<p>Just was wondering if your kids come back home. All my cousins and siblings ended up settling down where they finished college, grad /professional school, residency etc. Just talked to a California mother, her kids are grown, went to Yale and Harvard, and they ended up living back east. Does this happens because of job opportunities and spouse?</p>
<p>I think it's a combination. The first, of course, is opportunities being geographically skewed towards where they are now (as you noted, more jobs, love interests, internships, etc, in the area). The second is a willingness to be away from home. Many people who are willing to be far away from home and kin for college are also going to be willing to be far away from home and kin for life after school.</p>
<p>I brought this topic up on another thread a couple of months ago when the majority of parents seemed to be all for having their kids go anywhere at all for college. My daughter is going to college several states away and my fear is that she will decide to stay there. </p>
<p>It makes sense that when you go to a college out of state and get an internship and you get a job offer from that company, you would most likely take it. Why not? You know the area and in this job market, it's a lot easier to take what's offered then hunt around back in the home area.</p>
<p>In our family both my parents and my husbands parents AND my husband and I all got married and then moved away. So we all grew up without any relatives nearby. The kicker is both sets of parents moved back to their hometowns after they retired so they would be near relatives and consequently, neither my husband or I have a "home base" in our hometowns. In fact, I haven't been to where I grew up for years.
We do have vacations with my husbands parents and siblings so the kids all know each other but I'm always envious of people I know here in our small town who have sisters and family nearby.</p>
<p>I would really, really, like my kids to live within a couple of hours of us. I would love to be able to just casually do something with my grown up kids instead of making PLANS like our parents have to do when they come visit us.</p>
<p>My older son is graduating next month. He hopes to settle not where he went to college, but where he did his overseas study--in Japan. Talk about being far from home! He is applying for jobs teaching English there now, then hopes to come back for a master's in Japanese before possibly settling there to live, either teaching or doing translating. We shall see.</p>
<p>I ended up coming back home after I graduated from college, and I still live near where I grew up. Younger son says he would like to come back here after school, but it will depend where he can get work. And who knows how he will feel in four years?</p>
<p>Kathiep - I am the only member of my entire extended family - both sides - who does not live in the county where I was born - everyone else lives within 35 miles of their birthplace. My husband's parents were in the military for the first couple of years of marriage, then moved as far away from family as they could after returning to civilian life. So I was raised in my family's pocket, my husband was raised without extended family. Our children have been raised without extended family.
Interestingly, my kids fuss constantly about certain aspects of visiting their grands, but the point that they miss, is that if we lived closer, the things they dislike would be non-issues. A big one is spending the holidays away from "home" - if we lived close, we would still visit the grands on holidays, but would spend part of the holiday at home.</p>
<p>I anticipate this being a real crisis when DD goes off to college, I'm not sure she will want to spend her short vacation, travelling around to the grands.</p>
<p>When the offspring are settled, I plan on moving closer to them - not down the street, but within an hour's drive, just hope I can split the difference between the 2 of them.</p>
<p>At many colleges, kids start living off campus junior and senior years, so it is an easy transition to get a job in the city where the college is. Of course if you are in an outlying location where you are not going to find many jobs, this is not going to happen. The step of finding a job and then relocating to a new city without knowing people there is a daunting one for some kids. My son who graduated this past year had a big problem with this milestone in his life and got big time cold feet, despite the envy many had about him finding a job where he could do this. Finding a non commitment, non career job and staying at home or near his college was really more what he had on his mind.</p>
<p>I looked at the recent statistics on placement where our S is going to school. The good news was that they tended to place graduates in good jobs in a variety of other states, the most literally on the opposite coast. The bad news was that they placed the least number of students in our state, at least of the states they actually placed people in.</p>
<p>Never know how that sort of thing's going to turn out. A lot of it's about who's recruiting on campus and what sort of connections a graduate has developed, at school and with his family, friends, etc.</p>
