<p>Actually, I had many comments about this topic here on C.C. but it must have been before you came on. This has happened to us with our daughter. We let her go wherever she wanted to go to college.She was the 2nd of 4 and I was very busy with the younger kids.She did end of marrying her college sweetheart, buying ha house near her inlaws and having a family there.<br>
First of all, a young lady of 18 is not grown mentally and if you let her go far away to college and she does not come home frequently, she will mature with attitudes influence by her friends and not by her parents.This is what happened to us. So my daughter does not exactly think, understand, or sympathize with me or my husband on any matter.</p>
<p>My own parents (back in the 70s) would not let me apply to OOS schools, saying that NC has plenty of great colleges and universities from which to choose. Why should I look elsewhere? I kind of feel the same way where my kids are concerned; however, I would have readily let my older one go OOS if she had not been accepted to her in-state choice, which was her first choice. Her second choice was only six hours away, though. Even that distance is a long way for a weekend visit. It would not have mattered, though, because she never comes home except for fall break, Thanksgiving, and Christmas (not even spring break) - and she is only two hours away!</p>
<p>This semester she is in NYC for a university arts program, and we will see her on the usual breaks, but boy, is it expensive to let her come home now since it involves a flight!!! That’s another argument for choosing an in-state school. We would probably have said “no” to the fall break flight, but it is her birthday weekend…</p>
<p>An international mom here. My son is a very happy freshman in the US and I couldn’t be happier for him. I encouraged him to go far for college, to broaden his worldview and to grow up as an independent young man. I don’t miss him in a sad way – he is always in my heart and in my mind, but my feelings and thoughts are happy, I am excited about his new life, about his achievements, about the difficulties he overcomes every day. I absolutely understand that chances are for him to meet his future spouse while in college and it is not very realistic to expect that she will be a girl from his homeland. I don’t know where in the world he/they will settle. But that doesn’t make me sad either. I will be glad if he has a happy family. I feel self-confident that I’ll make it in my old age too. As to communication – there are phones, internet, cameras, airplanes…</p>
<p>I also remember a similar thread, backhandgrip, but it must have been awhile ago. Settling down where they go to college is a big concern of mine and it was something that I thought about when my kids were applying and looking oos. My husband’s family has a long history of marrying and moving. My husbands grandparents moved from Kansas to Colorado, my in-laws moved from Colorado to Delaware and all of their kids moved from Delaware to Arizona, New York and Pennsylvania and then the in-laws moved back to Colorado! My parents moved from New Jersey to Delaware, spent a few years in Virginia and then moved back to New Jersey. My husband and I moved from Delaware to uptate NY, to Wv, to Virginia and have lived in Pa the last 20 years. Our kids have cousins all over the place and have never lived (and neither have my husband and I) within an hour of any relative.</p>
<p>I would love it if our kids choose to move to where we live now. I would like to easily invite them over for dinner or babysit grandkids or watch these future kids at a soccer game. But, when we were looking at colleges and decided that a priority was diversity and exploring a different area of the country I knew that the chance of them coming back was going to be slimmer.
I’m not worried about them marrying someone from oos, I just want them to live hereabouts (within 2 hours would be wonderful) when they have kids!</p>
<p>What I’ve been doing since my daughter started college four years ago, is to just talk up this area whenever she’s home and mention how good the weather is every phone call, this works especially well when she’s having bad weather in the midwest. My son will probably go wherever a job offer takes him and not look back.</p>
<p>Is seems that the workforce has changed in that careers take our children from one location to the next in a relatively short period of time. Many times promotions are linked to relocation, so I can’t see following them about hoping they will stay in one spot.</p>
<p>Young adults are so busy with friends, jobs, setting up their lives that they really don’t have that much free time to spend with the family. Their kids will be in daycare or school and also very busy.</p>
<p>Our goal is to find a home so inviting that they will want to come visit when they have time off. A house on a lake with all the grown up toys seems to be the best idea for us. With any luck we will be their vacation destination for years to come, first with friends in tow and then family. </p>
<p>Who knows… maybe this won’t work…but we will be happy!</p>
<p>
BHG, I sympathize with your unhappiness about your daughter’s location. But may I respectfully differ with you on this point? Many 18 y/os are “grown mentally,” certainly enough to decide where to attend college - and if a spouse and eventual relocation are part of the deal - well, that happens. I don’t want to influence my children once they’re adults! If they’d like to settle near us, wonderful. If they wouldn’t, for whatever reason, I’ll respect their decisions and rack up the miles.</p>
<p>I live several hours from my mom and my husband’s parents, and personally wouldn’t have it any other way. I love them lots, but can only enjoy our visits because THEIR attempts at “influencing” can get pretty to old to this 50-something gal, and it’s nice to have some distance.</p>
<p>the story about the family in HI made me laugh, as I was reading it the suspense grew …would any of them actually NOT want to return to HI?</p>
<p>the weather stuff- to each his own, but when people say they want “real” weather, that always cracks me up- I enjoy watching that on the weather channel, but I don’t want to live in it. anyhow, we actually do have real weather in SD, its just more subtle.
