gelato

My post just got eaten - long story short I'm Australian, husband is Dutch and we live in Italy. For a variety of reasons we'd like to bring up our almost 2 year old in one of our native countries. Currently we're leaning towards Australia but after a recent trip to the Netherlands to see family (in small village in the south of Holland) I'm wondering if my perceptions of the negatives of the place are in any way correct. I've never lived there and I don't speak much Dutch but have travelled quite a bit around Holland and Belgium.

1) weather - whenever we go to the netherlands it seems to be overcast and/or raining. Maybe a bit like the UK in weather? I don't mind cold weather (I used to live in Moscow where it was often -20 celcius and that was fine by me) but I HATE overcast depressing drizzly weather and the UK climate would kill me. Is dutch weather always that drizzly and grey?

2) food - I'm sure there's great food somewhere but my husbands relatives seem to eat a lot of pre-packaged food and things like cupasoup and chips. The people I know don't seem to care much about food. I'm a big foodie and love to cook and eat. Italy and Australia are both great in that respect.

3) houses - all of my husband's relatives and friends seem to live in tiny brown brick 1960s row houses with very steep stairs and freezing cold toilets out the back (why are they never heated?). It seems that even in a tiny village only 'rich' people are able to afford to have a house with a garden. is this the same all over Holland or only in the south?

4) this may seem strange but I was completely shocked recently when I talked to my sisters in law as they said that in Holland, no matter how much you beg, they won't give you any pain relief during labour. Is this really true? Is this the attitude to pain relief in general or just for women? I guess this shocked me as while this attitude still exists among some older very Catholic doctors here in Italy, modern feminist views have mostly prevailed and nowadays in most larger towns Italian women are allowed to have pain relief during childbirth. I was kind of shocked as I guess I perceived the Netherlands as more progressive and feminist than down here - but maybe not? Since we're thinking about having another kid this kind of frightened me. Also having had major surgery recently I'm a big fan of pain killers when needed!

5) work - I've noticed that a huge proportion of women with children work part time and have gotten some negative comments about the fact that I work full time and have a kid. Is the negative attitude to working women a general thing or maybe just a small town thing? I want to live in a place which support me as a working mum. Also what kinds of jobs can foreigners do? Obviously I'll learn dutch but I'll never be a native speaker. I'm fluent in Italian and english (of course!)

Sorry if this comes across as horribly negative - I realise that all countries have negative qualities but I'm just trying to figure out the good and bad points of Holland as we're thinking about moving there.

Do these perceptions seem completely wrong or do they contain a grain of truth?

llams

The dutch are infamous for not putting the heating on but there is a basic level of freedom so you do get control over the thermostat in your own house. Just remember those woolies when visiting ...

Casa Santo Estevo

paul_bromsgrove

Hi Gelato,

From my personal experience living in Enschede and Zwolle (and the UK!)...

2. My wife is a "foodie" and has no trouble at all in finding proper food (as opposed to packaged food) from the regular supermarkets. I have noticed though (stressing...from my personal experience) that unlike the UK, the quality of fresh fruit and veg from street markets in the Netherlands is lower (and often more expensive) than what can be found in the supermarkets.

3. Space is limited in the Netherlands, so gardens are generally small, and I've noticed that many of the Dutch like building sheds/garages/carports in their small (and often concreted / gravelled) gardens. Sadly, a house with a decent sized garden, does cost a fortune I have found though, that the Dutch are very good in maintaining their gardens, so they're small, but well looked after.

4. My wife had our first baby last year, and I was concerned about home births / painkillers etc. See the thread a couple of pages back "giving birth in the Netherlands" http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=619871 (don't know how to put a link in here) which has a lot of useful replies from people here who know.

5. I'm surpised that there has been resistance to working mothers in the Netherlands, because from my experience (i.e. through my F/T working wife) that there is no problem, and it even encouraged. Parental leave is available for a limited time (parental leave = unpaid leave to look after your kids), tax rebates are available on childcare costs, time is allowed and rooms are provided for expressing at work (if required). Maternity leave is only 16 weeks, mind you, that's a lot longer than the pitiful 2 days paternity leave, so my humble opinion is that people are dragged back into work sooner rather than later!

Hope these views help, but as I've been very careful to emphasise - all based on my own experiences in both the Netherlands and the UK!

