Reykjavik Dad

My daughter, Yulia, was born two months ago today, right here in Reykjavík. I was raised up in a city myself. Despite the flight of some Icelandic families to the suburbs, I've always felt that an urban centre is the most logical place for new parents to raise a child: all of your resources are within walking distance, the living is more affordable, and the kid-oriented activities are more highly concentrated. One typically major drawback to urban childhood, violent crime, is practically non-existent in Reykjavík. But this is probably one of the more obvious advantages to bringing up your first child in Iceland's capital - I'd like to share a few of the less obvious high points to raising a child in Reykjavík.

1) Your carriage. The baby carriage will serve as a virtual carte blanche to anywhere you want to go. People on the sidewalk will get out of your way, and will hold doors and elevators for you. Cars will stop to let you cross, whether you're at an intersection or not. It's a preferential treatment that you'll notice right away, and certainly not one I'd ever seen in my home town.

2) Restaurants. Many American parents will attest to the shortage of child-friendly restaurants. Not so in Reykjavik, where even relatively high-end places will have child seats available, and a kitchen staff more than willing to whip up a kid-sized meal for your little one. Granted, you probably won't convinced them to braise just a quarter of a duck breast, but you really have no business feeding a two-year-old braised duck anyway.

3) Child admissions. This is something I didn't notice until very recently. Many places and events in Reykjavík, whether you're talking about the movies, museums, or even the city bus, offer reduced prices for people under 12. So commonplace is the practice that when putting together the listings for this paper, I came to expect special child prices for nearly everything I entered. Which certainly makes it more affordable to enrich your child with culture.

4) The Icelandic attitude towards children in general. Granted, this isn't confined to Reykjavík, but is just as prevalent here as it is anywhere else in the country: Icelanders take the perpetuation of the species as a given, and accord those with children an extra degree of respect. So important is having children to the average Icelander that the vast majority of the country favours the idea of gay couples being able to adopt or undergo arteficial insemination. As taciturn and guarded as an Icelander can seem, if you have a child, you'll find they'll open up more quickly, especially if they have one of their own.

In short, being a dad in Reykjavík has all the other advantages that raising a child in the city has, plus a few added bonuses that I haven't found in my home town. Mind you, if the party I had voted for in city council elections last month had won, pre-school would be free, too. Oh, well; there is no child utopia. But Reykjavík comes awfully close.

- Paul F. Nikolov, journalist and contributor to ReykjavikMag