anoel- beautifully said, I’m going to show tha to my d, as she is considering some OOS schools, but 2 are in FL soooo, hmmm, guess they have real weather there too. I don’t much like the LA area, personally, but SD is a world apart…
I grew up in upstate NY in an old farmhouse with unheated bedrooms…later in life my parents were in a bad weather-related accident ( the other driver was fatally injured, my parents were very seriously injured), and driving to work in whiteouts, getting up at 4 am to shovel snow and make sure your car started, having it be too cold /windy and sometimes snowy on Halloween for trick or treating, ditto for EAster egg hunts…just personal preference, but no thanks, after living in it for 28 + years… one of the biggest thrills for me after moving to SD was driving on dry pavement…</p>
<p>“First of all, a young lady of 18 is not grown mentally and if you let her go far away to college and she does not come home frequently, she will mature with attitudes influence by her friends and not by her parents.This is what happened to us. So my daughter does not exactly think, understand, or sympathize with me or my husband on any matter.”</p>
<p>? I know plenty of students who are living at home and going to high school whose perspectives differ greatly from their parents. Heck, my older S was like that from the time he was about 6 and insisted on supporting a presidential candidate from the party that my H and I hated. S even could articulate some of his favored candidate’s views.</p>
<p>S ended up going to college far from home and now lives far from home, but all of this reflects his general outlook on life, not where he went to college. </p>
<p>Meanwhile. my husband’s older sister moved 2,000 miles away from home after dropping out of college, which was relatively close to home. After she retired, she moved across the country to live across the street from her parents. Ya never know what can happen…</p>
<p>Fun thread with everyone’s experiences. I went from San Diego to Cambridge, Mass. with every intention of never setting foot again in California. 4 years later I was back and have never left except for trips/vacations. Weather was a huge factor, family/sense of belonging another. However, I do strongly prefer living in northern California to southern.</p>
<p>Ironically, S, who attends college 5 minutes away has his sights firmly set on the East Coast after college. Currently a young woman is adding to that inclination but it was there even before she came on the scene. Ah well, they don’t belong to us and they should go where their hearts lead them. I love to travel and by the time it is an issue, I’ll be retired and have the time to do so, so I am not fretting about it.</p>
<p>HIMom, whether your kids settle there or not, one can pretty much guarantee that you’ll be visited a lot! Living in paradise and all!!</p>
<p>We do think about this, but it’s awfully hard to predict anything. Looking at my own family:</p>
<p>My great-grandfather left home at 15 and travelled halfway around the world, with no sense he would ever see his family again. They wound up living on the same block with him in an eastern Midwest city.</p>
<p>He sent his three sons to Harvard and his three daughters to Radcliffe or Wellesley, quite a journey in those days. Four of them wound up back on the same block (including my grandmother), and lived most of their lives within a mile or two of each other. The youngest two wound up in Berkeley CA and Washington DC/all over the world (foreign service).</p>
<p>My mother and her siblings went to college at Mills (+ grad school at Harvard), Wisconsin (undergrad + grad), and Wellesley. My mother wound up living within a mile of her mother, her brother lived in the LA area all his adult life, and her sister lived in Philadelphia. (My father, of course, wound up living far from his parents with the wife he met in grad school, and my aunt lived where the husband she met in college grew up.)</p>
<p>I went to college at Yale (where I met my wife) and law school in California, and have lived in Philadelphia for almost 25 years, having moved here for a year while my wife finished law school. One sister went to Stanford and has never left the Bay Area, although she never married. My other sister went to Arizona, and lived in San Francisco for 10 years, but now lives eight blocks from my parents.</p>
<p>My Philadelphia cousins went to Harvard or Trinity, and wound up living, mainly in Mankato MN (with a wife from Philadelphia), Tokyo, and Copenhagen/Geneva, although the latter two have both recently moved to New York (long after their parents moved to Florida).</p>
<p>My LA cousins all went to college in LA – in West LA – and have never lived anywhere farther away than Ventura County. Long after college, though, one of them met her husband on an internet date in NYC.</p>
<p>Our closest friends are both from St. Louis. They went to college at Wash U and Mizzou, and met while working in Jeff City. They live in Philadelphia. Another close set of friends were originally from Nebraska and England, met in college at Duke, and live in Harrisburg PA. The Nebraskan’s sister went to college at Nebraska, and she lives in the Philadelphia suburbs.</p>
