Why I Won’t Raise My Kids in Europe
Compulsory Education Laws
Picture thousand-dollar fines or imprisonment for taking your kids on a trip during a school week. You don’t need to stretch your imagination if you live in Europe—that’s the reality.
Of course, the regulations vary greatly depending on which country in Europe, but “Why I Probably Wouldn’t Raise My Kids in Many European Countries” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
You should also know I don’t have kids, but eight months ago, I met a woman who made every fibre in my body yearn for children for the first time in my life. The biological and spiritual pull was strong enough that I asked her to marry me after three weeks. Questioning my sanity is fair, but I’ve put my parents’ love story on a pedestal my entire life, and they got married after six dates.
Unfortunately, my love story didn’t produce what my parents’ story did—one stable, independent son who soothes everyone with his presence… and me.
At least my love story was filled with lessons. You can’t expect loyalty from people who betray themselves, and you won’t get peace from people who are at war internally. You are not in a relationship with someone’s potential but with the person in front of you. And finally, a soulmate is not always the person you’ll spend your life with, but a mirror that helps you discover something new in yourself. As painful as cutting that cosmic thread is, part of maturing is recognising when a chapter has reached its end.
But let’s get back to kids.
A broken heart triggered my quest to the north of Sweden to explore the therapeutic effects of slow travel. A large part of this quest has been figuring out where the hell my home is or if I’ll ever find one. Because I thought I’d found ‘the one,’ home was wherever she was, but it brought up questions about where to raise kids, and since we wanted to raise kids as nomads, Europe no longer seemed like the best option.
Why?
Compulsory Education Laws.
In France, parents who fail to provide a valid reason for their child’s absence or resort to lying about it can face a fine of €135. If the absences significantly impact the child’s education, the penalties escalate to two years imprisonment and a fine of up to €30,000.
In Germany, fines vary by state, ranging from €35 per day in Bremen up to a possible €2,500 in Berlin.
In the Netherlands, school absenteeism can result in a fine of €100 per day up to a maximum of €600 per family for one week and €900 for two weeks.
In Spain, fines are usually capped at €1,500 in serious cases, but in Madrid, they can be as high as €30,000. Fines are usually pursued if a child misses more than 20 percent of classes a month.
Sure, you can argue that these laws and regulations enforce social cohesion and equality, integration and socialization, and parental responsibility, but countries (even if they’re social democracies) can pull all that off without this semi-authoritarian bullshit. Systems should encourage people who struggle to get their kids to school with rewards, not punish families who want to further a child’s education through travel.
When I learned about these fines, I immediately called my parents to say, “Of course you left Belgium and raised me in Canada!”
Every year, my parents took me out of school to visit a new country for one to two months. All they had to do was inform the teachers. They’d prepare me a homework package, we’d make a travel video, and I’d return, usually two to three units ahead of all the other children.
Privileged, for sure, but my case is becoming less unique as digital nomads and remote workers decide to have families or accidentally get pregnant during their ‘spiritual enlightenment’ in Bali.
Yet, unlike my parents,
, an artist raising nomadic third-culture kids, decided to make Belgium her home base.In Sweden, where I'm from, homeschooling is completely illegal. There's no "compulsory education"; there's "compulsory school," and the socialists are currently pushing for compulsory kindergarten starting already at 3. Freedom of education is the main reason we went to Belgium, more specifically, Wallonia, the French-speaking part, where you have the constitutional right to home-educate your children. It seems to be a relatively straightforward process with an easy paper signature at five. Starting at six, you'll submit a "schedule/curriculum" along with your application (it's different in the Flemish part of Belgium).
After my research, Luxembourg seems the friendliest country for homeschoolers looking more at the travelling side… even potentially world schooling as you can legally "unschool," meaning that you can homeschool with a strict curriculum.
We first considered other countries like Spain and Portugal, but it felt important from a long-term perspective to choose a country where the legislation is clear and set to avoid potential problems down the road. For example, in Spain, it's not recognized, which means your child won't be able to re-integrate later on should your family situation/desire change. I've also spoken to many expats in Portugal who've had problems getting their applications approved as it has to pass through local schools (who aren't very supportive). All in all, it's a tricky question, generally with a lot of urgency attached, as it tends not to become a problem until the children are here and you discover entirely new levels of how countries operate.
From what I’ve heard from my family in Flanders, Belgium, it hasn’t always been as easy as signing a paper, and it depends a bit on the school. Regarding flexibility within the public school system, Canada has undoubtedly been much more forgiving with me than my cousins in Belgium.
