Is there some reason - ammunition to show hubby, perhaps? - why you're particularly looking for 'moans'..?

I'm an at-home mum to two children, and have been for 10 years since I gave up a lucrative, high-powered marketing career when my son was born. At the time, we did a lot of soul-searching and concluded that our lives would run better if we just had one career (both were in areas involving frequent irregular hours and overseas travel). So for the last 10 years we've pushed hubby's career, which has involved moving areas in the UK every 2-3 years, culminating in the move over here nearly 2 years ago.

I do understand that your hubby will be the one with the job, the social recognition and the ready-made set of friends. But it is NOTHING like being a stay-at-home mum in the UK over here, where you're regarded as if you're one step away from a baby factory on benefits. Many women don't work, especially after having children - it is perfectly normal to live on one salary, that's why they're so high. And you know all those high earner workers: you don't think they all married stupid bimbos, do you? You will very, very easily find a set of expat friends, wives and their associated hubbies, to socialise with. Assuming you're coming to one of the main expat areas here - Zurich, Basle, Geneva/Lausanne, near any large city really - you and the kids will be as busy as you want to be, having fun with a whole bunch of interesting, well-travelled people from all over the world.

Sure, full daycare for working is expensive. But there's the equivalent of local playgroups, for a few hours each morning, and these are much more reasonably priced. You'll still get breaks, some time to yourself (I know just how important that is). And within one year your kids will have a second language. It's that easy at their age. But don't worry if you don't quite manage to learn at that rate; English is very widely-spoken and a tiny effort at the local language gets a lot of recognition and smiles. My kids have had 5 teachers so far, with year changes and job sharing; every one has spoken enough English for communication and a couple are fluent speakers.

You will not - absolutely will not - be sitting at home stuck indoors with 2 small kids, going up the walls. Just think about it: it's 'expat central' here, full of intelligent, educated, high-achieving types and their families, all of whom are dynamic and confident enough to move countries and none of whom have their childhood friends and their mum 10 minutes up the road. EVERYONE wants to make new friends, and the social whirl is as dizzy as you want to make it. And you can talk nappy contents or global economics, the choice is yours. Personally, my close friends and I do advanced linguistics to death almost every time we meet; between us we speak English, Russian, Spanish and French, all with kids in the local school here, and all constantly fascinated by how our kids are mapping and processing languages in the brain depending on their age and stage.

Oh, and what everyone else said: amazing lifestyle for kids, they walk to school and potter around the village/town alone from around age 6 or 7, they're so innocent and uncommercial compared to the kids in my son's previous (rural village!) UK schools, there's amazing scenery (we're on the shores of Lake Geneva, with the Alps opposite out of the window), we swim in the lake for 4 wonderfully hot months, then ski for 2-3 brilliantly crisp months, we can drive to several other countries in a matter of hours, there are proper street markets selling local food rather than imported Chinese-produced plastic tat, and a nice seasonal one - 'Christmas' didn't appear in the shops until the start of December.

But I think my favourite thought is just how much we've shrunk the world for our kids. They now think nothing of hopping between countries. They don't see nationality or even not having a common language as a barrier to communication and friendship with other kids. My son's nearly 10, and talks about what job he might like to do and in which country/ language he'd like to do it. Professional jetsetting couldn't be further from our own backgrounds - my dad's a postman, hubby's is a farmer, neither have moved more than 5 miles from the town of their birth - but it will be for our kids. We've given them so many more choices for their own lives that would never have occurred to them if we'd stayed in Townsville, UK for decades.

I've been here almost 2 years now, and it really is still like being on holiday the whole year round (granted, we live in a tourist town on Lake Geneva where they come around polishing the colour-coded flowers for extra prettiness, but still..). I don't know if we'll stay in Switzerland for ever, but I would only want to move to experience another foreign country; we have no desire to move back to the UK at all.

kodokan