<p>So . . . the long, shaggy-dog point is that where you go to college clearly has the potential to affect whom you marry and where you live, but there are lots and lots of other factors that affect those things, too.</p>
<p>Some other amusing geographical tidbits, since this is on my mind:</p>
<p>In the past 20 years, a lot of my second cousins have gone to college at Vermont. I currently have six cousins living in Burlington, and my sister is there one week a month, but only one of those people went to college and met his spouse (long after college) there.</p>
<p>I have 15 adult first- or second-cousins living in NYC. None of them went to college there, one of them grew up there (and one of her parents – not my relative – also grew up there). All of them went there because that’s where the cool jobs were, and all of them who are married met their spouses there (except the oldest, who was at Wellesley when my mother set her up with her NYC-native spouse, a college and grad school classmate of my father’s), and with the exception noted all of the spouses were there because that’s where the cool jobs were, too.</p>
<p>Almost 60 years ago my father in law left Egypt to come to University in the US. He married an American woman and saw his parents less than once per year for the rest of their lives. Earlier this year I was at his home when he spoke with and saw (via Skype) a childhood friend whom he had not seen in all that time. </p>
<p>I immediately had 2 feelings. First, no matter where my children are it is infinitely easier for us to stay in touch than it ever has been- and I don’t care how far from me they are for now so long as they want to stay in touch and want to come home every so often. Second, I felt heartbroken for my father-in-law’s mother, who never really had the same opportunity. How hard must it have been to see him go?</p>
<p>He remained a devoted son until her death and he still goes to see his older brother every year, health permitting. </p>
<p>That my children find the right mate is much more important than where they live. From my own personal experience I can assure anyone who worries about this that grandchildren and grandparents, children and parents, who live very, very far apart can have wonderful and very special relationships. </p>
<p>I went to college 15 miles from home, and now live more than 10,000 miles away. Don’t bet on anything!!</p>
<p>For families whose kids intend to go to graduate or professional school I think the choice of the GRAD school or residency can be the more significant one and potentially lead to the scenario the OP describes. That’s because in many cases marriage is postponed until after an education is completed. Not only is there a high likelihood of meet a future spouse there (closer to the time you know you will be interested in settling down) , or just after graduation, but job opportunities and potential for networking may be the greatest in the region where the grad school is located due to alumni recruiting, name recognition of the school etc. </p>
<p>I can give many examples of this, including that of one of my close relatives. Her kids all went within easy driving distance for college, but one S decided he wanted to explore the opposite coast of the country for grad school. Met and married a girl with ties to the area who had no desire to ever leave. Grad school led to job led to career. I don’t think he ever fully realized how one thing would lead to another that way. He really misses the east coast, friends and family. Meanwhile, another sibling followed him out there and one remained on the east coast where she met her spouse. It’s rare that the family (once so tight knit and close) is all together in one place anymore, especially since our model growing up was much more like the family in the example I’m ABOUT to share - </p>
<p>I have another group of relatives who, although they could afford to, never encouraged their kids to go OOS for college or grad school. The entire extended family ended up living within 10 minutes of one another, have regular dinners at one another’s homes and are a wonderful support system for one another, to the point where if one person needs a room painted the whole extended family will show up, paint brushes in hand, to make a party of it. These are not provincial people by any means - they are successful, well educated, and travel all over (and can even afford to hire their own painters!) They just made very different choices than most based on their conviction that having close connected extended family, such a rare thing now among very educated families, is what was most important to them. Although I would never limit my kids choices in the way these people did, it does make you think - their family dynamic is a beautiful thing to behold (I used to LOVE to visit over there as a kid) and no one seems to have suffered for lack of brand name colleges on their resumes. </p>
