To think an American/Canadian childhood seems nicer than a British one?

[WilsonandJackie]

I know I probably am BU as stuff like this will always be a "grass is greener" situation and I can't judge a place based on a holiday (have just returned from 10 days visiting a friend and her husband who moved to Pennsylvania 9 years ago) but I really did notice some things while I was there that have me wondering. I know America has it's issues like the UK with poverty etc and is in an absolutely dire state at the moment politically but I was amazed at how different the children and teenagers over there's lives seem to be.

My friend's live in a suburban neighbourhood outside a big city. The neighbourhood kids (know I shouldn't judge it it over one neighbourhood I spent 10 days in but I live in a neighbourhood of a similar socioeconomic class in the UK which is nothing like this) seemed to be living such an idyllic childhood. Kids out playing on bikes on the roads, climbing trees, building dens, in and out of each others houses. I didn't think kids that age did that anymore, it was like a flashback to the 80s and it felt quite lovely. We're talking kids who are 12-14 years old. They seem on a completely different planet to kids in the UK of the same age. I'd see them riding their bikes to school each morning and they looked genuinely happy, in their own clothes rather than a depressing formal uniform (I hate uniforms with a passion, much prefer the system of a dress code). There were some kids who were smoking weed I admit, but it just looked a different apmostphere. They weren't in tracksuits standing outside a corner shop and intimidating people (yes I see this every day in the UK in my "naice" area, didn't see it once in the US), they just seemed to be laughing with their friends in their gardens.

My friends have 2 kids (girl 16 boy 14), they are completely Americanized and you'd have no idea they were born in Yorkshire. The DD drives now and has a job in a diner, so she earns her own wage. Her school finished in June and isn't back until September, so gets 3 months to let her hair down. While we were visiting her and her friends ended up renting a minivan and all drove to a spot 2 hours away (it's meant to be a sort of mountain range with outstanding natural beauty) to camp. Yes there was probably booze and maybe bud, I'm not oblivious, but the pictures seemed lovely. Gorgeous scenery, campfire etc. They all returned next morning and her friend gave her a lift to work on her way to her own shift. Her brother is very sporty and his friends were round a lot practising basketball in the back yard and then they jumped on their bikes to go to another house. Both kids and their friends seem so carefree and happy. In a way they seemed more independent than teens I'm used to, but also seemed to have had more of a childhood. The schools looked nicer, I know there's still bullying and badly behaved kids etc but none of the schools we droved past looked like the ones I'm used to. I'm used to crumbling concrete blocks that haven't had any money spent on them since 1973 and kids in grim uniforms walking in looking like clones of each other. Whenever I see kids walking to school at home they always look so bloody depressed. I think the middle school system is fab. Why are we chucking kids who may have only just turned 11 into a huge building with kids who may be nearing 17 and expecting them to get on with it? They go from being the oldest, the "big kids" in primary to suddenly being chucked into secondary with no transistion. No wonder they feel under so much pressure to grow up quickly. I'd have paid for my kids to do a middle school system. My 2 boys high school experience along with my own were horrendous. They were both under so much pressure by Year 9 and had no energy to do anything. For 2 years every other bloody word was "GCSE". Even in the holiday's they just wanted to rest. Only went out with friends to KFC or to doss in someone's living room and have a takeaway. Meanwhile my friend's DS at 14 still plays out and lives and breathes his basketball. DS's both insist a kid who was always playing football would have got bullied and teased in their school.

The UK just seems depressing, and my friend's have said the same. My friend's own words were "You couldn't pay me to take my kids back to the UK now. There's so many more oppurtunities for them over here and they are both so much happier than I remember being at their age. We are never coming back." I still love the UK, and would never move to the US because of stuff like Trump and the godawful healthcare system etc. But forgetting stuff like that and just thinking about the kind of apmostphere I'd want to raise DC in, I'd choose the US any day of the week. I've heard of many people who have gone to the US and Canada with kids and have stated that their kids are doing amazing there. My friends knew another family who emigrated to Canada and eventually the parents came back but the DC (late teens who had been there 5 years) downright refused.

@x2boys almost every month I see a post from someone about a teenager or college kid dying from taking drugs and there are much more drink and drive fatalities with kids at 16 driving suvs etc. Wealthy suburbs and competitive parents breed their own problems.

I just moved back from the US after being there for three years. My kids did not get to play outside all the time as there was a lack of pavements where we lived (not uncommon) and there were no kids to okay with in our subdivision. I had to drive them everywhere. I thought we were just unlucky, but most of my kids’ friends were in the same boat.

School - on our school district they start giving grades from third grade onwards. Absolutely every piece of work is graded, which is a lot of pressure. At the end of the year - again from third grade (aged 8/9) - the kids had to sit the EOG (end of grade) tests...a three hour test in English and comprehension and another three hour test in maths. The results didn’t actually affect the kids, but the school’s ranking depended on it so the test was really pushed as being really important.

We regularly got messages to say a school in our district was on lockdown. There was never a genuine problem, generally somebody thought they had seen a kid with a gun, or someone had threatened the school. Scary all the same.

