Why I love living close to family

by Phil Stott

In preparing for our upcoming summer vacation—a road trip to Wisconsin to visit my wife's family—I've come to realize once again the benefits of being near one's family as a parent. It's a subject I've touched on before here—after my last vacation to Scotland to see my family, as it happens—but the more I think about it, the more I think about, the more sense it makes, and the more questions I have about the long-term effects for society in our increasing tendency to live far from the areas where we were brought up.

In no particular order, then, here are my top four reasons for living close to family members when you have children:

1) Generational wisdom: Without a sense of community that goes back further than one generation, we risk losing a large part of the culture and values that brought us to where we are. While some of that's a good thing—with evidence of an increasingly open, more inclusive society all around us—that sense of belonging to a larger community is becoming lost. Why is that important? In my opinion, growing up knowing the people in your community allows you to see on a daily basis how your actions affect other people, an important lesson for any child to learn.

2) You can take vacations that really are vacations: Case in point: prior to Maeve arriving, my wife and I were seasoned travelers, doing everything from weekends in foreign cities to road trips across the South. Since Maeve's arrival, we've been on three vacations—every one of them to visit family. The upcoming vacation will make it four in a row. Not that we mind, being of the opinion that we want our children to grow up knowing their extended family, but it stands to reason that if we lived closer to one or the other half of our family, we wouldn't be using all our vacation time and budget to visit them, and could feasibly consider going somewhere new.

3) Getting a break is easier: Whether it's for date night or a doctor's appointment, having easy access to people that you trust to look after your kids—and you know you can call on in an emergency—is an enormous benefit.

4) Your kids grow up knowing their relatives: This point kind of goes back to the generational wisdom thing, but it’s about more than that as well. I know from personal experience that there are things you'll tell one relative when you're growing up that you wouldn't tell another—especially where parents are concerned. And, where you have more people directly related you, you automatically have more of a community that's likely to look out for your child's best interests—plus a little more tolerance of family quirks and foibles,

As a couple whose immediate families live 3,700 miles apart—with us around 1,000  miles of land from one and 2,700 of ocean from the other—I suspect that this is an issue I'm going to be wrangling with for some time, no matter what happens in our future. Should we never live near either side, I'll always wonder how much my kids are missing out on. Should we choose to live nearer to one or the other, however, there will always be questions over whether we should have done something different. Of course, the very fact that our society is so mobile is the only reason I met my wife in the first place, and therefore the only reason my child—and any future progeny—exist. Given that,  I guess I just have to chalk it up to another of the unique constraints of being an international couple—along with mountains of visa-related paperwork and fees, having to re-sit a driving test at the age of 30, and honing my research skills to the point where I can find a free internet broadcast of almost any sporting event from around the world in less than 5 minutes!