Best wishes,

Paul

gelato

Thanks Paul!

I realise that my post came across as really negative. I could probably make a similar list of the negatives I see in my native Australia too - good food and backyards and beaches but really bloody far away from anything. The Netherlands in so compact and Europe is so compact so you can drive a bit and you're in another country like France. Can't do that in Australia.

It's so hard to make a decision. We're also making a decision about whether our daughter will be Australian or Dutch.

Maybe the food thing is a city vs. country thing. And the working mum thing might also be a city vs country thing. My inlaws are lovely but they're small town folk and used to doing things their way. They really are quite surprised that I work full time with a toddler at home. Here in Italy being a full time working mum is 100% normal so everyone is really supportive so that seemed like a bit of a difference. I also saw online that a huge proportion of Dutch women work part time but very few Dutch men do. That seemed odd.

nomadalien

Hi Gelato
We are currently living in Amsterdam, trying to migrate to Oz at the moment. My thoughts/experiences after living here for 3 years.

1.)Weather...yes, it sucks! For us it is one of the main reasons we want to leave. It's driving our kids mad sitting indoors all the time.Summer or winter, it can be drizzly for weeks at a time without seeing any sun.

2.)Food: Febo....do I need to say anything else? Unless you are very fond of sandwiches and cheese you will have a hard time adjusting. My wife just last week joked that once we leave here she never wants to eat or see bread again! The Dutch LOVES their sandwiches. Only problem is they all taste the same. As for home cooking, what I do notice for example is that their minced meat is EXTREMELY fatty! We always have to drain the fat off. Sure, you can pay double the price and buy the "magere" (lean) meat.

3.)Housing. For some reason the dutch loves to turn their heating off. When we go and visit dutch friends we always dress the kids extra warm as their homes are always freezing cold. I know our heating bill is much higher than the average, but that's because we turn heating on in the WHOLE house. That said, we live in a fairly new building (build in the 90's) but the insulation sucks big time, lost of cold spots in the house. We have lived in Scandinavia for a few years and there the houses were always warm, no cold spots, even older houses, so it's all in the way they build it.....not a dutch specialty.

4)This is absolutely NOT true. My wife gave birth here and we think the process was very good! You get a lot of consults from your midwife and they give YOU all the options....home birth, water birth, hospital birth, pain killers or not. You need to specify everything they can/can not do in advance.
What we DO have an issue with is that the doctors here are VERY reluctant to prescribe any kind of medicine. They literally will only prescribe something when you are already in serious trouble, not before. Our youngest have now been sick for over a month and the doctor refused to give him anything (tried a second opinion, same result) Anyway, my wife booked a ticket back home, took him to the doc who prescribed meds and 2 days latter the little guy is running around happily! Even the dutch will tell you that you are wasting your time to go to a doctor unless it is serious, so that gets a big thumbs down from us.

5.) This is true to some extent. In Amsterdam it is VERY international, so it's not strange to see "career woman". We did live for 1 year outside Amsterdam in the country side and my wife did feel out because all the woman in the neighborhood were stay at home moms. It seems there is a lot of indirect pressure from society that moms should stay home and look after their kids. This I think is a personal decision, so it's not that anybody is going to give you a hard time about it, but yes the expectation is there. That said, my wife is currently staying at home, the reason is purely financial. Daycare is EXTREMELY expensive here, and after doing the math we realized that we actually SAVE 500euro a month by having my wife NOT working!! Sure, you can claim some money back from the government, but still, with 2 or more kids in daycare/after school care it still gets very expensive.


Please note that this is my personal experience of the Country. We have lived here for over 3years now and The Netherlands have treated us well, so please don't read this email as "I hate this place so everybody should stay away from it". I would say that Netherlands is probably the easiest non-english speaking country to adapt/live in in Europe. But, we had the same questions/worries about some of the things you mentioned, and my advice would be that if these things, especially the weather bothers you then better not come with long term plans, but by all means, come for a year or 2 and experience it before you decide to make a more permanent move.
Like I said, The Netherlands have treated us very well, and we will always have a soft spot for it, but we really do not want to live here for the next 10 years.

gelato

thanks, nomad.