<p>Strick, do many kids from your state go that school? What is the job situation in your state? The answers may impact the stats.</p>
<p>Among my extended friends, family, and acquaintances this has tended to be the case more often than not but there are exceptions. Many alums of my fairly rural New England LAC are in New York City or Boston. Check out the alumni magazines of the schools your kids are attending to see where grads end up.</p>
<p>Somewhat off topic, but a linguistic question that interests me is how many of you say "back east" for the east coast? How far west do you live? Is, for example, Ohio "back east" if you live in Montana?</p>
<p>Jamimon, jobs are good here, and getting better in my S's area which was down until the last couple of years. Honestly don't know how many kids from Texas go there.</p>
<p>You're right, where you live in relation to the school is a big factor. I guess my belabored point was that you can often get at least an impression of where the school is placing graduates from their placement office's website. That can have as big a factor as where your student wants to live.</p>
<p>In our specific case, the absence is probably due the fact there's a specialized demand for students with the hard technical skills our S's school produces. Lots of job opportunities for those skills on the West Coast, often at fabulous salaries (at least until you look at the cost of living) while similar jobs are only common in Austin around here. And there's a little school in Austin that probably fills most of the state's needs. ;)</p>
<p>meant east coast......</p>
<p>"Many people who are willing to be far away from home and kin for college are also going to be willing to be far away from home and kin for life after school."</p>
<p>You make it sound as if staying close to home means someone is not kin enough for life... I think family relationships and obligations play a significant role. Kids who have had problems with their parents and siblings or just never had a close enough relationship with their family are likelier to end up far away from home.</p>
<p>Kids tend to take the easy way out--not all of them, but most of them. They are not going to comb an area or go through a lot of trouble for a job, particularly when they are finishing up college. My son's classmates tended to get their jobs either through parental connections, fall in the lap type of situations or through the college job service. Very few kids did anything else. Many did nothing, figuring to stay in the area until their lease was up if they were not in university housing and using the summer to make the transition and find a job in the area. Others went home with the family to live there and look for a job, usually taking some position that comes up until some better opportunity arises. I know my son was surprised to get a job through the college services, and was not exactly thrilled with the prospect of moving right away after graduation to a whole new environment. He wanted to just chill at home and have a "graduate" summer which he ended up doing with some disasterous results. We ended up kicking him out. So the umbilical cord was cut here.</p>
<p>I told my daughter who just committed to going to Vassar (we're in So. Cal) that the deal was, she could go there for undergrad, but when grad school time rolls around she's going to the west coast. Don't know if it will work, but... what the heck, we'll know in four!</p>
<p>My daughter is also going "back east" to Pennsylvania. She's a totally California girl but said she can handle the snowy winters and cold weather for a few years and then definitely plans to come back. We'll see, but boy I sure hope so....you never know, sometimes they meet someone and then plans tend to change at that point.</p>
<p>I want our kids to go out of state for their education, and hopefully stay out of state for quite awhile......Not that I wouldn't love to see more of them, but there are very few opportunities for young people where we live now.....If they're anything like I was (or my husband) they'll end up living with college friends after they graduate.</p>
<p>Daughter is considering med school, and since our state school is a real bargain, wants to use undergrad as a chance to spread her wings and live somewhere very different from home.
It hit her this weekend, just how far away it will be.</p>
<p>Well, now, see the secret if you want them to come back home after college is to make sure they choose a college in a place that is less desirable than where "home" is... :)</p>
<p>I know at least a handful of parents who have actually prohibited their children from going more than a few hundred miles away from home for college due to their assumption that the children were likely to meet a mate at college and settle down near where they attended school rather than to make their way back home. </p>
<p>It never occurred to me that it was my right to assume that degree of control over my child after high school graduation. For my friends, their reasoning is that what is best for them is best for their child. And, of course, we can always rationalize by saying that if we're paying for college, we get to call the shots.</p>