Never waste a midlife crisis

- not too far away from a major airport.

- not too hot in the summer. We don’t care about the winter. We have our winter home

- not too expensive.

- suburbs is okay. But not rural. But we would really like a walkable place. Our condo isn’t in a “walkable” area. But since it is built as a resort hotel, there are three restaurants, a well stocked convenience store, three pools and a gym on site, and a jogging trail.

- a low tax state.

The only city that we have been to that real piqued our interest is Charlotte, NC.

We were there last year for three weeks. But I ended up traveling for work two of those weeks. We are going back next year for three weeks.

We both love Vegas just because there is so much to do and Nevada is state income tax free and the cost of living isn’t high. But it’s hot.

Like I said, there is really no urgency even though I will be 50 next year. We might even end up buying a place in Atlanta again and going back and forth between Atlanta and Orlando.

People divorce cus they “fall out of love” and, since society today puts self-interest, especially if its related to sex, above all else, and the nuclear family is seen as worthless and “problematic”, people ignore any evidence against their politically correct sheepish opinions.

On your second question, drug dealers often start dealing to support their habit. Only in movies will you get that line. Y’all live such incredibly sheltered lives.

Stay together for the kids. Once they leave the nest, sleep with all the therapists you want. But to pretend like divorce is anything but cringe and pathetic is twice as cringe.

I guess now that I'm writing something anyway, I'll say this: My conclusion since having kids has been that what we've deprioritized to our detriment is proximity to family, both for the benefits to our kids from spending time with their relatives, and to us from not doing 100% of the child care. The families with young kids that I see working the best are the ones with loving families and friends really close (like walking distance close) who spend lots of time together. I see the kids in those families being close with their grandparents and cousins, and I see the parents in those families spending a lot of time with just each other, as their kids spend time with the other family members. This seems win/win/win to me.

But it's also incompatible with "we just have to get out of town away from the rat race", because we're not independently wealthy enough to be organic farmers or whatever, and that means jobs, and that means living in places where other people live, at least for some members of the family (not everyone does the kind of work that works remotely).

So that's why I asked you the question. I see advantages to what you described, but it seems like it is the opposite of being targeted at what I see as the primary problem of contemporary parenthood, of families living all scattered around instead of near each other.

I agree to a certain extent, although I probably don't quite see proximity to family as massively different from proximity to friends. I personally think kids being brought up in "generally loving and supportive" environments in which which they get to hang out with all sorts of groups is actually what's important.

So kids (of course) having other kids to be with - but also being involved in the back and forth of adulthood as well. Kids being at the table when adults are discussing things over dinner, being party to (some) of the trials and tribulations of adulthood, knowing that parents are fallible but supportive - and yes, into this mix comes family too.

What I'd personally describe as the "problem of contemporary parenthood" - as you describe it - is a bit closer to home. I'd say it is families where the parents simply don't have time to spend with their kids - either because they're primarily focused on The Big Career or have been forced by low incomes to work several jobs / work all the time. I see many, many people chasing money for the sake of some future satisfaction / security - and then they look around and their kids have been and gone. Those 18 years go like a flash (as my mother in law says: "when you have kids, the days are long but the years are short"), and our personal intention has always been (to a certain extent!): "screw the future, we're here and now with our kids, let's make the most of that time!". So we could have grown our business, could have taken on staff, could have had big premises, could have gone for bigger and bigger web builds - but we have deliberately chosen not to. Downside: we'll probably never be able to retire! - but I've had the absolute luxury and privilege of seeing my kids grow up, and being there all the way through that journey. There's a parallel world where I am now (at 50) selling my business ready for retirement - but it's a world in which I wouldn't have been present for my family. Would I swap these worlds? Never, not in a million years.

The childcare aspect is definitely a thing, and we have probably suffered - definitely financially (at least for a while while we decided to live off one salary in order to make the childcare logistics easier^) - but again, friends have been amazing, groups like the NCT, close connections with people in the village, all providing a support network that does all of this and more.

[^ I am very aware that nowadays it just isn't possible for many adults to have only one parent working, we were again lucky given the circumstances at the time that we were able to do this...]

The "media and communications equipment workers" category had a reported 0.00% divorce rate! It seems implausible that we should infer causality from this.