To ask your experience of moving to a rural location with children/ teens

[MumEeeee]

Dh and I are always tempted to move out the city. We grew up in villages, but not in the UK.

Friends keep saying to us how difficult it would be. We’d be driving them everywhere/ no facilities etc.

My experience of village life was that people didn’t leave that much, maybe one a week to the nearest town. There was a bus. One friend says I’m idealistic and what I remember has changed or doesn’t exist anymore. She’s a Londoner born and bred though…

So, if you made the move from
the city to a very rural location with teens and children- how did they take it?

Thanks

I think moving teenagers to a 'very rural location' might be a bit harsh TBH.

I grew up on the moors, loved it. Got a bit 'boring' when I was a teenager but my DPs ferried us everywhere. Got a lot easier when we could drive.

Not sure how I would feel as a teenager being uprooted from a big town /city where all your mates are and facilities are on your doorstep. Can you wait to move until they can drive?

We moved to a commuter village when DC were small. Fairly rural but with good train links to local towns and cities. Hopefully the best of both worlds. Time will tell.

@mountainsunsets
agree with your post.

I think for people moving to a rural location with DC, they probably need to go with a plan and be prepared to make a concerted effort to get their DC involved with outdoor hobbies e.g. horse-riding etc. while they’re pre-teens in the hope they will keep the hobbies up later.

And also to lead by example with dog walks/hiking/wild swimming etc.

Oh we moved to a village in Hampshire. Never regretted it. The kids have lots of friends and now go to secondary school by bus. We made sure there were good connections, train station etc. We all have bikes and enjoy riding about. It's good

Yes @mountainsunsets I think it very much depends on where the rural location is. My parents live in a village that's a long way away from any jobs. The nearest decent city is 2.5 hours away, and if you're not a teacher/healthcare professional/self employed, the local town only has crap low paying seasonal jobs, or similarly low paying jobs in agriculture. If you move to a village near a city/town with decent employment prospects, I imagine adult children are much more likely to stick around. Choose your village wisely OP.

@Frances658 you've just described the rural town we live in. It's sounds exactly the same as where your parents live.

Nearest city is over two hours away. No bus service. The only jobs in the town are teaching, care work, agriculture, trades or going self-employed. We don't even have hospital - the nearest is over half an hour by car. Lots of seasonal and touristy work too.

The vast majority of families here have lived here for generations. They're born here, raise their kids here, and then the kids stay and raise their kids here too. DH is one of five and nobody has moved away all his siblings and friends are in their thirties, forties and fifties with DC and DGC of their own and still nobody has moved away.

But if they have professional jobs, and they're not teachers/healthcare professionals, where do they work? What kind of jobs do they do? If you don't even have a hospital, they can't all be teachers!

www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/lifestyle/five-reasons-why-growing-up-in-the-countryside-is-shit-20220825224890?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1661414428

"Despite wanting you to grow up in a rural idyll, your parents actually made the weird choice of making you grow up in a Ford Mondeo"

Very true

They either move away or they compromise and get a job in tesco.

There are millions of jobs that aren't "professional" jobs, though. I know MN is full of lawyers, accountants etc. but around here most people just work in normal, regular jobs.

Off the top of my head - plumbers, electricians, plasterers, beauticians, hairdressers, care work, small-business owners (none of our shops are chains with the exception of a Tesco), retail work, hospitality, animal care (kennel workers or owners, dog walkers), agriculture etc.

We also have independent butchers, grocers and a fishmonger so there are plenty of employment opportunities.

A few people commute to bigger towns and may work in offices or for the council but otherwise you don't need a professional job and going to university is very much not the norm. Cost of living is low, rents and mortgages are low so it's just not seen as necessary to go off and train in a professional role.

Well yes @WindyKnickers, that’s why my experience doesn’t really tally with @mountainsunsets . I know loads of people who I went to school with who ended up working in shops/hospitality/care work. But of my social circle, my friends, like me, went to university and never came back. Me and my friends didn’t want to work in Tesco/care work/the family business (which was often something to do with tourism, or a trade). The only professional people I know who went back are teachers, even the healthcare professionals didn’t go back, due to better opportunities elsewhere.

Why is a “professional” job not a normal job @mountainsunsets ? What about the DC who want a professional, usually higher paying job, and to stay neat family? From what you’ve described, they couldn’t really do that, which is my experience too. I’m just pointing that out to the OP, as for somepeople, that would be a negative.

I suppose wfh and more hybrid options may well change some of these dynamics in the coming years.

Well if they want to pursue a profession and stay near family, they do what millions of other people do and commute to work.

People in cities often commute well over an hour in from the suburbs so I don't see why commuting from small village is seen any differently?

