Best Places to Raise Kids: The 15 Most Family-Friendly Philly Suburbs

East Marlborough

Population: 7,026
School district: Unionville-Chadds Ford
SAT scores: 573 math / 591 reading / 567 writing
Crime rate: Zero violent crimes per 1,000; 2.08 nonviolent per 1,000
Median home price: $390,000

If you’ve ever seen one of those TV commercials where the mom, the dad and the two kids laugh and smile as they zoom around on bicycles or go hiking or just generally emphasize your personal couch-potato-ness by being relentlessly active, you may have wondered: Where are people like that? The answer: East Marlborough, where we’re surprised they don’t make you do drills to obtain a mortgage. As local father-of-three and relentless recreationist Brian Ladd describes it, EM is “a small, quiet rural community that’s also full of activity and life.” With almost a quarter of its population under age 18, the Chester County township caters to its kids, who mostly attend schools in the top-achieving Unionville-Chadds Ford district and fill the area’s teeming rec-sports leagues. But parents don’t just cheer on the sidelines: Families cruise the township’s 4,000 open acres on foot or bike, while the Don and Betty Draper set plays golf and tennis at the sleek Kennett Square Golf and Country Club. While you’ll find typical community-calendar fare (5K’s, art shows, a famed mushroom festival), the hamlet’s proximity to family-fave Longwood Gardens and its historic pedigree (a Revolutionary War battleground, several stops on the Underground Railroad) make it a bucolic-yet-active (and safe, with one of the lowest crime rates anywhere) alternative for child-rearing. And the milkshakes at Landhope Farms entice at any age.

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