Which country best to bring up a child?

[whereforbest]

my first dc is approaching a year old. maternity leave is 6 months here, childcare astronomical, rent high. I also unexpectedly became a single mum. I lost pay last week as dc sent home from crèche but still had to pay crèche, obviously. I love my job and work hard but would love to be with dc more, to but need my full time wage as a minimum.

I'm highly qualified with a professional job but trapped - can now only afford student level accommodation for me and my child. or stop paying childcare but forget career. even primary school day is very short and no after school clubs - just expensive after school care.

Is there anywhere where (ideal wishlist!) childcare is good quality and fairly priced, accommodation matches average salary, attitude to having children with you is positive (in restaurants etc), plenty of facilities for children and families, support for working parents (flexible options)? and so on?

Ernestthebavarian I could have written your post! We are in Belgium. Dh and dd are thriving here and I am very happy with the education, healthcare and the greater emphasis on family. But for the same reasons you state, I'm never going to be completely happy here. It's a tough one.

Sanguine (do I know you????) - I would say the same thing. I miss the UK - though with a school age dc, I think it is better here.

I face a dilemma for the future. We always talked about a little house in France for our retirement. Doing the garden, keeping chickens thing. DH retires in 11 years - when dd reaches Uni age.

I think about the little house in French village - and it suddenly occurs to me that I may well be bored rigid! I like being able to go out with friends for drinks and food and to go the shops/cinema. I am not cut out for living in the sticks!

I will still have to work when dh retires presumably. Dd may or may not want to go to Uni. Uni in Belgium is practically free (at the moment) vs the huge debt you now face in the UK. Dd might want to stay here, yet I can't quite face the idea of retirement in Belgium!

So part of me thinks we MUST look to move back to UK when dd is older. And the other part thinks we should stay put, and yet there is still the call of the country cottage.....Aaaargh!

I think the UK - outside of the bigger towns

Porto, do like many expats here, have a house in 2 or more countries!

I'd like a house up a Swiss mountain, but then again I'll be bored after a couple of days.

'tis not just the expats, many of the 50+ dutch people I know do the same. Fantastic plan in any case!

natation - when I win the Euromillions! I am regretting selling up, vs renting out when we moved here. I despair of ever getting back on to the UK property ladder now. You can get some reasonable places for £100k euro in France, or rural Belgium. It's harder in the UK. But I still have 20 odd years left to work, so something should be possible.

Exactly what Ernstthe Bavarian said - we are in Bavaria too. Better for the kids, not always better for me, though my choice, I made my bed etc.

OP living abroad with kids is not the same as doing it in your 20s child free IMO - especially if you intend the move to be permanent. Be prepared for days when you feel utterly, utterly alone, especially if you don't speak the language fluently. You can be more alone with small children than on your own, as you don't have the flexibility you have when you are a commitment free individual. Once your child is settled into a new country, esp in school, and is happy and at home, it is a huge, selfish thing to drag them away if you are not happy yourself. You never have that hanging over you when you live abroad alone. Think about it!

Well Norwegian and Swedish are easier to pronounce learn than Danish imo. People often say the Danes are pretty closed too, although I've not experienced it that much, Each time I have started a new job here (Denmark), the boss has brought in breakfast for everybody for us all to break the ice and get to know each other (and in most 9-5 jobs, Friday morning breakfast for everyone is pretty standard).

And having tried living with children in London and Copenhagen, I definitely found Copenhagen much easier (but I was very lonely in London and found it hard to integrate where I lived, plus I found getting around on public transport much harder than what I was used to in Copenhagen - so my circumstances played a big part in influencing my experiences).

My tip - raise your DCs where you are pefectly happy to live and retire yourself.

