Currently living in AUS/NZ with SO. We’re going to be trying for a kid soon, but we have no support network here and no family to help out. I think we should move back to the States, where I’m 100% certain family members would come to help us out for as long as we needed. Given the distance, that just wouldn’t happen if we stayed in AUS/NZ. SO thinks we can just handle it on our own.
We wouldn’t need to find new jobs, as we can just transfer internally. Would taking advantage of your home support network be enough of a reason to back to your home country?
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And risk having your kid die in a school shooting?
It’s certainly not a good situation in the US, but the odds are still in your favor. Let’s say your kid was in the Uvalde school district. They have over 4K kids and lost 19. That’s 1/2 of 1%, in one of the worst school shootings.
That said, firearms are the leading cause of deaths for kids in the US. They’re getting shot, but usually not by strangers.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761
That said, all cause mortality for kids is bad in the US compared to almost all other OECD (developed) countries except for New Zealand (which is about as poor as the USA is for older kids). https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2017.0767
Yeah, and the number of kids killed in a school shooting last year in Australia? Zero. You can’t say “only” 0.05% of US kids died in a particular school shooting, so the risk is low. You have to compare the countries.
You wouldn’t catch me dead living in the US, but don’t underestimate the value of family help. Not a bad idea to go when the kids are under the age of 5.
Look up US maternal death rates before you decide where to deliver.
Make sure you factor in the cost of giving birth in the USA. Even with good insurance you’ll end up forking a significant amount of money. Money that could go instead in a fund for your kid’s education… I came back from Australia to USA and promptly left, first to Mexico and now Italy…
As an American also living in NZ absolutely have your kid here first. Having a baby in NZ is free and you have parental leave. When I was working in the US I had a coworker give birth to TWINS and was back at work 12 weeks later after burning through her PTO, FMLA, and disability leave. One baby suffered a broken femur at birth as well. Luckily they did have health insurance but I’m sure the deductions weren’t $0 like they’d be in NZ/Aus.
I work in healthcare and I cannot imagine moving back to the US to have a baby. What happens if you have complications and you or the baby end up in the ICU? How much would your healthcare cost you?
Is it feasible to pay for a family member to come stay with you postpartum to help out? Or even get a nanny? I would tally up how much you’re saving on healthcare alone and put that in a nanny fund.
Piggy-backing: why wouldn’t family fly out to support you in AU/NZ?
This is solid advice right here, not sure why it has been downvoted! Sure are a lot of ‘team america’ kiddies brigading this sub…
Yeah, I saw that anyone who spoke poorly of the US got downvoted lol. It’s fine, i feel like i am fairly qualified to speak on this post as a healthcare worker who has worked in the US and NZ.
Also my husband and I were fence sitters about having children when we lived in the US. once we moved to NZ the world didn’t seem so bleak and we decided we do actually want to have kids, just not in the US lol
I raised kids in my home country without grandparents or other family around. It’s not such a big deal, you get through. If you are happy, I would stay.
Your children will have a much better quality of life and education in New Zealand / Australia than they will in the states. Safer, too.
Health care
I think it’s situational. It depends on the country. I personally would say stay where you are if it’s not finance based reasons, as our healthcare is truly not something to marvel at. And like others have said, school shootings are out of control and our international relations are razor thin at this moment with some countries. Now if you and s/o are looking to get some shuteye after countless nights of not sleeping a wink, valid. But I’d personally not stay longer than a few weeks then get the hell back outta dodge.
Pop out one kid, evaluate how difficult it is, then decide? .
NZ probably has better free education than most states in America. It probably has better healthcare too. No school shootings either. Ideally, I would choose to raise my family in NZ long-term and send them to a university in the states.
You’re kidding. Move back to the US when the kids need to go to college. The only advantage the US has here is their great educational system. Australian Unis are atrocious in world rankings.
US college costs $30 k for a state school, $60 - 100 K for private this year (I have two in US colleges). To be considered
True but they’re actually good schools with global recognition often. my wife did a BA at Uni Texas and her MA at Univ of Indiana and has no difficulties getting recognition as an expat but my WAIT and UWA B.bus and M.Eng not so much.
Umm no. It’s only a great education if you can get into a good school, at which point you’re paying through the nose. EU is where it’s at for college, truly great college education for free.
Perhaps. It’s paid back quicker rho. I had a friend who did a 300k MBA from an Ivy. She was headhunted into a large US firm and paid that off in 3 years. You cannot get those rates in Oz.
The support is one thing - but what about everything else in the future?
If your family is in the US and you are close to them and want them in your lives, I would absolutely move back home if I were you. Home is home.
After 12 years away, nothing on the planet could entice me into moving back to the permanent chaos that is the US.
You need to balance the pros and cons of moving back to the US.
Having family members help out with child care is a massive plus, no doubt. My wife and I moved within Germany to be closer to my MiL, and honestly, we would not be where we are career-wise if she had not been omnipresent (and, I hasten to point out, had not offered to help us in the first place).
The cons are the reasons why you left the US. If you just left “to see the world” and liked the US just fine, then by all means do move back!
If you had other reasons for leaving the US, be aware that they will likely still be there when you return.
I’m European, so obviously my opinion on US society is biased (despite having lived and worked there for two years), but for me bringing a kid into the world would be a reason to move out of the US, and not back in.
The US is a much better place to have any kind of unconventional family structure. For example: I make significantly more money than my husband does so, when we have kids, I’d probably take like six months of leave and then my husband would take over/become a SAHD. In the US, people would be like “Oh cool!” In Germany, they’d be like “Scheiß Rabenmutter wieso kann eine Frau Kinder kriegen, wenn sie eigentlich nur Karriere machen will?!” Similarly, adoption is also semi-common in the US and no one would bat an eye if your kids look completely different from you (other than the initial “Oh I didn’t know”).
Plus if you can afford American healthcare… in the US, they have an RSV vaccine for pregnant people/infants and all hospital staff must be current with all of their vaccinations. In Germany, something like one in three women are abused by their doctors during pregnancy/birth and, when you consider how common home births are, realistically like half of women who deliver in a hospital are abused during the process (namely the doctors follow outdated practices (Kristallgriff) and do not respect the patient’s consent). With my experience in the German healthcare system, I’d rather give birth in a Sanifare toilet than in a German hospital because the toilet staff aren’t going to tie me to a bed and cut my taint in half without my consent. At least in the US, I can tell the doctors off if they cross a line and they’d listen to me because there are consequences for not respecting patient’s rights. Aber tja hauptsächlich ist das Kind gesund…
I’ve been a stay at home dad in the US and (German speaking) Switzerland, and I feel waaaay more accepted/supported in that role in Switzerland. Just a data point for you
We’re just going to gloss over American maternal mortality? Uh-huh
That’s what I mean by “if you can afford it.” If you control for factors like income, the maternal mortality rate isn’t actually higher in the US than in other developed countries.
Plus that shouldn’t be the only factor that matters if like half of the people are left with PTSD and other severe complications that could have been avoided.
You are entitled to your opinion. I am sorry you had those experiences.
Myself (despite being a foreigner and my wife working full time), have not had such experiences and have had only positive ones in Germany. My wife also happens to earn a lot more money than I do and I have never heard the things you mention.
Truth be told, you sound like you are not enjoying your time in Germany, given how incisive your comments were. I know that, were I not happy here, I would not remain.