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.

Ocean. Desert. Forest. Mountains. Snow. Redwoods. Beaches. California has it all.

Sometimes in the same weekend.

France can take you from Champagne country and the Alps to the yachts, beach clubs and wild cabaret of Saint-Tropez. Italy offers the Dolomites, the sun-drenched hills of Tuscany, the Amalfi Coast and Capri’s almost surreal blue.

California somehow decided it wanted all of it.

And then there’s the food.

I look forward to In-N-Out in a way that probably only makes sense if you’ve spent time away from California. I look forward to sushi that is extraordinarily difficult to beat outside Japan — although I hear Vancouver would like a word.

Even my favorite cookie has followed me west. Levain Bakery — the New York original I fell for in Washington, DC — has made its way to Los Angeles. Everything eventually does.

And yes, I’ve had the Hailey Bieber smoothie at Erewhon. And yes, it is divine.

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Laugh if you want. I do, too. But there is something wonderfully Californian about the whole thing: wellness culture, celebrity culture and unapologetic excess blended together and served with a straw.

Then there is the California that matters far more to me: Persian restaurants, Mexican taquerias, Korean barbecue, Armenian bakeries and extraordinary Japanese cuisine.

California doesn’t simply tell my daughter that the world is diverse. I can put the world on her plate.

And that, too, is an education.

But California’s promise isn’t confined to geography or food. It lives in its people.

Take Beverly Hills, where my cousin, Dr. Sharona Nazarian, recently served as mayor, becoming the first Iranian American woman to hold the office. That an immigrant who fled religious persecution in Iran could ultimately rise to lead one of the world’s most recognizable cities isn’t simply remarkable. It is the California story.

Come from somewhere else. Bring your history with you. Build something. Become something. Belong.

That’s the promise I want my daughter to grow up believing is still possible.

None of this means California is perfect. It isn’t.

And yes, choosing the West Coast adds a few hours when I head back to Europe, Asia or the Middle East. Those connections still matter enormously to me.

But the extra miles are worth it.

I want my daughter to stand in the snow, swim in the Pacific, wander beneath trees that have lived for thousands of years, see the desert bloom and eat food made by people whose families came from every corner of the planet. I want her surroundings to make her curious. I want her to grow up believing that the world is enormous, but somehow still within reach.

People can say what they want about Hollywood, that it was built to cast a spell with its tinsel and sparkle, selling us fantasies on screens big and small. They can declare the California dream dead for the hundredth time.

I don’t buy it.

Seeing California through my daughter’s eyes has made me realize something. The California dream was never really about California. It was the American dream with better weather.

And I’m still betting on both.

Adelle Nazarian is a journalist, entrepreneur and commentator covering politics, culture, technology and the ideas shaping America.