Currently living in AUS/NZ with SO. We’re going to be trying for a kid soon, but we have no support network here and no family to help out. I think we should move back to the States, where I’m 100% certain family members would come to help us out for as long as we needed. Given the distance, that just wouldn’t happen if we stayed in AUS/NZ. SO thinks we can just handle it on our own.
We wouldn’t need to find new jobs, as we can just transfer internally. Would taking advantage of your home support network be enough of a reason to back to your home country?
You must log in or register to comment.
Don’t do it. I’m an Aussie stuck raising kids in the US.
Pop out one kid, evaluate how difficult it is, then decide? .
NZ probably has better free education than most states in America. It probably has better healthcare too. No school shootings either. Ideally, I would choose to raise my family in NZ long-term and send them to a university in the states.
If your family is in the US and you are close to them and want them in your lives, I would absolutely move back home if I were you. Home is home.
And risk having your kid die in a school shooting?
It’s certainly not a good situation in the US, but the odds are still in your favor. Let’s say your kid was in the Uvalde school district. They have over 4K kids and lost 19. That’s 1/2 of 1%, in one of the worst school shootings.
That said, firearms are the leading cause of deaths for kids in the US. They’re getting shot, but usually not by strangers.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761
That said, all cause mortality for kids is bad in the US compared to almost all other OECD (developed) countries except for New Zealand (which is about as poor as the USA is for older kids). https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2017.0767
Yeah, and the number of kids killed in a school shooting last year in Australia? Zero. You can’t say “only” 0.05% of US kids died in a particular school shooting, so the risk is low. You have to compare the countries.
Health care
I think it’s situational. It depends on the country. I personally would say stay where you are if it’s not finance based reasons, as our healthcare is truly not something to marvel at. And like others have said, school shootings are out of control and our international relations are razor thin at this moment with some countries. Now if you and s/o are looking to get some shuteye after countless nights of not sleeping a wink, valid. But I’d personally not stay longer than a few weeks then get the hell back outta dodge.
The support is one thing - but what about everything else in the future?
You’re kidding. Move back to the US when the kids need to go to college. The only advantage the US has here is their great educational system. Australian Unis are atrocious in world rankings.
US college costs $30 k for a state school, $60 - 100 K for private this year (I have two in US colleges). To be considered
True but they’re actually good schools with global recognition often. my wife did a BA at Uni Texas and her MA at Univ of Indiana and has no difficulties getting recognition as an expat but my WAIT and UWA B.bus and M.Eng not so much.
Umm no. It’s only a great education if you can get into a good school, at which point you’re paying through the nose. EU is where it’s at for college, truly great college education for free.
Perhaps. It’s paid back quicker rho. I had a friend who did a 300k MBA from an Ivy. She was headhunted into a large US firm and paid that off in 3 years. You cannot get those rates in Oz.
You need to balance the pros and cons of moving back to the US.
Having family members help out with child care is a massive plus, no doubt. My wife and I moved within Germany to be closer to my MiL, and honestly, we would not be where we are career-wise if she had not been omnipresent (and, I hasten to point out, had not offered to help us in the first place).
The cons are the reasons why you left the US. If you just left “to see the world” and liked the US just fine, then by all means do move back!
If you had other reasons for leaving the US, be aware that they will likely still be there when you return.
I’m European, so obviously my opinion on US society is biased (despite having lived and worked there for two years), but for me bringing a kid into the world would be a reason to move out of the US, and not back in.
The US is a much better place to have any kind of unconventional family structure. For example: I make significantly more money than my husband does so, when we have kids, I’d probably take like six months of leave and then my husband would take over/become a SAHD. In the US, people would be like “Oh cool!” In Germany, they’d be like “Scheiß Rabenmutter wieso kann eine Frau Kinder kriegen, wenn sie eigentlich nur Karriere machen will?!” Similarly, adoption is also semi-common in the US and no one would bat an eye if your kids look completely different from you (other than the initial “Oh I didn’t know”).
Plus if you can afford American healthcare… in the US, they have an RSV vaccine for pregnant people/infants and all hospital staff must be current with all of their vaccinations. In Germany, something like one in three women are abused by their doctors during pregnancy/birth and, when you consider how common home births are, realistically like half of women who deliver in a hospital are abused during the process (namely the doctors follow outdated practices (Kristallgriff) and do not respect the patient’s consent). With my experience in the German healthcare system, I’d rather give birth in a Sanifare toilet than in a German hospital because the toilet staff aren’t going to tie me to a bed and cut my taint in half without my consent. At least in the US, I can tell the doctors off if they cross a line and they’d listen to me because there are consequences for not respecting patient’s rights. Aber tja hauptsächlich ist das Kind gesund…
You are entitled to your opinion. I am sorry you had those experiences.
