Did the SNCF expect such an outcry when it launched its new “Optimum” class on January 8? Intended for professional travelers, this offer promises a “quiet” space in the TGV, accessible “from 12 years old”. Faced with the outcry, the railway company tried to reassure: the little ones are “welcome on the rest of the train”. Pets are not affected by this restriction. While on January 13, INSEE revealed that in 2025, for the first time since the Second World War, France had recorded more deaths than births, many commentators noted the inconsistency of restricting children’s access to trains and regretted that there were fewer and fewer births. Certainly, the railway giant is not the first to give in to the temptation of “No Kid”. But coming from a public company, the initiative shocked, with many seeing it as a further step towards the progressive exclusion of children from public spaces. The economist Maxime Sbaihi, author of the book The empty swingsalso warned on X “against a society which now considers children as a nuisance.”
In New York, the swings are not yet entirely deserted, but only in Central Park do you still have a chance of seeing hordes of children swinging. A few days of expatriation are enough to realize it, a few months to be convinced of it for good: the Big Apple, Manhattan in the lead, has become a veritable open-air laboratory of a society without children fantasized by some adults. In this city of some 8.5 million inhabitants, “no kid” is no longer just a marketing argument, but a philosophy applied on a large scale.
The elevators that serve the 38 floors of this residential tower in midtown Manhattan — where the author of these lines resides — offer a daily glimpse. Families there have become so rare that you could count them on the fingers of one hand. The building is populated almost exclusively by young adults — most of them working in finance or tech — alone or in couples, but almost always accompanied… by a dog. Welcome to the era of dog rule. One day, you have to step over a Cavalier King Charles slumped in front of the elevator, while his mistress adorablely apologizes: “He’s too tired to move.” A few hours later, a French bulldog comes to sniff you without its owner deigning to react. The next day, a golden retriever jumps on you in the coworking space, while its owner, impassive, negotiates a six-figure contract over the phone. From these neighbors, we hardly hear a hello, and even less do we see a smile. Headphones screwed into their ears, eyes glued to the screen, they only have eyes for their pet. It is not at the sight, which has become almost incongruous, of an infant in a stroller that they take on a tender look, but at the slightest gesture of their animal or that of their neighbor. The child king has given way to the dog king. Times have changed: it is no longer hardened singles without children who find themselves in the minority, but the rare parents in the building, condemned to invisibility, with the growing feeling of no longer being in their place. The burden of guilt has changed sides. We are no longer looking for babysitters, but dog-sitters, as evidenced by this message posted in the internal loop of the building by a tenant on New Year’s Eve: “Is there anyone in the building tomorrow evening who would be available to take my dog out for 10 to 15 minutes between 11 p.m. and midnight? I am ready to pay!”.
Fewer children, more dogs…
On the main avenues of Manhattan, children have become rarer than bicycle couriers or Amazon deliveries. Even the (brilliant) Harry Potter store in the Flatiron district, although designed for young people, is today taken over by nostalgic forty-year-olds. In New York, children disappear, without black magic. Between 2020 and 2023, the city saw 186,000 children and adolescents disappear, according to a report from Social Explorer, a company specializing in the analysis of social and demographic data, cited by the New York Times. During the same period, the number of children under the age of 5 decreased by 17%, a drop of more than 92,000. Even if demographics are not the only factor, researcher Ken Girardin highlighted in 2024, in a publication by the think tank The Empire Center, that the number of students in New York public schools had fallen to its lowest level since the 1950s.
More generally, while the adult population continues to grow, the number of minors follows the opposite trend. “The total number of children under the age of 18 living in New York is at its lowest level in several decades, and the proportion of children in the city’s population is at its lowest level on record,” Mark Levine, the city’s financial comptroller, wrote last December.
