Last week, I wondered aloud with my boys, 9 and 7 years old, what it is they might do professionally when they are older. In the true politically correct fashion of my day, I suggested the widest range of possibilities.

“Maybe you’ll be an artist, or a lawyer,” I said to them, listing one option after another. “An actor or a doctor.”

“A doctor?” my eldest, Jacob, asked. “Women are doctors,” he said seriously.

Now if ever there were a comment that reflected the peculiarity of being raised in Manhattan, there it was.

Jacob’s pediatrician happens to be a woman. But I think his comment is a greater reflection of the fact that among the people he knows who are physicians — his friends’ parents and our close friends — the majority of these doctors are women.

This, of course, brings to light the financial reality of living in Manhattan these days. When my brothers and I were raised in the city in the 1970s and ’80s, plenty of our friends’ parents were doctors — meaning plenty of our friends’ fathers were doctors. Back then, a doctor could afford to live in the city and raise a couple of children.

Today, there are several changes among city parents, the most striking of which is that both parents are likely to be working. But one fact that hasn’t changed much is that the fathers are typically the breadwinners. There are plenty of mothers in my children’s classes who are doctors — but their income only supplements that of their husbands, not vice versa.

“We certainly couldn’t afford to live in Manhattan on my salary alone,” a physician and mother of three said. “And it’s not just because I work four days a week. My father was a doctor and I was raised in Manhattan, but his salary provided him with a much better standard of living than most doctors’ salaries do today. I really feel lucky because it’s my husband’s salary in the business world that allows us to live in the city.”

Because the cost of living in the city has risen dramatically — far more so than the average physician’s salary — male doctors, who are usually their families’ breadwinners, are more likely to take their broods to the ‘burbs than they are to stay in the city. It’s not just that the fathers of my son’s friends aren’t doctors — there are hardly any lawyers, teachers, dentists, graphic designers, artists, or writers — you get the idea. Most professionals can no longer afford to live in Manhattan — it’s that simple.

“Many of my son’s classmates’ parents are doctors,” a mother of three in Scarsdale said. “Amongst the fathers, there are plenty of lawyers, and accountants and journalists and HR folks, and Wall Street guys, too. Lots of the mothers stay at home, but plenty of them work as well, especially part-time.”

Friends of mine in Chappaqua and other nearby suburbs echo those assessments. “There were more men in my graduating class at medical school than women, but it wasn’t so imbalanced,” a mother of three in her late 30s who lives in Teaneck, N.J., said. “My husband and I are both physicians. We realized that we’d never be able to live a decent quality of life in the city. How could we afford a two- or three-bedroom apartment and send our kids to private school? It’s the people in finance or on Wall Street who can afford to live in Manhattan.”

The rate at which women have entered the medical field is astounding: According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, amongst the 2007 medical school graduates, 51.7% were male and 48.3% were female. In 1970, only 8% of doctors in America were women. And in 1985, women accounted for only 15% of all physicians.

On a basic level, Jacob’s comment certainly reflects these facts. But his comment also seems to suggest that men are not doctors. On top of the rise of female medical school graduates during Jacob’s lifetime is the skyrocketing cost of living in New York City.

According to the Fiscal Policy Institute, from 2000 through 2006, New York metropolitan consumer prices have risen more than 20% faster than the same costs across the nation. According to the most recent quarterly report by the real estate firm Brown Harris Stevens, Manhattan apartment prices continued to buck the national trend, averaging $1,430,514 last quarter — 34% higher than a year ago. In 2004, by comparison, the average price of an apartment in Manhattan was $1,052,155 — also a 30% increase from the year before. In many fields, it simply isn’t possible for salaries to keep up anymore.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder what kind of impact this will have on my children. Is Jacob less likely to envision himself becoming a doctor because he hardly knows any male doctors? When I was Jacob’s age, I remember dreaming of becoming a veterinarian, and also wanting to be a toll collector on the highway. It’s not as if I’m convinced that there is a direct relationship between one’s aspirations in elementary school and the outcome 20 years later.

But I do marvel at the speed at which one profession has begun to achieve a gender balance through education, and the speed at which one city — ours — has established a certain uniformity among its residents. It’s a shift that will no doubt have some consequences, albeit undetermined ones.

sarasberman@aol.com