I was wondering what are people’s experiences of having and raising children in a different country from your own, specially if your partner is a local. Did you find it challenging not having your family to support you? Did you manage to have them be bilingual? Do you find it’s hard for them to identify with your country, and if so, what are good ways to help with this?
So I’m American and my wife is Austrian, w Eli e in Austria and have two younger kids aged 7 and 3 years old. To answer your questions:
challenging, not really. My wife’s family lives close by and they are awesome and super helpful, but It would still be nice to have another group we could ask to help watch the kids as both my wife and I work full time. It‘s more a bit sad that we don‘t get to see each other that often.
bilingual comes naturally with kids as they are absolute sponges when it comes to learning language. We just do it that my wife only speaks German to the kids and I speak English. It took a bit longer for my kids to start taking in English, but they understood it from very early on.
it can be tough, they are definitely more Austrian than American and there isn‘t much I can do to change that. We visit the US every year and we celebrate American holidays to try to get them familiar with the culture, but it‘s still foreign for them.
On the last point, It must mean they like Austria. I hated growing up in bumfuck nowhere Italy and absorbed way more of the American culture than the Italian one in certain aspects of my life, I knew it would have allowed me to gtf out of there.