After school activities - yes, there are lots, but they often push the children to dedicate a LOT of time to particular sports and activities. My son played football and if he wanted to continue playing, from age 11, in a decent team with decent coaching he would have to commit to three practices a week plus 1-2 matches every weekend, up to to a four hour drive away. My friends 9 year old daughter did gymnastics and was doing a three hour practice, 5 days a week. She wasn’t Olympic standard, or even looking for a college scholarship. My daughter did martial arts and was being strongly encouraged to take part thrice a week, which seemed too much to me. It seemed very important for kids to be occupied doing something sporty, or as a team practically every day after school.

There were lots of things I loved about being in America, but not enough for me to want to stay. Our school was highly regarded but didn’t remotely treat the children as individuals, or encourage them to have opinions. It was pretty rigid.

Like I say, there were lots of great things about living in the US and I miss it, but it wasn’t like some idyllic childhood scene from an American film.

In part school transition will be easier because that nice ‘cosy’ primary that you’re think of from the UK doesn’t really exist in the US. It might in a really rural area, but generally speaking US elementries are much bigger than U.K. primaries. And it’s much less personal.

And if you haven’t seen overcrowded classrooms and schools that haven’t had money spent on them you have very much only seen a certain type of neighbourhood in the US.

I've got a further couple of comments.

Friends of ours have just returned from 3 months in the states. We too have been many times, but not for that long.

We were discussing how though we speak the same language Americans and English /British are literally nothing alike! the similarities practically end there! as they were saying that the Americans are just so completely different and have very little in common with us British, their values, the way they conduct themselves, just everything and we were laughing about you know how they went to the 4th of July celebrations with some New York cousins and how everyone is very very patriotic.

and we were joking about how James Corden has become more Americanised and has toned it right down because the Americans just can't cope with his sense of humour and it's all become a bit mainstream.

and a was talking about how Americans are and I don't know quite how to phrase this, it's like really weird : even though some of them are very bright and you can have very detailed conversations, there is another level, for some, that they just sound kind of dumb!

we were joking that it's like the American cooking programmes:
Bree Drummond and her family who are all bright but sound thick as shit.

And Ina Garten and her Head of Dept bumbling Jeffery who is just an idiot.

Mind you, we did finish with the fact that we are so stupid in the UK with Brexit, than the rest of the world is still laughing at us!!

I've watched way to many American slasher movies to ever want to raise teens in America. If they aren't getting murdered in their sleep by Kruger, they're being chased by Jason, or worse, dreaming about catastrophic events then being chased by death for the next few hours.

hahaha - you have some lovely rose tinted (white, middle class, employed and well-off) glasses on there op... my uncle was a church outreach worker in Detroit in the late 80s (violent crime rates of well over 2000 per 100,000 population).

His photo album is not so pretty.

I live on the edge of a middle class, leafy and generally well-off town in the Cotswolds. We live the dream life. I currently have 2 teenagers outside cleaning my car - (YES... at 8.20 in the morning!) to raise cash for their inter-railing adventure next week, every day you can hear the kids out in the woodland down the road making dens and climbing trees, riding their bikes to school is second nature as it is that or walk...

If you have the money, you can move within the UK for a decent vibe. (and have the NHS, more than 2 weeks annual leave, and decent gun control)

Guns!
I have 2 young grandchildren living in New York
They have regular lock down drills
Mum and dad have fairly highly paid jobs but only 14 days holiday.
Hardly any maternity leave, therefore high cost of childcare from 8 weeks old.
Pluses though, fabulous out of school and weekend activities are widely available ( but costly)
Excellent primary education ( not yet secondary age)

Detroit schools would be a bit of an eye opener for the OP.

Every visit to the doctors, paediatrician, dentist etc costs money

The other thing I would say - my nieces and nephews are having the nice middle class version of US life and appreciate NOTHING. Their level of privilege is astounding as far as I can see but they rarely seem that happy, it all more more more. They have no clue how lucky they are, and they and their friends come across as spoiled and bratty but actually they are half decent kids. They are also scheduled to death with 6am starts and 8pm finishes with clubs and activities ir childcare as their parents have so little time off with them.
Wouldn’t be for me. And we have seriously weighed up the pros and cons of moving there - essentially what it comes down to is we don’t want our kids turning out that way which I feel they inevitably would if they had that lifestyle.
Here in the UK they still play out, go to the beach, call for their friends etc. That’s not gone away for my children even living in a city

I've spent quite a bit of time travelling in the USA and what strikes me most is how different each state is... in many ways they are separate countries.
Some did seem as you describe (I loved Fort Collins in Colorado...leafy green suburbs with friendly happy people walking everywhere) but then.. San Fransisco... homeless beggars every 50 years (no exaggeration) a horrific drug problem and even the shampoo in the supermarket was behind locked doors. In Texas I never saw a soul on the streets... everyone drives..distances are vast.
And I have a son with disabilities..as do my friends in the USA.. 5 families I have stayed with. They are medically bankrupt from their kids medical bills, and they spend a huge amount of time fighting with insurance to get necessary meds, tests etc.
I love visiting , I I love many things about the USA but it always makes me very grateful for our NHS!