<p>On the other hand, our own case - H went to undergrad and professional school that were each over 1000 miles away from home and ended up a mere 100 miles away - by way of many moves early on in his career. There was NO predicting where he would have ended up early on. Me - I went within 200 miles for both college and grad school, finished grad school and came home (NY) , ONLY to meet H who had just gotten first job -out of town!! I eventually ended up within the same 100 miles of most of my family members, too. Along the way, we had offers to move everywhere in the country from LA, Chicago, Boston, Florida and Atlanta. Having family and friends nearby did help us make our final decision, though.</p>
<p>But who knows, with S maybe we actually “did it backwards.” Although this was not at all by design (we have always encouraged our kids to look without geographic limitations), ironically, S ended up nearby for undergrad. Still, he may very well want to explore a different area of the country for grad school and then end up there! </p>
<p>One thing I’ve learned is that you really can’t ever know just how things are going to work out. Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans,and all that!</p>
<p>Ah settling in paradise or “desirable” locations can be sometimes much more challenging than one would wish. My folks are the envy of most of their friends in that their kids have all returned to HI to live & raise their families & have their careers. Most of their friends may have one or two kids who returned to HI but many who could not return to HI due to difficulty finding a job & place to live that could support them comfortably.
For what it’s worth, my hubby’s brother & sister both moved from HI to SF, where they have careers & homes & have lived their entire adult lives. They only visit every 10+ years or so, we visit them much more often (at least every few years).
Jobs & housing & cost of living are an important factor in the options available to families and how they end up deciding where they will live, especially in regions where housing & cost of living is very high and well-paying jobs are relatively rare.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t let the fear of a distant marriage influence where my kids go to school. Unless they attend a very small local school or community college, they are apt to meet people from all over the country. We are from the midwest - my son attends school in the southeast, and his new girlfriend is from California. You just never know.</p>
<p>If I thought that a local college would guarantee a local job, spouse and a house down the block so I could see the grandkids regularly, I would have insisted on it. But you just don’t know…</p>
<p>People who want to see the world will do it, whether it’s in college or in the job force.</p>
<p>All four boys in H’s family attended the same college close to home. Thirty years later, one still lives close. The other three are scattered around the country. </p>
<p>S2 is halfway across the country, and we fully supported his desire to experience a different part of the country. I hope he gets it out of his system and returns to his Midwestern roots, but even his mother the control freak realizes that you can’t predict outcomes.</p>
<p>You said:</p>
<p>“I can see the attractions other places might hold over the L.A. area for some folks but as someone who lived many years in suburban Chicago, Milwaukee was regarded as a good place to be <em>from</em>.”</p>
<p>Things change. You would probably be astonished to learn that the latest trend in our very fashionable, rapidly developing downtown neighborhoods is the number of well-heeled Chicagoans who are buying pied a terres HERE to enjoy Milwaukee’s cultural, festival, social, dining and recreational opportunities. :)</p>
<p>My travels have taken me to every major city in the country numerous times. Each place has its individual charms, but I would never actually live anywhere but in Milwaukee or Madison (except for the time I also spend in the far northwoods of Wisconsin). I understand that there are many people on the left and gulf coasts who cannot imagine enduring a ten below zero day, but I also pity them missing a swirling snowstorm, an apple crisp late fall day or the utter joy of the first truly warm day of spring. To many of us, what you call “paradise” we see as a horrible monotonous sameness – albeit in a polo shirt and shorts.</p>
<p>I think that there are disadvantages to going to college far from home (especially if the child is from the type of family (often ethnic) that is very close, and the child enjoys that closeness.) </p>
<p>I come from a large - very close - Italian family. We have big celebrations for everything – births, Baptisms, First Communions, Confirmations, Graduations, special birthdays, weddings, Mothers/Fathers Days, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, the 4th of July, Wakes and Funerals. Those of us who treasure the closeness, attend many or most occasions, and those who desire less closeness, attend few or none.</p>