I hate to break it to you but if you love central heating and being warm Australia may disappoint you! (unless you live somewhere tropical like northern Queensland!) In Sydney (where I'm from) most houses have NO central heating and it gets pretty chilly in the winter huddling around a little electric heater. In the winter I used to sleep in warm pajamas, with 2 quilts and a hot water bottle - I'm cold blooded though. But at least it's not as cold as the Netherlands and the sun shines a lot (well in Sydney at least maybe not so much in Melbourne). Oh and most people have proper backyards and you can have fruit trees and things.

Febo - (shudder!) - I was just amazed when I saw those little metal boxes in febo which are sort of a food vending machine thing. Maybe I've been in Italy for too long but life is too short to eat fried food which has been sitting in a little metal box for who knows how many hours! And while I like cheese sandwiches sometimes there's no way I'd eat them every day (I'd alternate with vegemite - )

I do like mayonnaise on my chips though.

Glad to hear that women can get painkillers during labour if they want. My sisters in law must have been misinformed (which is weird as they have kids).

I guess what I found weird with the working mum thing in the Netherlands is that they use just that word "career woman" when talking about mums who work FT. I'm not a 'career woman' - I'm just a woman who has a job outside the home. Here in Italy (and in Australia) that would be totally normal - but in the Netherlands I got comments from family etc re working full time and also the fact that I didnt' change my name when I got married. Maybe that would be different in the big city though. It surprised me, though, as I guess I always thought of the Netherlands as very progressive and open minded.

Thanks for the warning about the weather. I've never lived in a place with lots of drizzle and overcast days (the UK, Netherlands, Seattle) so I don't know how I'd react but I can say that here in Rome we had a very drizzly winter and I got seriously depressed so I suspect I'd get quite depressed in a drizzly climate.

Where in Australia are you hoping to move to?

nomadalien

oh yeah! The dutch gets 10/10 for "inventing" mayo on fries!

I can understand if the ozzies don't know how to do central heating, but it's not as if The Netherlands is located in the tropics and never had to content with cold weather!

Coming from Italy you will be disappointed with the food, but at least you are in control of that. My wife and I now spend a lot of time in the kitchen and really enjoy cooking. We hardly ever eat out as it's mostly a disappointment.

All I can think of each day is sunshine.....some nights I even dream of sunshine

Oh, and another thing I like here.....cycling! Great to see everybody on their bikes cycling everywhere! It wakes you up in the morning cycling to work.....I'll definitely miss my "oupa fiets" if we leave here.

gelato

Oh gosh - eating out is our 'thing'. Might be a problem even for my Dutch husband if the inexpensive restaurants aren't good in NL. Looks like maybe we should move to Sydney after all.

Unfortunately Australia can be quite cold, depending on where you are. Not all of Australia as 'the tropics'. Nothing colder than Canberra in the winter - brrrr. But at least it's cold and sunny.

Caitilin

take the fiets with you. I'm in Canada and miss my decent proper oma-fiets. I hate these mountain bike things.

As to Aus or NL, just as a thought, being brit raised in NL.
Your kid will be fluent in both if you raise them in NL. Your kid may or may not be fluent in both languages if you raise them in AUS, depending on how much you use dutch at home. Having a second language has more than once given me a job.

Holland is very child-friendly as a rule. I don't know about Aus so can't judge on that point.

Small gardens, yes, but that's ok as you can play in teh street! (or you could up until the point I left holland 10 years ago - there were always neighbourhood kids playing in the streets and kicking a ball. Made for interesting driving lessons)

Then again, there's nothing to say you have to raise a kid entirely in one or the other.

Meds at birth - not having had one, I can't judge.

Working full time: I've still got several dutch female friends who work full time or part time (depending on their choice/situation) and nobody has ever commented that I know of. I know of one husband who took the wife's name though?

gelato

Thanks Caitlin. What are fiets?

Anyway our baby is currently being raised trilingual (Dutch, Italian and English). If we move away from Italy it would be to either an English speaking country or a Dutch speaking country and she'd lose the Italian. A shame but not something which would sway me either way to be honest.

That's nice that you have female friends with children in Holland who work full time and no one has commented. I have one female friend who works part time - 30 hours a week - and she complained that she received a lot of finger wagging comments when her kids were small as everyone thought she should work even less.