At the same time, the number of dogs in New York is estimated at around 600,000 compared to around 100,000 in Paris. They will not compensate for the erosion of the tax base linked to the exodus of families, but the dog economy is doing wonderfully. In 2022, Americans spent $136.8 billion on their pets, up from $123.6 billion the year before. In New York, businesses dedicated to dogs are proliferating: daycares, hotels, specialized supermarkets, pastries, pet-sitting services, yoga studios. Here, a spa offers a “blueberry facial”; there, a lightening oatmeal shampoo. “Pet insurance has even become the trendiest business benefit, with premiums that can exceed $100 per month in New York for the most comprehensive plans. In my neighborhood of Chelsea, the dog boarding house offers a chef, a driver, and private rooms larger than mine,” observed Michael Hendrix, former researcher at the Manhattan Institute, in 2019.
Oscar-winning actor forced to leave Manhattan
The city has very few playgrounds: it ranks 48th out of 100 large American cities according to a 2019 report by former New York City Comptroller Scott Michael Stringer. For every child we meet during the day, we easily see ten dogs. And a sign of a major societal evolution: on the website of the prestigious New York Times, an entire section is devoted to animal science, regularly populated with articles, the vast majority of which relate to canines: one of the latest? “Why you should get your dog a stroller”. “The construction workers are charmed. The grannies melt. Sometimes, friends or neighbors ask me in a low voice: “Do you think I should buy one?”, relates the author.
In restaurants, children’s menus seem to be a thing of the past. Ask your waiter and you will see surprise in his eyes, as if you were asking him if there is still a pay phone on the corner. In Manhattan, where the cries of children in playgrounds have given way to the unsavory smell of recreational cannabis, legal since 2022, finding an affordable three-bedroom apartment is now a feat. Large families move away, towards Brooklyn when the budget allows, outside of New York otherwise. Even Oscar winner Kieran Culkin recently moved from his one-bedroom East Village apartment where he lived with his wife and two children to a larger place in Brooklyn where the Succession and his partner have just welcomed their third child.
In Washington Heights, north of Manhattan, the population under 18 fell 48% between 2000 and 2020 (compared to 10% for the city as a whole). In question, according to the New York Times : a housing shortage, skyrocketing rents, and prohibitive childcare costs. To give an idea: the median asking rent for an apartment of three or more bedrooms in New York is $4,800, according to StreetEasy. Some businesses are suffering: a seller of traditional ice cream has seen its sales drop by more than half in ten years, reports the daily. A family clothing store has recorded a drop of more than 30% in sales of children’s shoes since 2019. A bad patch that Wagwear, a high-end New York brand specializing in accessories and clothing for dogs, is not experiencing. During this winter period, the brand offers a whole collection of warm clothing: like this fleece pullover sweater for $75, out of stock. The sleeveless down jacket remains available.
The theory of the “creative class”
New York is not the only large city affected by this societal evolution: in an article entitled “The future of American cities is childless” published in The Atlantic In 2019, journalist Derek Thompson explained how in large, high-density US cities “like San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, DC, no group is growing faster than wealthy, college-educated, childless whites.” New York is “the poster child of this urban renaissance,” he added. It is also the culmination of the “creative class” theory, popularized by urban planning professor Richard Florida, according to which attracting educated and creative workers would make cities more prosperous. In an analysis published in 2024 on the Vox site, journalist Rachel Cohen Booth described how urban planners and local elected officials were inspired by this theory “by building buildings full of studios, T1s and T2s designed for singles, roommates or couples without children.” The only problem with this theory: by focusing everything on young, qualified and childless millennials, it has forgotten that when they reach their thirties and start a family, they in turn end up leaving, due to lack of suitable housing. However, as the journalist points out, cities must retain these talents when they are at their professional peak, that is to say when they become parents.”
This Sunday in January, while New York wakes up under the snow, in the silent streets, a few courageous people walk their dogs. A young couple they meet on the path engage in a snowball fight. They have lost nothing of their childish soul. “The modern American city,” recalls Derek Thompson, “in The Atlanticis not a microcosm of life, but a micro-slice of it.” And the journalist concludes: “It becomes an Epcot-style theme park (…), where the rich can behave like children without ever having to meet any.”
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