AIBU to move our family from London to my home town?

[CoatsforGoats]

AIBU to move our family out of London to live in the town I grew up in? 3 children under 5 at the moment, so possibly imagining an easier life where getting the buggy around isn't as much of a daily challenge. We have been thinking about it as a family for a couple of years and feel completely stuck.

Points to note

• DH job is firmly London so he would be away part of the week (thinking Mon - Wed or Thursday as a pattern)
• We have a lovely little house in London BUT I am aware of the pollution here, and even walking to the park from our house involves a lot of passing traffic. Middle DC coughs at the fumes and it breaks my heart.
• The town I am from is nice and interesting (altho I haven't lived there in years) plenty going on in terms of culture and sport, good access to mountains and excellent walking/forest nearby.
• We would be able to buy a bigger house and have a much bigger garden if we left.
• We don't really have family here or in the town. Some family are overseas and location doesn't make a huge difference either way.

I guess part of it is that neither of us grew up in London, so that feels like an unknown quantity for us, and we are a bit worried about how a London upbringing might be for older primary aged children and into teen years.

Single parenting is rough. Single parenting while knowing full well your husband is enjoying a single London life all week sounds incredibly rough. I couldn't do it.

I live in Edinburgh and wouldn't go any smaller. My kids have loads of opportunities, my daughter is really into theatre and we go a lot, we have the festivals and all that and she can take the bus anywhere she likes. It would have been virtually impossible to get the kids around to everything on my own every day and choosing a single parent life while married is really difficult.

I have a few friend's whose partner's work away in the week and it's very, very difficult for their relationship. Every single school event, illness, dentist appointment... all of that is on my friends. One of them is now part-time as it was just too hard to juggle everything and she only has 2 kids. Add in the driving around in circles and the logistics and it just gets harder.

So I would want to really understand what moving away would look like. Can you also afford babysitters if paying for two different homes? Can you get a cleaner once a week? Can you quit your job?

Of course millions of people single parent and do it brilliantly, but I don't think anyone would say that's easy. And for the tradeoff of having some fields and a big garden doesn't feel like the right balance to me. You seem to be thinking of it as a binary choice when clearly there are many, many other options that might at least be a compromise.

You are using hyperbole and sweeping statements from a position of ignorance. You cannot comment on the current experience of raising children in London as you have not done this. You don’t seem familiar with London and its different areas and dynamics. I grew up in Leeds but cannot comment on raising children there now. I can’t comment on raising children in any part of the country really other than where I am.

It’s fine to advise the OP on the implications of family splitting up, how pollution could affect kids, the expense of city life etc. But to make sweeping comments about the whole of London being a dangerous dump is just unhelpful and silly.

I gave my experience raising children in a small seaside town and how I believe it to be superior to raising them in a city especially London (based on working in a shop with branches across the country and having colleagues who have moved out of London specifically because they had children and dont want them around that)

My experience and opinions are just as valid as anyone else’s on this thread, you don’t have to like it.

Sure.

This.

There's more important than free museums and 3000 parks

You have deliberately taken the point out of context and conveniently ignored what it was in reply to.

And I would argue that it is actually very important for children to have access to all these things and more especially when so many are free or very cheap. The “cultural capital” that MN loves.

Plus the freedom to travel independently at little or no cost.

Travelling to central London from zone 3 in under 30min is a very different kettle of fish from doing the same from further afield on the fast train. There are very limited options to get home if there are issues with the trains for the latter.

Tbh I am surprised an 18 year old finds it so tiring when my my friend’s 70+ year old mum frequently travels in from zone 3/4 with her freedom pass not to mention all the people that commute in, work and commute back out.

Oh don’t be unfair to @Spotthetooth. She came down for a training day once. That arms her with enough experience to make her judgements surely?

Anyway, as a zone 3 Londoner I bloody love the place. Grew up in another area of London, moved for uni and now back with kids.

