Make me feel better about staying in London please!

[Sudbury]

Partner and I are going to move out of our London flat as we want more space / garden for the toddler and baby.

I’m desperate to use this as a way to leave London and head for a smaller city, think: a Cathedral city so somewhere with culture, history and an identity - basically York or Norwich, but probably York. Somewhere we can get a slightly bigger cheaper house, have a calmer pace of life, make new friends, grow our own veg and not raise children who may be entitled London brats.

Reasons being I find London life annoying is I’ve been here 13 years and it’s increasingly fast paced, crowded, polluted and competitive. Don’t like being so far away from the countryside, living in the same city as friends but it taking an hour and a half to get to them because it’s so bloody big, no real sense of community, the general feeling of stress and busyness that seems to scent the London air.

Partner is not keen to leave, at least not now and gives very sensible reasons. We’d have to find new jobs / retrain as we both have London centric careers and while we do want to retrain now is probably too soon. We don’t have friends of family outside London in the places we’d like to move and raising young kids with no friends or family close by (which would be the case if we moved) is bloody hard. Other places may be less open / accepting of people who don’t 100% fit the straight, white, Christian mould.

I know in my heart that partner is right, and if they also wanted to leave I’d be voicing some of their reasons for staying. But I still get a horrible pang of longing whenever we leave London, or conversely view a house In London that costs double what a bigger house would cost elsewhere.

Help! Convince me that London is worth staying in and that the dream life doesn’t lie in York

Move to Hertford. You'll have 2 train lines into London but a more relaxed way of life.

@Okeydoky what area is that please? It sounds great!!

Other places may be less open / accepting of people who don’t 100% fit the straight, white, Christian mould.

Stay in London, OP. Seriously. The rest of the country really doesn’t want insular, ignorant Londoners with ridiculously stereotypical attitudes about the world outside the M25.

I was born in London, now living outside of London, very happily!

London's a wonderfully diverse city, diversity does not always equal community. All of my family still live on London so I have very strong ties.

We are all free to come and go, but it makes me sad that people blow into London, live the life and then feel I can't live here anymore, it's to this or to that.....

I left London because DH, who loves the energy of London wanted the countryside also. He is not a Londoner.
We do go to London regularly, good commute service. He says we have the best of both worlds. I just feel that London has lost and will continue to loose sense of community because those that can afford to live there, believe me I know it is expensive - eventually feel that they do not want to live there anymore.

For those born in London who have no choice or that are quite happy to continue living in London, there is community. It is often messy, but it's community, that's how I grew up in London.

I love living in the countryside and am part of a wonderful community here.

Cities, everywhere are challenging, brilliant places to live.

I’m a northerner

Whereabouts do you live in London?

I could never leave London. If there's a major show or major band or major exhibition it's right there on my doorstep along with so much culture and vibrancy as well as the amazing transport links to get to them. I'll keep my smaller garden to always have that available.

I guess you were hoping for some
mindless London bashing OP, sorry you didn’t get it 🙄 If you can’t manage to raise your children not to be entitled brats, it doesn’t really matter where you
live 🤷🏻‍♀️

I asked for exactly the opposite of mindless London bashing actually @JasmineIndigo. Did you read my post? I was asking for reasons to feel glad about staying in London, beyond the sensible ones my partner had articulated.

Why so disingenuous?

You trying to influence the factors in your children's lives IS parenting. That's part of what parenting is; the decisions you make for them.

I wasn't claiming anything other than if your children turn out entitled brats that won't be because of the city they live in. It will be HOW they live in that city. And HOW they live is down to you and your parenting. You're no more likely to raise a brat in London than you are in Norfolk or York.

Excellent reasons to add to my list - thanks

Born and bred Londoner, possible brat, lived in a buzzing part of the city all my life and now decided to move to Harrow for kids. Offers really great schools, lots of parks/greenery and village feel as we will be between Pinner and north harrow. Harrow/kenton have great housing stock, the plots are big with large gardens, links on the met line are amazing if you want to get into the city.

Suggest you look at greater burbs of london, whichever take your fancy, I think that will be a good compromise for you and your partner.

