We just did the lightweight version of that, moved from a major city to the beach, but still in a beach town. It came about due to my wife’s midlife crisis induced by major (now solved) health problems. We’ve lived at the beach for three weeks and already it feels like our best decision in many years.

(We kept our old jobs and are working mostly remotely. The commute is two hours each direction by train, but doing that once a week is fine by me.)

Can I ask what are you and your wife working with now?

Yeh, we run a small web consultancy. I also have another business which is a little more platform-y / SaaSy. Wife has also learned how to be a florist so is building that up too. All fun stuff :-)

I mean good for you. Both my boys (2 and 4) are social butterflies, if they had only each other they’d probably go crazy.

A couple questions if you're willing to indulge:

- What about friends and family? Are you further from or closer to family? Did you have friends nearby? Did your kids? What is your familial and social circle now, compared with then? - What about school?

Sure - well, my wife is from the North East so her parents are problematic from a travel point of view, and definitely worse now given that we don't have easy access to trains / airports now. We've mitigated this by having them come to stay for longer periods of time so it's good that I get on with them :-)

We didn't have any friends at all down here when we first moved. The village was extremely welcoming, and in large part (as ever) the kids going to (a small and friendly) school massively helped to build some initial connections, many of which continue to this day.

We now have a really nice circle - people round these parts are very much not obsessed with work in the way we've found with other places we've lived, which is a bonus for us. Lots of variety in what people do with their leisure time, lots of home workers, and in general people seem more relaxed.

Massive downside about our particular part of the world is the terrible lack of diversity. We also miss bits of city culture and have to travel now to go get our culture / food / music - but we find we can sort of "top up" on a monthly basis and then run back to the sea feeling refreshed :-)

I appreciated this response yesterday but had nothing to add so just gave it an upvote, but now I'm feeling like from your perspective I asked you for something and then ignored you :) So now I've written this comment to say that I appreciated your response!

I guess now that I'm writing something anyway, I'll say this: My conclusion since having kids has been that what we've deprioritized to our detriment is proximity to family, both for the benefits to our kids from spending time with their relatives, and to us from not doing 100% of the child care. The families with young kids that I see working the best are the ones with loving families and friends really close (like walking distance close) who spend lots of time together. I see the kids in those families being close with their grandparents and cousins, and I see the parents in those families spending a lot of time with just each other, as their kids spend time with the other family members. This seems win/win/win to me.

But it's also incompatible with "we just have to get out of town away from the rat race", because we're not independently wealthy enough to be organic farmers or whatever, and that means jobs, and that means living in places where other people live, at least for some members of the family (not everyone does the kind of work that works remotely).

So that's why I asked you the question. I see advantages to what you described, but it seems like it is the opposite of being targeted at what I see as the primary problem of contemporary parenthood, of families living all scattered around instead of near each other.

I appreciate your response to my response :-)

I agree to a certain extent, although I probably don't quite see proximity to family as massively different from proximity to friends. I personally think kids being brought up in "generally loving and supportive" environments in which which they get to hang out with all sorts of groups is actually what's important.

So kids (of course) having other kids to be with - but also being involved in the back and forth of adulthood as well. Kids being at the table when adults are discussing things over dinner, being party to (some) of the trials and tribulations of adulthood, knowing that parents are fallible but supportive - and yes, into this mix comes family too.

What I'd personally describe as the "problem of contemporary parenthood" - as you describe it - is a bit closer to home. I'd say it is families where the parents simply don't have time to spend with their kids - either because they're primarily focused on The Big Career or have been forced by low incomes to work several jobs / work all the time. I see many, many people chasing money for the sake of some future satisfaction / security - and then they look around and their kids have been and gone. Those 18 years go like a flash (as my mother in law says: "when you have kids, the days are long but the years are short"), and our personal intention has always been (to a certain extent!): "screw the future, we're here and now with our kids, let's make the most of that time!". So we could have grown our business, could have taken on staff, could have had big premises, could have gone for bigger and bigger web builds - but we have deliberately chosen not to. Downside: we'll probably never be able to retire! - but I've had the absolute luxury and privilege of seeing my kids grow up, and being there all the way through that journey. There's a parallel world where I am now (at 50) selling my business ready for retirement - but it's a world in which I wouldn't have been present for my family. Would I swap these worlds? Never, not in a million years.

The childcare aspect is definitely a thing, and we have probably suffered - definitely financially (at least for a while while we decided to live off one salary in order to make the childcare logistics easier^) - but again, friends have been amazing, groups like the NCT, close connections with people in the village, all providing a support network that does all of this and more.

[^ I am very aware that nowadays it just isn't possible for many adults to have only one parent working, we were again lucky given the circumstances at the time that we were able to do this...]

> I'd say it is families where the parents simply don't have time to spend with their kids

I don't think this is quite right. I have seen research on this (sorry don't have a link or anything, so if this is a myth I'd be happy to be corrected) that shows that at least for the like knowledge-worker rat-race type people, we are spending a more time with our kids than people did in the past. I think this reflects more helicoptering the kids around to different activities, and less independent play in the neighborhood and wandering over to the homes of family and friends (because someone would have to drive them). (This is probably a pretty US-centric perspective too.)

I do tend to agree with your point about how friends can be just a kind of supportive extended family. But most people in their 30s with young children don't have friends who are retired and excited to spend time with their kids the way that grandparents are.

Bath might be beautiful, but it's definitely not perfectly good!

It's at the same time too small to be interesting (you need to drive an hour to get to Bristol), but too big for having those advantages you mention for Nothing-by-the-Sea.

> Right. I'm off for a surf :-)

What beach, you must be on a foamie considering todays conditions?

Yeh, it's awful, I ended up just having a little dip instead :-)