Where I live is urban and full of independent shops and restaurants. And it’s green - 5 minute walk from a massive woods, within 10 mins of 5 parks (3 of which are huge). My daughters walk to meet their friends and to school. Which is a very good (and free!) school achieving amazing results and with tons of facilities such as a dance studio, recording studio, data tech labs. Their opportunities are endless.

And sorry to blow your mind @Spotthetooth but I know my neighbours too! In face we have a street book club group and regularly have street ‘parties’ and ‘play days’ where we shut the road off. Same in the last place I lived in London too about a mile away.

But I also have expanded horizons beyond the place I grew up and have always lived and, no my kids are not best mates with my old school friends (although I still am!). And I’m thankful for that. It sound claustrophobic. I love exploration and different people and experiences.

And I am totally fine with the fact that some people would hate to live in London, just like I’d hate to live in the country or a small town. What irks me is when they just make shit up because they’re ignorant.

King College have just done some research into this - worth a read Spot.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/london-misperceptions-public-wrong-on-crime-safety-and-capitals-muslim-population-study-finds

@Coffeewinecake I realised I had a typo and it should have said "That's more important" not "there's" - as in it's more important to the OP whether or not she is happy to essentially be a solo parent for half the week than worrying too much about what cultural facilities are on offer.
For your information if you are interested my daughter is autistic so she does view the world slightly differently.
But she very much is over central London.
Too busy, too loud and public transport might be cheap but sometimes it's soooooooo slow.
She's been to the Science Museum etc approximately 453 times in her 18 years so she hasn't missed out 😂
She does love the theatre but we often to go to Richmond or Wimbledon which is obviously still London but it's touring shows so we could go and see them out in one of those culture-less non London towns/cities and it would be exactly the same show 😂
By the way the train I mentioned from my old hometown to the next city isn't a "fast" train - just a train. A regular ordinary train. The last train back is at almost 11pm. There's also a bus as an alternative which the last one is also around 11pm.
It might be a shock but not all public transport outside of London is terrible 😂

I think the last bus/train being at 11pm is pretty awful actually - despite rarely being out at 10pm or 11pm. But I have been known to do so!

I really think it's about the single parenting here. The rest is just details - if theatre or parks or a garden is a priority then you structure your life around that. It's how we ended up living in Edinburgh for so long - enough green space to keep my husband happy and enough theatre (and the fabulous festivals) to keep me happy. I don't know if that balance would work for anyone else on this thread, but I know it would have to be a pretty amazing setup for me to choose single parenting for over half the week. I'd want it to be enough money to outsource everything possible - particularly in OP's situation where they won't have other family around in either scenario.

@PurpleThistle7 11pm is pretty good.
Compared to some other towns (looking at mother in laws town with last bus at 6pm ish 😂)

Well, comparing this one stat with your town, wherever it is, is complete whatabouttery. No one is saying London is crime free. Even the stats I posted said it's higher than many areas - but it is lower than a lot of other large metropolitan areas and of course what we are discussing here is whether the London crime rate is so bad you would have to move away to avoid it.

My part of London has no rough sleepers - i am always shocked when I visit say Brighton or Birmingham. My daughter has additional needs and she feels safe to travel into town on her own on the bus. She has never been attacked. And all the services she needs are so local - we can walk to our local hospital, to the supermarket, to 6 different parks......

You are the one who said look at stats. I previously posted crime in general stats also

We have enough Londoners moved here unfortunately

You’re only in your 20s. How can you have “raised” your children at all? And many seaside towns are notorious for being druggy, deprived landscapes with low educational standards and aspirations, to equal some of your hyperbole.

OP, I was you many years ago, I lived in Stoke Newington and loved it but after a couple more children we needed to move, I have family in SW England, and I love it there but decided it wasn't quite right to us, so I moved to SE London in Zone 3 (which at that time had overground and felt like the middle of nowhere) with the agreement if that didn't work we'd move to SW. I won't say it was instant because it took a while to get used to it, but I love it now and my children have both had great educations, experiences, friends and my son is now at an amazing 6th form (in North London). I did used to worry about all the things you mentioned but I am so glad we stuck around. Might be worth mentioning my son is asthmatic and we've never had any problems with the pollution.

