Why California is still the best place in America to raise kids

I’ve lived in China, Egypt, France, Dubai, London, Sweden, New Jersey, Manhattan, Washington, DC and California.I know there are extraordinary places to live all over the world.

But now I have a child.And that changes the way you judge a place.You stop asking which city has the most impressive skyline or where you can get the best dinner reservation.

You start looking at the world through the eyes of someone seeing it for the first time.Where can I show her the most? Where can her imagination become bigger simply because of what surrounds her? When I ask myself where in America I want my daughter to grow up, the answer is still California.We can talk about the economy all day.We can debate the cost of living, calculate what a house costs per square foot and make spreadsheets comparing California to everywhere else.But spreadsheets don’t measure sunshine.

They don’t measure taking your child to the beach in February or waking up beneath palm trees, driving a few hours into the mountains and watching your toddler make footprints in real snow.That’s California.There is the quiet beauty of San Diego, the iconic beaches of Santa Monica, the funky eccentricity of Venice Beach and the manicured elegance of Beverly Hills.And there is Yosemite, where nature reminds even the most self-important adults how small we really are.There is San Francisco’s slightly grungy seriousness and Palo Alto’s unusually well-funded science fair populated by billionaires.

Then there is Palm Springs, a midcentury modern mirage in the desert, with swimming pools and palms beneath an almost impossibly blue sky, framed by mountains rising dramatically from the desert floor.California's top news, sports and entertainment delivered to your inbox every day.

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