Kids These Days:

Two years ago, I was offered a job in Arizona that would have paid me far more than I am now earning. The salary would have been enough to send both children to expensive private colleges without borrowing a dime, and there would have been plenty left over to live a very nice life.

One plan was to have me commute to and from the Phoenix area, leaving Monday morning and returning Friday evening so I would be home for the weekends.

The other plan was to move to Arizona, which was becoming the more likely option.

I said “yes” to the offer. Then, in what turned out to be a very wise move, the recruiter called me minutes before he was going to seal the deal with my new employer.

“Steve,” he said, “are you sure you want to take this job out of town?”

In the week between getting the offer and that call, my wife and I had several conversations about where we wanted to live and eventually retire. We like the Sierras very much and had thoughts about moving to the Lake Tahoe area after the kids are grown and gone.

Privately, however, I had many thoughts about my own childhood.

My mother and father moved us out to California in 1963 when I was 8. We had no friends and no relatives in Los Angeles. I came out with one of my three older brothers, Stuart, two years older than me and interested in different things.

One of my brothers, Michael, stayed behind to start college and the other, Larry, stayed behind to finish his senior year in high school.

Over the years, I made plenty of friends and may have spent more time at their homes. At their homes, there was family, including aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. I had never been around this environment and I knew one thing: I liked it.

When I met my wife in 1985, one of the attractions was her family. With deep roots in Orange County (she remembers playing in avocado groves and also packing houses near her home), there was a feast of relatives at every event.

As our kids grew, they attended all of the family events all over the county: reunions, birthdays, memorials and more. The relatives were always there to laugh or cry or offer support.

The four Smiths drove up to Paso Robles on Saturday to attend the wedding of David Spohn and my niece, Laura West, who live in San Diego. Before the ceremony, I struck up a conversation with one of my wife’s cousins and his wife, who live in an out-of-the-way town, far from relatives.

They told me how nice it was to attend an event such as the wedding because it gives them a chance to see everyone. The absence of those relatives, I realized, was something I never thought about because I had adopted my wife’s family. Or, they adopted me.

There is no underestimating the power and influence of the local family support system. It’s just a guess, of course, but I’d bet that kids who grow up with their relatives in the area probably have lower rates of drug and alcohol abuse, and generally live happier lives.

At the wedding, the “kid cousins,” the sons and daughters of my wife’s brothers and sister, were sitting at one table and they had a great time, in part because there was no learning curve — they had been around each other for years.

Watching them laugh and smile, I was happy that when the recruiter asked me if I really wanted the job, I said, “No.”

STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Send story ideas to [email protected] .