true for the current generation of parents. They aren't returning to religious affiliation - or affiliating in the first place.

In the Freeman family's case, did the grandparents need to be worried? According to Manning, the data on growing up without religion are mixed. Some studies show that children growing up in a faith community experiment less with drugs and alcohol and juvenile crime. And some show that kids raised without religion are more resistant to peer pressure, and more culturally sensitive.

"But," as Manning points out, "and this is a big but - we don't know if it's religion that benefits the children, or if it's just being part of an organized community, with other caring adults that regularly interact with your child."

Manning - who raised her own child without religion - notes that there are lots of ways to raise a child to be moral and religion is only one of them.

"I'd say from what we know now, both a religious and secular upbringing can have both benefits and risks for children."

For some unaffiliated parents, like Emily Freeman, raising children outside of a definitive religious construct can be very valuable, by empowering them in not knowing.

"Growing up, there was a long period of my early adulthood where I felt like there were these answers,"sighs Freeman. "Like where should I live, and what should I do, and who should I be with, and what's the answer to this and that?"

For some people, religion can provide these answers. For others, it's a sacred space to explore not knowing. Parents like Emily Freeman try to help their kids find their own voice in the conversation. About belief, about what's right, about their values as a family.

"They don't spend all day wondering why zebras have stripes. We just look it up on the phone. And boom - wonder, done!" laughs Freeman. "So I love this idea of giving them open-ended, unanswerable questions. And saying, who knows?And people you love can believe different things than you do, and that's OK."

And Freeman says helping her kids find their way through the wonder of it all - even when it's uncomfortable - is part of the job of parenting.

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Teaching Children To Ask The Big Questions Without Religion

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Emily Freeman, a writer in Montana, grew up unaffiliated to a religion - culturally Jewish on her father's side, a smattering of churchgoing on her mother's. She and her husband Nathan Freeman talked about not identifying as religious - but they didn't really discuss how it would affect their parenting.

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Being young and inexperienced, I have less knowledge about life things than the average adult. This gives me a different perspective than the average adult.

I have more knowledge than the average adult when it comes to the internet, social media, memes, and other young culture items.

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Young people, the Internet and civic participation | Shakuntala Banaji | TEDxUHasselt