To ask if anyone enjoyed growing up rurally?

[YellowRedwheels1]

I’ve been on MN long enough to know that all the threads about rural living mention how bad it is for teens and how they themselves really resented it etc.

However, I feel like myself and some of my friends must be anomalies then as I absolutely loved it and wouldn’t have wanted to have lived in a town or city.

I guess I’m worried as DC is 6 and currently loves the fact we live rurally, have a big garden for her to charge about in , she horse rides just down the road etc but I’m waiting for the inevitable resentment when she gets to her teenage years and for her to hate the countryside and spend all her adult life living in towns and cities due to being scarred from her time in the countryside!!

I never felt this way though, to be fair we did have a bus service in my village growing up, only 4 a day, one in the morning, one at lunchtime and then coming back one in morning one in evening to the nearest town and city so I wasn’t completely cut off in my teenage years.

Myself and my friends were involved in the YFC, rode horses etc and even now, a lot of them work in agriculture or live rurally. We just weren’t bothered by living in the countryside and it was almost a way of life for us?

These people all have normal jobs in the local towns and cities now that they commute for or a lot WFH, there’s a couple of drs who moved back and work at the local hospital, one is a university lecturer and again, works at the local university. Another a nurse, project manager in tech etc so it’s not like we’re all a load of unskilled/ qualified country bumpkins.

You just don’t ever see this side on MN, it’s nearly always how bad it is for teens and how living rurally is bad for them/ isolating.

Is there anyone else on here who grew up living rurally and enjoyed it?

My kids love and but we make sure they do t miss out on activities with their friends at weekends. Theres no bus service and town is about 45 minute drive away but we always accepted we would be taxi parents as they got older. They love the freedom of lake swimming, beaches, forests and space to ride their quad bikes, wild camp etc and having lived in big cities would not want to change it. The older kids at city universities both say they really miss it!

I grew up semi rurally, house right on the outskirts of a city with nothing behind us except hills and fields with cows in. Had a huge garden with a stream running through the bottom of it. Best of both worlds really.

I grew up on the edge of a town but didn't really socialise independently as a teen as all my friends lived miles away. I would much rather have lived more in the countryside as I was really into horses!

Same as @FourEyesGood I loved it as a child but hated it as a teen, moved to a city asap and have stayed there.

It's personality too though, I knew I was a city person before ever living in one.

With phones now, teenagers are a lot less isolated. My best friend hated talking on her landline in the hall and we'd literally send letters in the post over the summer holidays!

Grew up rurally,loved it..I could get a bus to school but often walked.walked everywhere,late DM didn't drive
Parents reared chicken, fruit and veg home grown, neighbour went hunting, pigeon and rabbit. Woods at the top of our road. Moved to London on marrying ex H, absolutely hated it.. second H is from Sarf London, and he couldn't wait to get out.. now retired,we live on the edge of a village,farms and fields 2 roads away, opposite the South Downs.
.

Rural life is all I've ever known, and I've never wished I lived in a city. There are good things about city life, but it has its own set of problems, too. Not all teens want the same things in life. I wasn't particularly interested in socialising at that age. I saw more than enough of my peers in the classroom. Between the pressures of studying and the company of my siblings at home, I was happy for some quiet time doing my own thing (reading, writing, arts/crafts hobbies) at home. I'm not saying my experience is typical, but I've never craved city life at any age.

I didn't like it, because I had a crap family and the weather was often too bad to go out in an enjoyable way. No cinema, only outdoor sports facilities, public transport bad, not a lot of after school activities etc. And I was a person who loved travelling and spreading my wings (still am).

So that was my particular situation. If you were outdoorsy and dare I say happy at home, it was probably very different.

I honestly don't think it's a bad thing to highlight rural teen boredom, underage sex/drinking, the number of boys who kill themselves in car accidents on rural roads at night time, etc. But if you have a variety of things you can do, and you can get out of the village to do them, it's better. I just didn't!

There's also a huge class difference when living rurally. Not always fun. I definitely thought the (few) middle class kids were having a better time in general.

I grew up in a small village rurally. It wasn't a classic "rural" lifestyle - we weren't into horses, dogs and didn't have a massive garden. There was no bus service at all so we had to rely on our parents for lifts which they were mostly willing to do, to be fair.

Swings and roundabouts. I have always loved open countryside and can't bear traffic noise. There were several of my year group in the same village and we got on well, and were in and out of each other's houses all the time. It was great in the summer (summers were always hot in the 90s, right?) We were given a huge amount of freedom, and roamed the countryside and swam in the river and had water fights and went on long bike rides (roads were quieter back then of course)

In some ways it was great, but that was only because of my peers, and obviously I didn't know any different. I would have felt very differently if I had moved there from somewhere more lively and left all my friends, and had no new ones nearby. As I got to 16/17/18 and really started clashing with my mum and brother it got worse and I'd have rather lived in town.

