What city in Illinois is the best to to start a family? (Chicago: best city)

[Branportharris773]

My fiancé and I would like to know the best city in Illinois to start a family and raise our children?

Help or tips please!!!!

[ForYourLungsOnly]

What kind of lifestyle do you enjoy? There are many many family friendly and affordable suburbs in Chicago and outlying areas that have a lot of amenities and easy access to the city. I don't know anything about downstate, so I can't help you there.

[Maintainschaos]

Are you looking for something small or something big? Do you want to be near Chicago, St. Louis, or neither? Places like Naperville and Downers Grove (outside of Chicago) always get good marks as being desirable and ranked as one of the best places to live. I prefer Evanston over them, as it's much more urban feeling and much closer to the city.

Most places in central Illinois are great for raising children and starting families. COL is inexpensive, and you have most of the amenities you could want from the larger cities, although each MSA is relatively small and only 200,000-400,000 people each. Champaign/Urbana and Bloomington/Normal normally come out on top.

If you really want the urban experience, there are some good places in Chicago proper to raise a family, but COL is going to be generally higher and the lifestyle completely different than the other suggestions.

[chet everett]

As others have suggested more details are needed -- if you have a job or career experince related to traditional office oriented work there are a wide range of options around the greater metropolitan region that spans from the Wisconsin state line through northwest Indiana, many towns are well served by commuter rail.

The large region above also has many employment options in healthcare that would be a good path for supporting a family. The picture is different if your skills are more oriented toward manufacturing or the broad "food service / hotel" sector -- generally incomes in those fields make it much harder to have a pleasant range of options given the high cost of living in much or north eastern Illinios...

If you have skills in manufacturing / heavy equipment the relative wages for firms like Deere and Catepillar compared to cost of living in Moline or Peoria is better but even then the total employment options for those firms has shifted to include many more off shore plants and facilities in lower wage states...

The overall financial mismanagement of Illinios political office holders has resulted in many decades of foolish spending and irresponsible tax increases that forces the state's unemployment rate higher that it otherwise would be. The "business climate" is terrible here. Frankly the options for a young family are better in many states -- the Pacific Northwest (think cities like Seattle or Portland) holds much more promise. The sunbelt is similarly far more appealing long term. Even many east coast spots hold more promise for the future...

[cubssoxfan]

Do you work from home and can the job follow you anywhere? If not, then it all starts with finding good employment!! It's all nice & good to say "Gee, let's live in ________". But if you cannot find decent work, what's the point?!

[Drover]

Originally Posted by Branportharris773

My fiancé and I would like to know the best city in Illinois to start a family and raise our children?

Help or tips please!!!!

Whichever one you can find a job in/near and has the environment and values you wish to raise your family around.