Mother’s Day is just around the corner, that one day that Americans celebrate their mothers with hugs, cards, and brunch. But which cities are best for mom the other 364 days of the year?
To find the best cities for mom for the third year in a row, we again started with the 100 biggest cities in America and then looked at the following datapoints, each weighted equally:
Mothers-per-capita: the percentage of mothers in each city with one or more children under 18 years old, according to 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data.
Educational quality: the overall caliber of public schools in each city based on a worst-to-best scale of 1 to 10, compiled by Great Schools, which uses standardized test performance to score schools.
Child care: the number of child-care workers per child age 5, according to each city's surrounding Metropolitan Statistical Area, based on 2011 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2011 and U.S. Census population data.
Maternity health specialists: the availability of maternity specialists (in obstetrics and gynecology) based on the number of recognized practitioners, per resident mom, in each city, according to HealthGrades, an independent health-care ratings company.
Love for Mom: Have you sent mom a card yet? For this category we used 2011 data from MyFunCards, which provided the number of cards sent for its top 100 American cities. We then took this data and converted to a per-capita ratio.
Is your city among the most mom-friendly?