The nearest such city to my parents is 2.5hrs away, so not really commutable. There’s hundreds of jobs that graduates go into (most of my friends are not lawyers, accountants, doctors etc) that just aren’t open to people from my home town. You need largish businesses for those, which just don’t exist within a commutable distance. It’s something for the OP to consider when they’re choosing their rural location.

@Frances658 you don't need to work in a city to have a professional job

I was raised in a decent-sized country town full of professionals working professional jobs, and we have numerous towns within a thirty minute commute where you could be a lawyer, a doctor, a vet, a GP, a nurse, a teacher, an accountant, an optician, a dentist etc.

It really depends how rural you mean. We live in a largeish village so not isolated but semi rural and its perfect for us. Kids are 10 and 11 and I am totally comfortable to let them walk around the village unsupervised, call on friends etc. There is a great community and stuff to do. Youth club, Scouts, Football team etc. I do fully expect to ferry them around as they get older and make friends outside of the village but that's what I expect to do as a parent until they are old enough to drive. I would never want to live in an isolated rural location though, I'd hate it and no beautiful view from my bedroom window would be compensation, I'd find it boring as I'm fairly sociable.

We live in a very small rural town. We have a couple of shops, pubs, hairdressers etc. My dc don’t know any different though. I grew up rurally and always said I wanted to move to a more urban area so tried uni in a built up area and hated it! You have to drive everywhere which is a pain but that said there is a primary and secondary in walking distance here and activities at the local leisure centre, football field etc. That said teens find it hard as there is nothing for them to do here unless they farm or try to get into the pubs!

I wouldn’t choose to move with children that age to a ritual location, espeacilly if they’ve been used to living in a city. I wouldn’t like the practical issues (driving them to meet friends/to their new jobs) and wouldn’t want them to feel isolated. I have a friend who has just moved out of a rural viallge with teens specifically because she wanted them to have some independence (they’d never even walked to a shop alone because their village was so small and badly connected).

I would consider a village/small town if it had good transport links and it would be possible for them to independently travel to meet friends/shop etc.

I actually only live in a small town but w have a large train station that when older the children can use and they are walkable to the local schools etc.

Your kids will hate you.

Apart from everything mentioned already they will be more dependent on you, not just for lifts but also financially, there are few Saturday jobs they can do.

I find the comment about them being financially dependent interesting, as there are loads of Saturday/casual jobs in my rural area for teens.

Pot washing, paper rounds, waitressing, working in the local takeaways or cafes, working at the local stables or on the local farms. If they go to the local college, there's loads of work around there too - McDonald's, supermarkets, shops etc.

People in cities often commute well over an hour in from the suburbs so I don't see why commuting from small village is seen any differently?

Cost. Commuting to either London (just under an hour away) or another major city costs between £40-150 a day from where we are. Season tickets make it a bit cheaper but not enough to make it affordable for most people. Then there's the car parking, £9 a day at the station.

But you don't need to commute to a big city to do most jobs

You can commute to our local town for the grand cost of £8 a day. Station parking is free. The local town is about 25 minutes by train and has hospitals, schools, colleges, council offices, lawyers, opticians, dentists, vet surgeries - you can do loads of professional jobs there just fine.

I'd agree there is plenty to do - often work on farms if you're friends with a farmer's son/daughter and then plenty of work for youngsters in local pubs and cafés and generally most people who wanted work could find something. You did have to be prepared to cycle to the jobs though (or later drive). If you had parents who didn't let you because they didn't think it was safe then that would have been very limiting. Those parents tended to end up giving a lot of lifts and finding it pretty frustrating I think.

@mountainsunsets

sashh
Your kids will hate you.

Apart from everything mentioned already they will be more dependent on you, not just for lifts but also financially, there are few Saturday jobs they can do.

I find the comment about them being financially dependent interesting, as there are loads of Saturday/casual jobs in my rural area for teens.

Pot washing, paper rounds, waitressing, working in the local takeaways or cafes, working at the local stables or on the local farms. If they go to the local college, there's loads of work around there too - McDonald's, supermarkets, shops etc."

Totally agree. Most of my daughter's 15 year old friends have part time jobs... most work in the local pubs (we live in an area where lots of day trippers come from the big towns in the summer), but a few also work in the shops (general stores, newsagent, butchers, hairdressers etc). Plenty of jobs, I would even venture to say more than in the town as older students tend to drive and so go to the town for more work and more pay, younger teens tend to work in the villages around here (but the pay is not great!)

My friend recently moved from a large busy town to a tiny little village with nothing but a park - she has got 3 children and honestly l think the kids are miserable there.

Was a funny age to move them away from all their friends but to somewhere where there is nothing to do? I know l would have hated that. They literally just game all the time which defeats the object of living in the country for her .