We live in Switzerland, a friend of mine here loved raising her now teenage DCs in Switzerland (it's so safe, schooling is great, they are multilingual, they are excellent skiers etc) but they never intended to retire here. Now they are moving back to UK and DCs won't go with them as Switzerland is their home. My friend couldn't bear to retire here, so lonely, little provision for isolated elderly people, etc but doesn't want to be parted from her 'Swiss' DCs who are alien to life in the UK.

I think that's often the case with expat brats though Shay. Most people I know who themselves lived in several countries/in a "third culture" as children become committed expats/globetrotters as adults. I don't live in the same country as my parents/DH's parents, so I have to accept that the price for that is likely to be that my own children will also have a fairly global view and be unlikely to live in the same country as me. Personally, I think it's a good thing for them. It's a big world and I'm happy that they won't grow up with the mental barrier of which country they "belong in" but it does mean that there's no point of dreaming of living round the corner from my future GCs

Where are you now?

I am British (but not had experience of kids in UK), partner is from Norway and we are currently in Sydney. Norway is hard to beat for family friendly life, so I am having a very hard time trying to explain to my partner and his family that I do not want to move back there (I would like to move back to the UK), it may seem like a utopia from the point of view of childcare etc, but if it doesn't feel like home, is that enough ... ?
Like others have said, its a tough one to crack, I cracked it, but the effort left me with a sour taste in my mouth for Norway, I think when I'm old I want to be in a place that accepts me, and Norway likes its own.

I'm from the UK and live in Ireland. I've lived around Europe. I have a fantastic job but that doesn't mean I'm financially able to stretch as this is an expensive city.

just thinking about the future!

I must say, as foreigner in the UK, having lived in 6 different countries, I feel completely accepted and like I belong here, and love England as my home. That is why I am happy fro my kids to grow up "English", as they do.

Mind you, I think England is a hard place to live if you are really poor, and as public transport is expensive, you can become isolated in that case.

Thatisnotitatall where are you? I'm on the outskirts of Munich.

Ernst I'm north of Munich - I think maybe we "talked" on the Germany thread ages ago (I used to be "5moreminutes" - might go back to that actually) and were both outside Munich but in opposite directions. Where are you?

Second everything RealLifeIsForWimps just said about Asia
Blimey!its difficult to type your name with all those capital letters!

Quebec, Canada. Pretty much everything you've asked for. Plenty of drawbacks though, too, as everywhere.

München Ost, on the S2 Stop Heimstetten. Are you near Unterschleißheim? I'm up that way a lot. How long you been here?

Ernst we're a 35 minute drive north of Unterschleißheim. Actually DH worked there when we first moved here, it is somewhere I can realistically get to within the time constraints of having a child in the 1st class of the German school system (I have recently been looking for English speaking toddlers groups, but they are all impossible as for some reason they all seem to start at 10am or later, meaning I have no chance of being home for dd finishing school at 11.15am - makes me wonder whether there are no other English speaking mums who have both babies/ toddlers and school age kids to be home for... and whether all toddlers but mine have lie ins til 9am...) anyway I digress...

Petershausen is our nearest S bahn, which is the S2 coincidentally. Heimstetten is a 62 minute s-bahn ride though, according to the timetable I just looked at.

If you ever have time to meet for a coffee in a cafe near an S bahn station one day (perhaps if you are planning to be somewhere in between our two homes on the S2 anyway) that would be great! I think our kids are quite different ages, though I may well remember wrongly - mine are 6, 4 and 10 months.

Oh sorry forgot to say - we've been here almost 4.5 years! My younger 2 were born here. What about you?

an ex colleague has lived in the German speaking culture for five decades, since her early 20s. she's observed that German culture in some countries suppresses women. I know what she means after having lived there myself - in this particular country i reached the limit of the glass ceiling very early on and other female colleagues have had awful times, but noone questions the status quo. anyone else with experience of this?

Germany is very sexist imo. Women with children stay at home to look after them. Any other set up is unusual, I would say less than 25% of middle class mothers of my acquaintance have anything approaching a career. Also, no pain in labour!