But I’m talking about trying to influence the external factors in my children’s lives by moving or not moving cities, to somewhere we could afford a better lifestyle and they could go to a more socially mixed school. Which is both parenting, and doing what I can in my limited capacity to change their outside influences

I think we’re essentially agreeing here. Just differing on definitions of what is just parenting and what is down to outside factors which can be partially but not fully influenced by parents choices.

I don't get the 'entitled London brats' comment which strikes me as a sweeping generalisation.

Having lived in London all my life, albeit on the outskirts, I would not want to live anywhere else. There is plenty of green space within London and just outside it. I do understand that, when it comes to property, you can buy more for your money outside London but salaries are generally lower.

It's quite easy to get around in London, public transport is good. There will be more to interest your children as they get older.

Think about it seriously from all angles before making a decision.

Just move somewhere commutable. Your London friends can come to visit and vice versa.

St Albans, Cambridge, Oxford, or any number of market towns in the commuter belt.

You have young kids - this will help you make friends.

London also doesn't have to be stressy. Would you consider/ are you able to reduce your working hours ? I've done that and it's a game changer.

I'd also look at the pros more. London will offer your kids better opportunities when they are older. There's so many jobs.

I find the ability to change jobs really positive. You can change pretty much when you want and get to know another area / part of the city.

It's pretty hard to get bored which I love. Plus the mix of people and cultures is really inspiring.

Yes I didn’t say all the kids in London were entitled brats. Just that my kids might be more likely to become that way if we stayed where we were. Perhaps it’s the fact that London is a series of villages, and that one village tends not to blend much with another is part of the issue. Notting hill six bedroom townhouses in one village, high rise estates in the next village over, but their kids usually not mixing much. I grew up somewhere much more mixed and blended, which is the environment I’d rather have for my kids. But hey ho, we are where we are.

It was intended as a light hearted remark but clearly I’ve misjudged the tone, as some people on here have taken it pretty personally as a judgement of their kids or a sweeping statement about all London kids. Sorry if anyone has taken genuine offence. It wasn’t meant.

that was the case my kids would have exactly the same life / personal outcomes if they went to a private school in Highgate with posh friends, music and chess lessons and no money worries vs if we moved them to Bradford.

Why on earth are you equating being a London kid with being privately educated, and being a Yorkshire kid as going to a sink school in Bradford 😭 London is full of state schools, plenty of desperately poor kids as well, while Yorkshire has its share of rich, privately-educated children. Ridiculous stereotypes.

Yes they are exaggerated extremes, that was the point. I was using them as extreme examples of different environments that kids could grow up in to illustrate a point that kids are influenced by their environment, as well as by their parenting.

I didn’t say either was typical of all London or all Yorkshire. I picked extreme opposites to make a point. Probably chose the Bradford one because I grew up very near there and my uncle taught in one of those schools, and the London one because that’s close to how I see some of the kids living near me growing up

You can choose the school they go to in London, and you are likely to have more choice than being in Bradford.

I wouldn't move away from family when you have children. The support can be invaluable.

I live in London and my DC grew up here -they went to state schools. London is really great for children and teens. My home town is York and I return regularly. My parents live there. I love it, and for a long time I wanted to leave London and return to York. London is so expensive and my now-adult DC have no hope of ever being able to buy a flat of their own in their home city. It makes me sad, and worried.

But it doesn’t make any sense- if you want your kids to go to state schools and know poor children, we have both of those in London. It’s not a reason to move to Yorkshire. (Not offering a view on what you should do btw- I’m also a Yorkshire-born woman living in London and I love both places. Just don’t like stereotypes.)

This

Family
Friends
Good museums
Really good theatre
Polish restaurants
Well connected airports
Lovely architecture
Mix of people
Turkish greengrocers
Amazing parks
Lots of jobs
Several symphony orchestras
24 hour chemists / corner shops
Great transport network
Afghan restaurants
Jewish Ethiopians
Injera
Synagogues
Friends who come and visit from other places

This list reminds me of that part in Gone Girl when Nick & Amy moved to a small town and he said that Amy only really missed NYC's ethnic diversity as it was part of her brand / lifestyle.

😂 @FKATondelayo i think the OP isn’t white which is why she has a fear of moving away from london, which is justified. Many places in the UK are still racist but lets not get into that! Even if you are white OP i can see why you love Turkish grocers, the bread 🥖 is divine.