My kids are all adults now and have no complaints. My DD went through a short phase in her mid teens when she moaned about not living in a big city but then, much to our amusement, went on to move somewhere even more off the beaten track when she grew up! Both my sons have gone to big city Universities. The one who graduates this year can't wait to move back to our area and the other one is enjoying city life but spends a lot of weekends travelling elsewhere to do various outdoor pursuits.
Obviously it depends on personality, interests etc but my children would tell you that they had very happy rural childhoods and I think the majority of their friends would too.
I agree with PPs about it probably needing more effort from parents to ensure rural children have plenty of opportunities though and we always did as much as we could to ensure that they didn't miss out on stuff. For instance my DS was invited to join his sports' talent development pathway and the nearest training centre was 150 miles away with sessions every week on a school night and lots of weekends too. Fortunately we were in the position to be able to manage that both logistically and financially so he didn't have to miss out but I can see how he would have been frustrated if he'd not been able to take up his place because of where we live. Of course being financially stable makes life easier wherever you live, but I suspect it might make even more of a difference if you live rurally as travel makes everything so much more expensive. We were lucky enough to be able to support our children's interests but I can see that for children from less affluent backgrounds things might be different.
On the other hand of course I have friends who live in big cities who spend huge amounts of time and money driving their kids into the country to go climbing, hiking, cycling, sailing etc and mine had all that kind of stuff on their doorstep so it's swings and roundabouts. My children could do things on an evening after school that might only be holiday activities for many others, but there were limitations in other respects- I don't think anywhere is perfect.

Loved it. Moved away to the city for uni but made my way back (to a different county) eventually. Bringing DD up rurally too.

I will be a willing taxi though.

I suppose it depends on what you mean by rural. I live in a village, a couple of miles away from the village I grew up in. I lived in a local city in my late teens/ early twenties but my children have always lived in a couple of local villages, I wanted them to have the same childhood as I had.
Our village has a couple of shops, pubs, a social club, hairdressers and barbers, a garage, a doctor’s surgery (a branch surgery, the main surgery is in the next village) and it’s a 15-30 minute drive to nearby towns, train stations, shopping centres etc. I think that’s very different to being somewhere without any services at all.
What it doesn’t have is decent public transport, there’s far fewer buses than there were when I was a teenager, the bus service really deteriorated from covid lockdowns onwards, there are a few buses but in the day only. My children learned to drive when they turned 17, so did all of their friends, just like we did in the 90s.

I do wonder if having a family who are 'active' rurally (if that makes any sense) helps? A friend hated it, but his parents didn't walk, or ride, or want to know anyone locally really, they just liked it because it was pretty.

So they didn't get 'stuck in' as such, and therefore the kids didn't either?

Family members also moved rurally, again just for the views, didn't bother with anyone locally, unsuprisingly hated it!

Lived in villages for my whole life (as did my OH) until we moved to a small market town a few years ago ready for retirement.

Loved growing up in the countryside.
We could be in the fields as soon as we went out the bottom of the garden and would spend the whole day out there.
There was a comp in our village and kids were bussed in from outlying villages.
Had our own Brownie/Cub/Guide/Scout groups in the village and plenty of other groups & clubs (although for some at a county level we did have to get driven there).
Fairly good bus service into the nearest town but TBH, from about the age of 12 we were trusted to cycle the 5-miles on our own if we wanted to go there (I know, a different world in a different time).

My love of the countryside meant I only lived in villages until we decided to make one last house move and knew that the better links & facilities would be needed for our (rapidly) approaching old age.
We are now 56 & 60 and miss the village feel but we're lucky enough to move to a house while in a town, is right on the edge so the countryside is literally just a few yards away

Loved it but have subsequently lived in towns and cities until fairly recently and we have moved back to the country.

However we chose a hamlet that is walkable to a decent village and only 3 miles from a station with trains to a small city and some good towns. We are 15 mins drive to a county town and 45 mins drive to a lovely city.

Loved it! We were coastal though so actually quite a lot going on in our local very small town between May and September. There was a nightclub in our town that had U18s nights, we had beach parties, woods parties, big camping parties no lack of socialising. Parents did have to taxi us until we learned to drive but could get a train to a small city in approx 30mins to go shopping. I left to go to uni at 18, as did most of my friends, lived in a couple of major cities for around 18yrs total then returned to rural living when my kids were toddlers.vast majority of my friends have also returned to the countryside with their young families.

I lived in a town but spend all my mornings before school & after school at the farm with my ponies. i didn't grow up in a town, i just slept there! i never used buses, i walked to school and i never hung out with school friends as they didn't have horses.
i never used "town facilities" either

I loved it, i wish we had lived in the countryside, it would have been the perfect childhood for me!