Also, from a Canadian perspective, most public schools I’ve seen in Europe look like prisons. And even if they lack the physical appearance of a prison—concrete football (soccer) fields, windows small enough to keep children from jumping out, and grey walls that lock you in—the imprisonment of spirit and mind is inevitable.
In Germany, you pop out of the womb already forced to decide your career path. In France, people define you based on your high school. And in Spain, those who go to semi-public Catholic schools think they’re better than everyone but leave the school with the same non-existent second language skills and entrepreneurial spirit as everyone else.
But there’s always homeschooling… kind of.
In Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Greece, homeschooling is illegal, with some rare exceptions, but those countries don’t represent all of Europe. According to Nomad Capitalist, the best countries for homeschooling (based on factors such as legal status, availability of resources, and cultural experience) are South Africa, Singapore, India, Austria, Belgium, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States.
So, although saying “I won’t raise my kids in Europe” was simple when considering taking kids out of school for trips, homeschooling makes it a bit more complicated. In Spain, homeschooling is still a grey area (like everything else in Spain) with no specific legislation. So, do I want to stay a resident there? Do I want to create a home in a country that makes it difficult to take my kids out of school?
told me that you risk being alienated by society and certain friend groups if you choose to homeschool your kids. Unlike in North America, where people look at the individual standing before them, they look at the group they belong to.I would say that’s true to my experience as an adult in Vancouver, Canada. But as a Belgian “foreign boy” who grew up in Vernon, Canada, I know small-town North Americans will exclude, torment, and bully anyone who doesn’t fit the mould. Fortunately, we outcasts in elementary school had the chance to flourish in high school. Woodworking, metalworking, sewing, football teams, ski teams, drama clubs, accounting & entrepreneurship electives, cooking classes, hotboxed vehicles, leadership groups—no matter where you excelled, you had the chance to find your direction in a Canadian public school.
Yet, school systems are at the whim of governments, the economy, and salaries that don’t devastate teachers' well-being. Ultimately, I think choosing the place you feel most at home is best. Regulations can always change, just like your income and the remote job that allows you to travel can. Hell, in my case, I don’t even have control over who I fall in love with and crave making babies with. On top of that, I still don’t know where home is.
Please let me know if you’d like to learn about online homeschooling options, and I’ll write a follow-up article.
For now, you can check out my interview with Chantal Patton from @GrowingUpWithoutBorders. Chantal reveals what it’s like to travel to every country in the world while homeschooling three kids!
Your support gives me the time to research and write my best work on a platform not controlled by ads. You can also support me through Buy Me a Coffee.
At the end of every journey, I write a book. My first one, Living with the In-Laws, is available on Amazon. Paid subscribers get a free Kindle or PDF edition, and founding members get a signed paperback.
Who is Born Without Borders for?
Global citizens, therapists or business professionals looking to increase their cultural competence, those who need a push to step outside their comfort zone, and anyone who feels as inescapably foreign as I do.
I was stunned when I did an elementary school practicum in Canada (Vancouver area) for teaching (grade 4, age 9) and was working in a classroom with over 90% S. Asian kids... and was told by my sponsor teacher that the school had an unwritten rule NOT to give the kids any "homework" when they travelled to spend a month or so with extended family in India. The school wanted to actively discourage this... My opinion? I think that travel anywhere, even if spent watching television in another country(!), was something a child would learn more from than sitting in any classroom!
I routinely pulled my boys out of school for snow days (and later learned this is illegal here too), because it almost never snows and life is too short.
For the record though, British Columbia is an EXCELLENT place to homeschool as we have sections in our education act that allow you to do so without any curriculum or routine scrutiny. You can truly unschool! The Minister of Independent Schools can come and drop by to see what you're up to... fair enough! But to date, no family has EVER been found to be wanting. I was on the Board for the watchdog group to make certain no bad end ever comes of the sections (13 and 14). It is a gift. And the children I know who have gone through their learning years in this way have no issues with post-secondary or careers/jobs.
Of course I have to click on this post immediately, haha! Well, I was actually surprised and then a little offended that homeschooling is illegal here in Germany (I heard they are reviewing this but to what extend I don't know). But it's ok for me at the moment because I do not have the capacity to homeschool, even if I want to. Kindergarten and Montessori schools seem to align with my principles at the moment, but as my kids get older this may need to be re-evaluated. I do wish we can take them out of school when we need to go home to Malaysia though, but I guess summer holidays will have to do for now.