Last summer, my family packed our bags and spent three weeks in Los Angeles: We swapped houses with friends of ours who had recently moved to the centrally located Pacific Palisades. While they spent a week in our New York apartment, we lived in their spacious Spanish 1920s home — dog, car, pool, and housekeeper included. I think we got the better end of the deal.

Most New Yorkers have something to say about Los Angeles, usually an acerbic one-liner that proves New York is the superior city. “L.A. is a cultural wasteland” or “It’s one enormous sprawling suburb.”

Until I spent those few weeks in Los Angeles, I would have also counted myself as one of those bashers. But after my brief family stint there, my opinion changed: I think that when it comes to raising children, there’s a lot to be said for year-round sunshine and casual clothing. My boys still talk about their two weeks at camp in Santa Monica that took place on the beach. I still remember standing in line to pick them up with the other mothers who may have been driving fancy SUVs, but looked like they, too, had just rolled off the beach. Flip-flops, jeans, and the right Tshirt from Fred Segal: They may have been blonder, but they were not nearly as emaciated as their New York equivalents.

“In L.A., people are much more active,” a mother of three said. “When I lived in New York it was all about being thin. In L.A., people meet for a hike or a bike ride outdoors. There’s a different emphasis.”

And so it goes for their children. “There is so much more sports here than in New York,” a mother of four who has spent time on both coasts said. “In New York, you play baseball in the spring. In L.A., baseball is a year-round sport.”

As for academic pressure, though, she feels that if you compare apples to apples — serious prep schools in New York to those in Los Angeles — there is very little difference.

A woman who babysat for me and other New Yorkers before moving to the West Coast finds that children in Los Angeles are less pressured than their New York counterparts.

“All the kids I take care of spend a great deal of time outdoors, playing. There is just less pressure on these kids,” she said.

All the Los Angeles transplant parents, including many who have spent time going back and forth between the coasts, feel that children in New York grow up faster than they do in Los Angeles, particularly during middle school.

“When the kids in Los Angeles get their driver’s licenses, then it all evens out,” a mother of two said. “But until then, the kids stay more sheltered in California than they do in New York, where they have more independence at an early age. The L.A. kids have to rely on their parents to drive them around and this keeps them more protected.”

As for the emphasis on the entertainment industry, my friends in Los Angeles are quick to find a positive spin. “There isn’t a single way to define success here, like there is in New York, which is so money-driven,” the mother of four said. “Yes, there is this piece that is so celebrity-driven. Being in the entertainment business might mean power. But even so, that means there is more to success than just money. Money is simply not the denominator in Los Angeles the way it is in New York,” she said.

Now that I’ve run through the pros of raising children in Los Angeles, let me be clear: I love New York and wouldn’t trade its urban grittiness for anything. I love taking my gang to the Metropolitan Museum. They know the history of immigrants on the Lower East Side, and what it means when there’s a 12-foot-tall inflatable rat outside a building on Madison Avenue. By sight, they know the local bodega shopkeepers. The doormen, the fruit man, the homeless people. They know about the four seasons and the giddiness that comes with a snowfall, the cherry blossoms, and the first day the sprinklers are on in the park.

But what about living in a city where success is defined by money?

“Living in New York or Los Angeles these days is like living in a city on steroids. It takes an enormous effort to transmit good values in either city,” a father of two said. “The materialism and the lack of delayed gratification – it’s a real struggle.”

sarasberman@aol.com