I loved it, navigated my way through training for a professional career whilst staying rural. Married, house purchased and raising my own rural children.

My younger peers who were all desperate to get away to the big towns and cities are now all married/marrying, having children and moving back because it's such a lovely place to grow up and raise a family. The downside, unless they've been lucky or had help, house purchases aren't very affordable.

I grew up in a village in Gloucestershire. There was a bus service into Bristol but it wasn't exactly convenient. Rural teenagers fell into different categories. I had friends in the village who were obsessed with horses and young farmer's dances and couldn't care less about spending the night getting stoned at a disco or buying hot pants from Top Shop (this was the 70's)! Then there was me and a several others who wanted to be where the "action" was and it was bloody frustrating. Endless arguments with parents because I crashed with friends (and sometimes with strangers) in town because I'd accidentally missed the last bus. Parents didn't ferry their kids around then.

I didn’t like it. There were some nice aspects as a smaller child being out and about in nature but the isolation did not help me. No public transport apart from the school bus twice a day when school was open, no one who really lived nearby, no way would my parents drive me about so I spent most evenings and weekends on my own while my friends were out and about enjoying themselves.

I do remember being jealous of the other kids who could walk home together and see each other after school, when I had to get my bus to the arse end of nowhere.

Walkable friends are key for a rural teenager!

It depends on the type of rural life you had/have. If you have money, a large house with lots of space, horses, dogs and things to make a rural life enjoyable, then you're going to have a much better time than someone with a small house on an estate in a village in the arse end of nowhere with limited and expensive public transport and no space or money. My experience growing up was the latter.
On the one occasion some of us entered a field to play, we got chased out by a farmer with a gun who threatened to call the police as we were trespassing. There was no opportunity to enjoy the countryside around me, I had to stick to my tiny box of a house and garden. I did go riding on friends' ponies now and again so occasionally got to experience the delights of the Cheshire countryside but it was mostly dreary and dull, and most of the local kids weren't the brightest. Their idea of Friday night entertainment was to buy a bag of chips and throw them at cars passing through the village. Some of them still live there, they never left for longer than 10 days in Spain each year.
One advantage of having nothing to do and nowhere to go was that I read and drew extensively which I might not have done if I'd lived in a town or city.

Grew up rurally. It wasn’t the horses/dogs/farming set area. It was quite poor. Although some friends lived on farms they lived in what we would consider poverty now.
There was a strong community of school/church/amateur dramatics type activities. Everyone knew everyone and it was rare to see incomers.
Of my friendship group, only one of about a dozen returned after university due to a lack of opportunity. I think it’s better now but I don’t go back and have never missed it.

I grew up in a small village rurally. It wasn't a classic "rural" lifestyle - we weren't into horses, dogs and didn't have a massive garden.

This is what I had - there was a bus once an hour but not really late or early enough to be that useful and parents with one car who didn't like giving lifts and few amenities or groups. Bus went to small town and to get else where other buses or trains would be needed. Not a huge community spirt - well not for my family but very pretty village though.

Some of my peers at school had farms/small holdings so had dogs horses chickens.

House was 3 bed terrace with not a huge garden and while surrounded by farmers fields not easy to access and spent a lot of time in cars being driven places or on buses to do anything. Could not stay behind for school groups either at secondary as depended on school bus.

Smallest place lived as adult - edge of a town and that was too limited. We are currently at edge of small city (really a town) -- accessible countryside one side - walkable to city center other way - buses and trains to nearby cities. They can aslo walk to their mates houses and a few public places they can hang out at.

We live on an island. Horses, dogs, beaches, mountains, boats kayak astonishing amount of freedom . They hate the city. Think it stink, ironic considering that they are generally covered in dung and horse sweat.
If they go to the city to study, I will be amazed if they do tove back when they can. A lot of the island children stay here or go to uni then move back shapushish if they can get work.

Both DH and I grew up very rurally (a long way apart) and both loved it. As a child I loved ponies, dogs, climbing trees, the countryside. We weren't rich (didn't have our own ponies) - just a very ordinary village lifestyle. DH grew up on a farm.

As a teen I was perfectly happy at local discos and in pubs in the small market town I went to school in. We knew almost everybody, played a lot of sport and had a lot of friends and fun. I never felt I was missing out.

During and after Uni I lived in cities for several years and hated it. It felt busy, dirty, crowded and unfriendly (and I lived in several different places, including London).

Came back to live near where I grew up and raised DC here. They loved it too. Two have moved away (both to smallish market towns) for work. Two are still in the area - now in their 20s - and are happy. All have been away to cities to university and agree they are happier with country living.