When you were growing up did you ever see a new family moving into your neighborhood and wanted to know “Do they have any kids?”. Then finding out they were either the wrong age or gender?
Or when you were moving in did you see a crowd of kids standing outside looking to see if your family had kids?
You as parent, when choosing a new neighborhood did you find yourself looking for evidence of kids in the area like counting backyard swingsets?
Stories anyone?
When we would move to a new building I would knock on the other doors on my floor and ask if they had any kids my age I could play with. Childless people or older couples/singles would give you cookies or candy and leads on where to find kids. That’s the NYC version of how this was done. You find most of your friends when you get enrolled in school, but it was nice to have back-ups in the building.
I am afraid my large group of sibs took over any neighborhood we landed in. We were like a troupe of monkeys let loose.
We moved into our first house when I was 2 - I have no idea if any neighbors were checking us out. I moved out when I was 19, and during those years, I don’t recall anything beyond curiosity about new neighbors, and within a day or two, we knew all we needed to know. There wasn’t a huge turnover, and some folks who lived there when my parents bought the house were still there when they sold it 23 years later.
As a home buyer myself, I wasn’t all that concerned about neighborhood kids, and I don’t ever remember any watching us move in. Other than choosing a county with a good school system, I didn’t really pay attention to much else regarding kids my daughter’s age.
I remember families like your became VERY popular!