Myself (despite being a foreigner and my wife working full time), have not had such experiences and have had only positive ones in Germany. My wife also happens to earn a lot more money than I do and I have never heard the things you mention.
Truth be told, you sound like you are not enjoying your time in Germany, given how incisive your comments were. I know that, were I not happy here, I would not remain.
We’re just going to gloss over American maternal mortality? Uh-huh
That’s what I mean by “if you can afford it.” If you control for factors like income, the maternal mortality rate isn’t actually higher in the US than in other developed countries.
Plus that shouldn’t be the only factor that matters if like half of the people are left with PTSD and other severe complications that could have been avoided.
I’ve been a stay at home dad in the US and (German speaking) Switzerland, and I feel waaaay more accepted/supported in that role in Switzerland. Just a data point for you
After 12 years away, nothing on the planet could entice me into moving back to the permanent chaos that is the US.
You wouldn’t catch me dead living in the US, but don’t underestimate the value of family help. Not a bad idea to go when the kids are under the age of 5.
Make sure you have the support network that meets your expectations. We moved home once for that same reason and ended up being lonely with very little extra help compared to the social system abroad. Family may or may not be a blessing with your kid and it caused a rift because they were so hands off.
same. i came back to the US to have my baby for the support system and left when she was 6 months old.
I was going to say this. I just moved “home” for multiple reasons, but family help was definitely one of the draws. Family had been talking about helping out and looking forward to all the stuff we could do together. This was offered, not asked for by the way. Everyone has changed their minds on the help offered since we got here. Whether it be items, or physically helping, or spending time with my kids/us. I have received almost zero help. I won’t say zero, because one person has done the bare minimum of what was offered. In fact I have ended up being the one they are coming to for stuff. So not only is my family’s life upended and I am super busy doing all the things moving to a new country require, I’m also being pressured to do more for completely established people. I would actually have more help where we lived before from friends. We were all newer there and banded together to help each other, because we didn’t have support systems. Moving home, I’m needing to start from scratch to build a support system, but because everyone thinks I have one in family, I’m not included as a new comer, so it’s lonelier and more isolated.
I would honestly say have the kid there first and take advantage of any maternity / paternity leave that you can get. Then reevaluate and see how you like it.
If you’re going to be working full time in the States and the child will be in daycare, the family help wouldn’t actually be as necessary as you think. And you’ll presumably get more holiday in NZ / AUS to take advantage of chances to go home.
Try it and see what you think.
As my child has started going to preschool (I was working ‘flexibly’ while caring for him… ha) I’ve found I have so much more space and need the help so much less than when he was an infant. I could see myself staying abroad indefinitely. But it is true the first 1-2 years are hard if they aren’t in daycare and you really aren’t getting a break! So plan those family trips as much as possible.
Also build your network of mums and families in your neighbourhood. I could have done that a lot better and that would have given me a lot of relief
We have two kids and we are still in our home country (we’ll be moving to Spain in the beginning of 2024) and our network is zero or actually just another family with whom we are very close friends (they took care of our oldest one for two days when I went to give birth to the youngest). We manage just fine! Granted I’m a freelancer and work from home, so I have more flexibility to handle situations like one of them gets sick and has to stay home, and my husband’s job also allows him to manage my schedule when I have appointments with clients. If it would be better if we have grandparents close by? Yes it would, but we chose to live in a differ part of the country and it’s best for us as a family. So when we move to Spain next year, it’ll be just the same.
As others are stating, I would also be very reluctant in moving to the US because of kids, with everything that is going on that scares the hell out of me. Nothing pays for the peace of mind that I feel by leaving my daughters in their schools, a feeling I don’t think I would have in the US.
Our situation is different from yours of course, but it’s just my two cents by someone who has kids with no network. We made friends with other parents in our daughter’s school and we hang out many times.
Thank you for this very valid comment- we have this ridiculous social expectation in the US that you need to have a dozen close connections and everyone helps everyone out all of the time and the kids should see their grandparents every week.
Other people in your life can be great and helpful, sure, but they can also bring complications. Sometimes less is more and it works out fine to just focus on your nuclear family!
You might be overestimating the help you’ll get in the US. I’ve seen a lot of posts complaining about the (grand)parents wanting grandkids and promising to help then seeing the kid only once a month or so.
What does school, daycare and healthcare look like where you are ? Any government assistance ?