While Manhattan’s gay couples are hitting the city’s hot nightclubs, their counterparts in The Bronx are more likely to be reading kids bedtime stories, a new survey has found.
Despite being home to barely 11 percent of the city’s gay couples, The Bronx accounts for 32 percent of all children in the Big Apple being raised by such partners, the city’s highest rate.
In contrast, Manhattan’s gay couples are much less likely to have kids. Just 8.5 percent of children in the city’s same-sex households live in Manhattan, despite the borough having 38 percent of New York City’s gay homes, according to a report from UCLA’s Williams Institute.
Nearly half of The Bronx’s gay households are raising kids – a rate that nearly matches the 55 percent of married straight couples in the borough who have children. “I’ve never seen any jurisdiction [in the United States] where those figures are that close,” said Gary Gates, senior research fellow at the Williams Institute. Gates added that same-sex couples of ethnic minorities “are much more likely” than their white counterparts to have children, a factor that could explain The Bronx’s higher rate of gay-household kids.
Another factor is that in areas like The Bronx that have relatively low numbers of gay couples, such couples are much more likely to have children, he said.
The opposite trend is seen in gay-heavy areas such at Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, Gates said. “The numbers are surprising,” said Tawana Avery, a black lesbian who, with partner Lisa Burton, is raising an adopted 5-year-old son, Nasir, in The Bronx’s Highbridge section. “We don’t have neighborhoods like the Village or Chelsea. There is only one community center for [gays] in The Bronx.”
Gordon Sanchez, a 34-year-old Chelsea waiter, said, “Most of the gay men in this area are very self-obsessed and only concerned about their careers, the gym and clubs on the weekend. So having children is the furthest thing from their mind.”
Chelsea resident Joe Hilder, 34, who works in finance, said, “As a gay man who wants to have children one day, I wouldn’t raise them in Manhattan, especially in Chelsea, as this area isn’t as child-friendly as the outer boroughs.”