Hellobee

I’ve written about why I love raising my kids in the city and on an island, but before having kids I always thought I would raise my kids in the suburbs. I’ve mostly lived in cities, but I also lived in the suburbs for almost 10 years in my late teens and early twenties. The suburbs appealed to my introverted self, where I loved having a home to spend lots of quiet time alone.

We’re in Los Angeles now visiting my family, and while I was walking my parents’ dog in their suburban neighborhood, I started thinking about where I want to raise my kids after we leave the Philippines. Suburb? City? Island? There are pros and cons to each, and my life experiences have changed my views. As I thought about why I loved a specific area, I figured out the answer.

But first these are the biggest pros and cons of each for me:

SUBURB
Pros: Clean, safe, quiet, good schools, more affordable and larger homes/yards, convenient access to big box stores, city is still accessible
Biggest Con: The suburb my parents currently live, and many throughout Los Angeles county, is not diverse at all. It was what I knew when I was growing up so I didn’t think too much about it at the time. But having lived in New York and the Philippines where I have friends from around the world, diversity is one of the most important things to me when it comes to choosing a neighborhood to raise my kids.

CITY
Pros: Culture, diversity, activities/entertainment, energy, ambition, community, walkability, public transportation
Biggest Con: I truly loved living in New York. The biggest con was definitely the expense. My life would probably be grand in the city if I were a millionaire, with a country house to escape to on the weekends!

ISLAND
Pros: Nature, clean air, simpler life/childhood
Biggest Con: While I do love the simpler offline childhood in nature my kids are having now, the remote nature of our location means we lack access to important things like good healthcare and education options. As the kids get older, I would want them to have access to more educational opportunities that are difficult to come by on a remote island in Southeast Asia.

.  .  .  .  .

After moving out of Los Angeles, I frequently visited because my parents still lived there — they wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world other than the Los Angeles suburbs. Despite having many friends in LA, I didn’t have a community because we moved around a lot growing up and I had friends from many different parts of my life (school, church, etc.). Socializing was a big effort because Los Angeles county is huge (4751 square miles), and I have friends spread all across it. Perhaps since I never lived in Los Angeles after having kids, I never had a chance to be part of a community like I have in New York and the Philippines, and that’s why I haven’t loved LA that much since I left it.

When I moved to New York when I was 24, I instantly fell in love with the city. I loved New York for all the things that people love about city life, and I fell in love with it even more after having kids. I met some of the best friends of my life there, and we were part of such an amazing community of parents through our daycare, preschool and elementary school.

I realized just how important community was to me when I moved to the island capital almost a year ago. Olive started attending school and I instantly became part of an incredible community — the outpouring of love I received from them when I was recently hospitalized truly touched my heart! Beyond that we do so much together because of our kids, regularly sharing in life moments big and small. I had forgotten how much I had missed that living in El Nido where my kids didn’t attend school, and there just aren’t many expat children.

I guess all this is to say that I think I could be happy living in a variety of different neighborhoods, whether they be city, suburb or rural. Turns out the most important thing to me is having good friends and a strong community, and that’s what made me really love where I lived. Research even backs up close friendships as key to your happiness and longevity!

Want to live longer? Make close friends — because research shows that friends can affect your health even more than family. The 2005 Australian Longitudinal Study of Aging found that close relationships with children and other relatives had very little impact on how long you live, but people with the most friends tended to outlive those with the fewest by 22 percent.

Better yet, a clinical review of nearly 150 studies found that people with strong social ties had a 50 percent better chance of survival, regardless of age, sex, health status, and cause of death, than those with weaker ties. via Business Insider

I have no idea where we will end up after leaving the Philippines. But as long as we have a great community and great friends, I think we could be happy anywhere.

What is the biggest pro and con of where you live? And where do you want to raise your kids?