To be honest, working full time, part time or not working outside the home all seem like perfectly valid choices to me. What gets me is living in a culture where people feel free to make judgments about women based on what hours they work outside the home. That's one thing i like about Italy actually - I work full time and that's considered completely normal for the mother of a small child. No one has ever made any judgmental comments - even older people are supportive.

Anyway nowhere is perfect but I'm trying to weight the various pros and cons. It's hard as I've never lived in the netherlands so I really have no idea what it's like apart from a few visits.

Caitilin

sorry, a fiets is a dutch bike - skirt protector and all!

Trilingual kid is awesome, go for it! Just remember that the dutch will impact their school results- I was predominantly speaking english at home and had to take extra school work in 'ontleden' ..breaking down a sentence into its base components, ie, verbs, nouns etc, but once i did my equivelent level in most subjects went up a year. Can either of you speak italian to the kid to keep that up?

Under five years old, yeah, mum's are kind of expected to stay home in the smaller places, but lets be realistic. Better a mum who works and can feed her kids, than a mum who doesn't and who is living on welfare. Single mum here, my friend. And anyone who wags a finger had better step up to the plate! Not that she's had any trouble from anyone mind you.

They are all valid choices and if made with a good solid reason, i've found most dutch to be very accepting and laid back about it.

As to what tis like...how do you describe a culture? I recommend reading 'the undutchables' though...rather a hillarious look at holland.

gelato

Thanks Caitlin. That's as I thought about the expectation that Dutch women will stay home or work part time while their kids are small (and I assume do a larger share of childcare and housework than their husbands). Maybe I've just run into a lot of judgmental people in NL (including the inlaws) but it was weird to have people shocked that I work full time (no mention of my husband's schedule of course) with a 2 year old at home. It's 2010!! Anyway I wasn't a fan of the finger wagging. I haven't encountered that in either Italy or Australia. Maybe there are some people in each place who think that a woman's place is in the home (or that she should work part time at most) but they keep their mouths shut. In my case, we could survive (barely) on my husband's salary but I've always worked FT and can't imagine giving that up. STaying home or working PT is something which I never really considered - my mum worked FT and that was just fine. Also my workplace doesn't allow part time work.

I'll have to read that book...

kabuk1

I have spent quite a bit of time in NL. My partner is Dutch (moved to Ireland at 12 years old) and I was an au pair there. I'm quite fond of it.

As for the weather: I'm from the States (grew up in the north and lived in Cali and the south) and am accustomed to most weather. I couldn't complain too much about the Dutch weather as living in Dublin was awful. You get 10 seasons in one day, mostly keeping it dreary with some sun.

I was an au pair for a family in The Hague. They had 3 young kids (1 boy in school and 2 girls at the crèche part-time). Their mother worked full-time, and her job included international travel. Their dad has his own consultancy firm and works 2 half days a week. It seems to be common for families to have au pairs, at least in The Hague. It's so international (it cute hearing a woman speaking Dutch with a Scottish accent) with lots to do. You have the beach close buy as well; Scheveningen is one of my favourite places to visit. The restaurants on the beach there are quite nice.

As for food, well I like a lot of the Dutch food, but I wouldn't consider it dinner food. I really enjoy the bakeries, especially in Friesland. Maybe it's the exception, but almost everyone in my partner's family is an excellent cook. When we were there for xmas and new years, we had all sorts of yummy food.

If you want a very beautiful landscape with gorgeous houses and gardens, then I would go more north. It does get quite cold in the winter with the canals freezing over, but it's beautiful in Friesland and Groningen.

As someone else has pointed out, your children will definitely grow up bilingual in the Netherlands.

While I find Australia appealing, I don't think I could ever live there. Like you said, it's too far away from everything. I love living in Europe and am looking forward to moving to the Netherlands.

Best of luck with your decision.

gelato

Just wondering what you mean by this?

Anyway we always go to the south of the Netherlands (Brabant) when we go there to visit my husband's rellies as that's where he's from. It's pretty ugly to be honest and very crowded. Houses and/or industry everywhere and they live in the country (although as an Australian I would not consider where they live to be the country - it's like one big suburb!) Maybe we should explore the North next time we go there if it's more beautiful.

I guess I think about Australia differently since my family is there. I think of Europe as being really far away (from Australia). But it is fun living in Europe as you can hop from country to country on cheapo airlines so easily.