I had my eldest at 16 I’m in my mid/late twenties now. Still maybe I should of said “raising” not raised, sure.

There are hundreds of seaside towns and only one London. I know you’ll say London has loads of nice parts but I’m hundreds of miles from Blackpool and someone living in nice Clapham Common is only a couple of miles from a really rough part of London.

Earlier this year loads of thugs stormed Clapham Common and looted all the shops

Oh I DID say raising not raised anyway

I grew up in Somerset in a lovely quiet village, lots of green fields, beautiful scenery and I loved it until I got to my teens and then was bored stupid. I got up to much worse than my kids ever do. London isn't perfect, but where is? There were defintely drugs and teens we knew not to go near within a couple of miles of where I was but I think that's everywhere in the UK. My best friend lives in the Cotswolds and her kids are always at illegal raves doing god knows what (much more in line with what I did growing up ;). Not saying none of this happens in London (or anywhere in Uk) but not worth discounting staying here because of that.

Also, very aware it doesn't need to be country or city, lots of brilliant small towns and smaller cities to think about.

Much like those who would never move to London, I would now never want to want to move anywhere else, but that doesn't mean it's right for everyone.

This was something that I considered when moving away. I came to the conclusion that despite both me and DH having parents who lived in a commuter town near London, we’d neither of us ever gone back home to live or made use of that fact, so it would be an odd thing to base the decision of where to live as a family on.

A mid - point could be to move to somewhere like Finchley or Maze Hill - so easy to get back into town but more suburban for the kids? Or a nice commuter town? (Though these can be quite boring because everything is focused around London). I wouldn’t have hubs away for part of the week, that will impact the closeness of your relationship and make it hard for you to get back into work/change job.

Schools - that’s the main thing

So this 'known reality of london' is not your know reality?

I said look at the stats to show that London is not as dangerous as some posters are making out. I didn't expect anyone to think the figures would be comparable with whatever provincial town you live in. Being one of the world's major cities, of course it will have more crime - but given all that, the crime rates are not so huge. They are lower than eg greater Manchester. And it varies by LA to LA. My LA has a rate 23% lower than the London average.

You didn’t mention your daughter was neurodivergent in previous original post. I had already caveated all this previously.

Of course Richmond is in London. I don’t think anyone who knows London is only talking about zone 1. That’s why many are suggesting to OP that even moving to zone 3 or 4 can make a big difference and be the best of both worlds. Even moving to a different part of zone 2 can have the same effect.

No idea which town you live in so can’t comment.

I don't live in a town.
I am from a town originally but now live in London.
I have lost track of the conversation somewhere but I think what I was trying to say is many people (on Mumsnet it seems) say that living in "a town" must be sooooo awful because there's no culture and living in London is better because it's all on your doorstep.
But it isn't really.
As I said it takes 25 minutes from our zone 3 stop to get to central London and that's just too the railway station. To get to a theatre or wherever is another journey.
Even if we go to one of the regional theatres (ie Wimbledon, Richmond etc) where we are means it can be a hour on public transport to get there.
However.....(are you still following?) my hometown is a 25 minute train ride to a nearby city. Then a 5/10 minutes walk to a theatre - which is a regional touring one that shows exactly the same shows that are shown in Wimbledon or Bromley or Richmond.
Exactly the same !!
So why is it better to raise children in London vs a random town when (shock horror) London isn't the only place with culture?
Sorry.... that's a bit rambling.

Tbf you get a very limited type of culture at the Richmond and Wimbledon theatres. My nephew is a drama student and this isn't the sort of thing he is interested in - he is watching more experimental stuff in Shoreditch. And I suspect it would be harder to find that in most towns.