The internet has not negated every advantage of regions, unfortunately (Employers are still making folks come to the office) and it still costs money to move elsewhere.

Folks in Ohio still have trouble leaving Ohio.

And you can, to an extent, buy a nuclear family. Mail order brides still exist (and the arrangement can be beneficial for both parties). You can do this with the expectation of children, which you will pay for in the US. Alternatively, you can check adoption as plenty of agencies will make you feel like you are buying a child. (20k upwards, plus travel).

The risk of being tied to a small corner of the country is real and something any Ohioan ought to be sensitive to. Most of Ohio has suffered 50 years of economic back sliding. A lot of people thought that they had realized their modest and reasonable middle class dreams of a good quiet life doing honest work. Major structural changes compromised all of that and a lot of people were stuck holding the bag in places like Toledo, Akron, Youngstown. (Not trying to pick on Ohio, just making a point about risk (though Toledo is the least nice corner of the state and they would have been better of foisting it off on Michigan back when they had the chance))

>God forbid. Think of all the experiences you and your family will miss out on!

This is a snide remark, but it is absolutely a factor. I grew up in Michigan, and the number of people who never venture beyond their almost-entirely-white small town to see what other communities and cultures are like is a huge contributing factor to the amount of prejudice and judgmental nature that makes me never want to move back.

Seeing people different from you and different places is broadening and gives you a much better perspective to be able to understand the world. This is important in life as well as in your career.

also, and this is personal taste of course, it can get to be pretty soul-crushing working with and being around mostly people that don't value a nuclear family, when you yourself do. this was a major reason for moving away from the video game industry and greater Seattle area and returning home to South Dakota a few years ago. it took a lot of mental and emotional effort to kill the lifelong dream I worked toward since elementary school (I turned 30 this year) and "settle for" a local government programmer job... but so far it's been 10000% worth it, I'm much happier than I've ever been, I'm going to start a family very soon, and I'm surrounded by people who have the same core values as I do. nobody in the greater Seattle area wanted to hire a white male with no degree but a frankly ridiculous amount of self-driven personal project experience (plus some team project experience from a few contract positions and an unfinished (stopped halfway when the college fund ran out—best decision of my life) degree) in the fields of game and web development, but my hometown was overjoyed to get someone exactly like myself to write SQL and learn all the ins and outs of the public education system and how it interfaces with state and federal requirements. it's not my first choice of work by a longshot but without having money to either finish a degree (like all my friends did) or make my own gamedev startup (in an increasingly flooded market to the point of ridiculousness), I've finally found happiness, and, more importantly, a very direct path to achieving the actual lifelong goal I kind of always had but never knew it: starting a family. like you said, you can't put a price on something like that.

my best friend had a complicated career trajectory that began with a music education degree, until he found out he hated teaching music to middle schoolers, then he decided to get a two-year online CS degree. this put him in a fair bit of debt as he comes from a very poor upbringing. he got married and moved to the D.C. area a couple years ago to work for a CRM shop there and while he loves the work, he hates the crime and bullshit of the Big City Life, and while he and his wife have gone from enjoying it to tolerating it, they're moving back here to South Dakota at the end of this year before they have children.

I wonder if, going forward, with the advent of remote work and the like, we're going to see less and less people who come from rural/suburban/otherwise sub-100k-population cities choosing to either move back to areas like those they grew up in (if not where they grew up specifically) instead of migrating to The Big City to Make It Big, for these exact reasons. there just doesn't seem to be much to gain from moving to The Big City anymore, if starting a family is your ultimate goal in life.

Everyone has to make trade offs. You want to live in the cultural capital of the world or place where the average income is over six figures, but everyone else does as well. There's limited space in these cities, so you need to bid top dollar if you want to keep a place for yourself.