<p>When my nephew chose to go 2,000 miles away (Colombia), his parents were fine with that — until he kept wanting to come (fly) home for various occasions (in an extended family our size, someone is always getting married 
or dying 
). After paying for more airfares than they EVER intended, they encouraged their next child to choose someplace closer. Nephew #2 did; he’s 75 miles away at another top tier school. And… that Colombia nephew is now going to grad school within his home state (at another top tier school!).</p>
<p>Also, transporting his dorm stuff back and forth evey year was also an additional financial burden that they hadn’t considered.</p>
<p>Unless a family is very affluent or has tons of frequent flyer miles, frequent air travel has got to be an added pain to college costs; especially when those costs are avoidable by choosing a great school that is closer. Also, during many times of the year(Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter), the airfares are unnaturally high and more difficult to get. </p>
<p>Also, parents often forget to include the annual “Parents Weekend” costs when figuring college costs when their kid goes far away. Parents Weekends add even more airfares, hotels, car rentals, pricey food, etc. to the total cost of attendance.</p>
<p>I’m not so worried about my child meeting his wife at a distant college and staying there because most kids are marrying much later in life (and many jobs will transfer a person several times within one’s career). As a parent, I would be reluctant to “move” to live near an adult child (and his family) unless I was prepared to quickly move again if he was transferred elsewhere. (I’ve seen grandparents stuck living by themselves after moving to a new area and then having their kid transferred elsewhere.)</p>
<p>I have mentioned before my comfort level with D deciding to attend school in our region
It made life easier IMO, because not only were we able to visit her much easier( and cheaper) than if she had to travel by air, but also her sister has been able to visit her much more often, including travling by train with her friends to visit the college.
Now that she is graduated, and continues to live within 10 miles of the college, it is nice to have her so close.
We only talk to her every few weeks, but we are able to visit more often ( although I haven’t visited her since she moved- her sister has) and are planning to go down soon.
We are a close knit small family, and she is a big part of it & I recognize that she is grown now, but especially for her sister, if not for her parents, I am trying to keep the connections going as much as we can.</p>
<p>Re cost of travel home, I would be very up front with a child heading off to college about what travel expectations are. Christmas and Summer, definitely. Thanskgiving & Spring Break, no promises, to be negotiated, with a strong possibility of “No.”</p>
<p>D is in the middle of a five-month internship right now and most definitely will not be coming home for T-day…fortunately, the family of her “little sister” from college lives in the same city and invited her for the holiday not ten minutes after meeting her. She’s flying up to her college for a long weekend to celebrate her birthday and to talk to some profs about a thesis topic, etc., all at her own expense.</p>
<p>MilDad, I recall very well what a zero-degree day with a 20-knot wind blowing off the lake is like…don’t miss it a bit. Snow can be visited if need be. Otoh, I’m less than three miles from the ocean and there are days that you feel that if you could stand only a little higher on your toes that you could see all the way to China and both sunsets and the rare storm coming in are pleasing to behold. </p>
<p>The cities on my list are all fairly highly ranked for being cosmpolitan, unlike many U.S. cities which are pretty much white/black, white/brown, or if they’re really diverse white/black/brown. My D’s elementary school had children from homes where 39 different languages were spoken and in a brief drive I can take you by storefronts with signs in English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian, Farsi (Iran), Hebrew, Ethiopian…as the old line goes, we’re a city where you can go to a Chinese restaurant and get a kosher burrito. My particular neck of the woods is heavy with ex-pat Brits, Irish, Aussies, and Canadians…the three prime exports of Canada are timber, minerals, and Canadians. My other preferences for cities include easy access to world-class museums and performing arts; presence of major league baseball is a plus, National League preferred. Excellent restaurants a must, good Mexican food gets substantial bonus points (you should have seen what I was served at what purported to be East Lansing, Michigan’s, <em>better</em> Mexican eatery…the “cheese” was Velveeta). </p>
<p>I’ve also noticed a weird indicator of places where I’m happy enough for at least a while: cities that have a higher number of newspaper racks than others.</p>
<p>I’ll give an Honorable Mention to Santa Fe: if it weren’t a thousand miles from the ocean…</p>