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Who'd have thought? On the life changes relocating with children can produce...

Moving to another country on your own can change your life... Moving to another country on your own with young children can change it pretty dramatically! With good and so-so outcomes, as with any change. Here's my experience of it. It's one among many which I'd love you all to tell us about on this web site.

Financially speaking, I paid a price, as in my case I opted not to take job offers that would take me away completely (i.e, more than 10 hours a day) from my then 7 months old daughter (and a couple years later, from my newborn son). I also left the secure French social system, where taking time off for your children is sponsored by financial incentives and where state-run retirement is based on the number of years worked in the country...

But who would've thought I'd...

be so much richer from the many questions I asked myself regarding my daughter and my son, as one coming from a mainly French background, now in California, with its health care system, and its funky culture...Who'd have thought I'd also have so much joy seeing my children's smiles, their play, their first and comical consequent steps, constructing a cardboard kitchen, chatting baby chat with them, or taking swimming classes with them on weekday mornings, as someone who didn't give much thought to children before having my own?

But after 7 months of full time child-mom bonding, I felt the need to have time off for me, as a thinking and social individual, even if it wasn't a 50 hour a week job I wanted, and took part- time care for her. Likewise with our second child.

Who'd have thought I'd...

Have become a web site producer, editor and later webmaster, where from simply being able to send an email, I'd be talking HTML, Php and MySQL to engineers and web designers within a few months of community college classes and self teaching? Where I'd have registered a few domain names and knew what ICANN, DNS and IP address stood for? Where I'd be writing hundreds of pages of text in French and in English about the crazy idea of an online resource and network for French speaking and Francophile families in the US..? Where I'd get up in the morning and rush to my computer to see what Valerie, the site's web designer in Washington, DC and Thibault, the site's original programmer in Grenoble, France, had 'produced' during my sleep time and give them feedback before they went to lunch or to sleep;-)? And where I did this during 16 months, with limited interruptions during short stays abroad.

Who'd have thought...

I'd have though up a site called Frenchparents.org, a site with a North American approach based on member participation with the rather individualistic 'French' word in its name? The bicultural, dual Canadian and French citizen I happen to be probably has something to do with this unusual (but nice right?) mix...

Whereas it could be understood by some to be a refuge away from the ambient American culture, it's really a site about taking the best from both cultures and meeting, as French speakers and Francophiles. So now, I can only wonder, what will my daughter, a French-Californian think of when she decides ends up living in Paris..? Surfing_on_the_Seine.com?

Who'd have thought...

I'd be passionate enough (or hit by the sun too hard) to pursue this project long after the site was completed, where I am still managing it 18 months after it's been online, three and a half years since it's inception, and another child richer?

I'd always been attracted to a more creative type of position in the past but was never given the chance to migrate to one, given the marketing carreer track I was on. I'd also never applied some computing classes I'd taken in college that demonstrated a curiosity about computing technology. California changed all this, with it's internet craze in the later 90's...Look at me, writing text, code, and press announcements all at the same time !

Who'd have thought...

as a consequence of our diminished financial means and home-based work, I'd go from a $ 250 clothes budget a month to a $ 250 clothes budget a year? And from a $ 0 education budget to a $ 25,000 one (for my children)!

Honestly, I didn't know I could do it!;-) But living in Berkeley certainly helped (;-)) and even later in San Francisco and not needing to be business-like nor trendy, life is easy- attire-wise. Who wants to wear high heels and worry about pantyhose that runs? Who needs all the latest fashionable pants and jacket when you have to account for those little baby accidents on the way home from the daycare or you want to stop at a park without fearing for your clothes? Oh, and seing those socks in those sandals in Berkeley was a great cure for all trendiness attacks...;-)

I would probably have gone to work much sooner had I remained in France, with a marketing job waiting for me, as well as plenty of opportunities to move to another job where shorter hours would be possible. Again, legislation pushes companies to allow flexible work schedules for parents and the French work ethic is also very different from the American one. Work is work, not Life!

I'd have found a good caregiver for her I could easily afford ( given state tax incentives to hire home-based employees). Because the French system subsidizes both state and private child care, I think finding good quality child care is easier to do in France than in California.

We'd have gone on vacation 7 weeks a year, to Spain, Italy, our parents homes in the south of France and Normandy, maybe even California!;-) I'd have rushed between my job, shopping before stores close ( at 7 PM) and home, under the rain 80% of the time, and in a little car among other little cars that would be honking because traffic had come to a standtill in 6 pm traffic because the subway workers were on strike, yet again...

But I didn't do that.

Who'd have thought I'd be telling you all this today, nearly four years after the adventure started?

Maybe you're not surprised, since you also relocated to a new environment with kids as part of the picture... Adaptable women and men of the world, tell us about it!

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