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?

No they loved it. You do have to be prepared to do a lot of taxi driving initially, and then get them through their driving test asap

I didn’t love it as a teen but that’s probably because we had four buses a week not a day! (One into town and one back on sat and Wednesday - market days!) If I wanted to go anywhere else I had to cycle.

I spent a lot of time staying over with friends at the weekend which was really good for learning to be independent and for developing close friendships.

I actually don't think it depends that much on the person, I think it depends on the place. I grew up an hour from the nearest train station and close to that for any clothes shops etc. It was a very pretty place but only 1 or 2 people have ever returned there after university. Contrast that to where my husband grew up, a small town, and he knows a few dozen people who have returned.