Your picture of America is not what I experienced living there for two years. Your picture of the UK is not what I experience living here now.

I think you should think about moving (not necessarily to the US), you obviously don't like where you live right now (and it doesn't sound good to be honest). There are lovely places in both countries - and awful ones.

OP I think we have lost our way with childhood in this country.

"I think that there's an attitude over here that every teenager will go through an arsey phase where they act like a bloody terror and it's some kind of right of passage so the teens almost want to live up to that."

A Portuguese colleague told me that the concept of the difficult teenager didn't exist in Portugal. I can well believe it for southern Europe because they have different ideas about separating from parents in that people will often only move out to get married or if their job takes them far away. In that situation, there isn't the same tension about becoming an independent adult. The colleague was comparing with another northern(-ish) European country, not with the UK by the way.

I may be shot down for saying it, but in most cases, I think the difficult teenager thing comes down to relationships with parents tbh.

My FIL had cancer, he’s ex military so has ‘amazing’ top level healthcare. All good. He had a recurrence- insurance covered most of it again though they had to pay a few thousand themselves. But here’s the kicker - if he gets it again his insurer DOES NOT have to cover treatment. So a man who spent 40 years serving his country ( mainly because he’s from a poor state and needed a government type job for the health cover for his family) faces losing his house if he’s unlucky enough in his retirement to have another bout of the same cancer. Plus he and MIL still contribute 100s of UsD a month towards healthcare insurance anyway in their retirement. He’s joking that next time he’s hoping it’s his heart...

@grumiosmum 42% of Americans have a passport compared to 75% of Brits. I don't know where you came up with 7%..

I think the countries are all large and diverse.
A child growing up on a large country estate in the Chilterns will have a vastly different experience to a child living in a damp, crowded flat in Barnsley. Neither would experience life in a way the child of a Brethren family living in Andover did.

Similarly, it would be difficult to compare a child living in poverty in Harlem with a child whose parents had a second home in the Hamptons. Neither would have a life anything like a Mormon child in Salt Lake City.

There is no direct country wide comparison to be made. I just know that I wouldn’t want to live in a country with such lax gun laws, which allowed a reactionary right wing attitude to human rights, abortion and immigration. I suspect those things don’t impact very much on most people in most of the country just as knife crime doesn’t affect most of us in the U.K.

Ah the US passport thing! So US citizens can bob off to Canada, Mexico and US Caribbean etc. Without a passport. Plus they have this amazing country where they can holiday and ski, or holiday at fab beaches, or go hiking on amazing trails or visit famous cities without Needing. A passport. Then you factor in how expensive it can be to travel long haul to Europe or Asia from the US, particularly with kids and you start to realise why they aren’t that arsed about getting a passport...

My DC live a comfortable life, have independence, are reasonably well socialised etc and we live in London. However, we live in a naice middle class bit of London and pay for schooling. We could probably live a similar life in a similar area in the US (DH is North African Muslim so possibly not in some of the more conservative areas).

However, if we were not comfortably off I would prefer to be in the UK than the US. I think the US is even more stratified by wealth, religion and ethnicity than the UK. As we would not be a WASP family I suspect being poor in the US would be more grim.

I think fair points have been raised about France and, I would suggest Germany too. I suspect in the U.K. we don’t look to much there to bring up children due to the language barrier. I remember visiting Germany as a 15 year old and being stunned at- cigarette machines- the type you found in pubs- on the street. The would’ve had the shit vandalised out of them in the U.K. also, 16 year olds allowed to drink with no expectation that their behaviour would subsequently need “managing” real eye opener

@Rtmhwales Apologies - my information was way out of date, and goes back to when I was living there almost 30 years ago! I see it has changed a lot since then, and am happy to be corrected.

And yes, the US is a wonderfully diverse country geographically as I know & have benefited from travelling widely within it - to ski resorts, coasts with great beaches, vibrant & amazing cities, mountains, stunning national parks. But that still does not expose you to the different ways of thinking and attitudes you get from travelling abroad.

Interesting article about the passport thing.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42586638

I have a few young relatives who have worked at Camp America and they say a huge proportion of the kids they look after are on some form of medication for their mental health.

“I may be shot down for saying it, but in most cases, I think the difficult teenager thing comes down to relationships with parents tbh.”

Could you expand on that a bit? I think it’s a really interesting thought but, it’s hard to see how US parents could have better relationships when there is so little support for working parents as described in this thread

I do have a similar opinion to you, we "lived" in America for about a year for ex h work when ds1 was only 1, but our lifestyle was a world away from what it was and is here, we both still talk about it a lot and loved our time there so much. We toyed with the idea of a permanent move there at some point before we split (his family are all American and live there and he has a passport) but decided against it purely because family here wouldn't have wanted us to move and we also didn't feel comfortable with the idea of sending our children to school in America because of the shootings... I never felt fully comfortable in any public space to be honest!