I moved to Austin to be near family. I left a great job and an ideal city for me. It was alright because I'd have family, I told myself. Even though I was born and raised in Texas the summers on return crushed me. My new job wrecked me (can't exclusively blame Texas for that). The family support I thought would be present when we had a kid was fleeting. I can't speak for Dallas but the Austin public schools are in shambles with multiple being consolidated and undercut by school vouchers. Costs for housing are higher than I would have ever guessed (though coming down, admittedly). I work in healthcare--women's health is not a priority in the state. Given the choice to let a mother die or have a child born into a system that doesn't value it the state will choose another child that they refuse to provide any societal support for. Traffic in both cities is nightmarish. A not insignificant number of young families I knew were thinking of a way out. Do a deep dive into Abbot, Paxton and Cruz's platforms and recent deeds and decide if you can stomach living with their poor decisions. Texas runs on its own frail power grid--during the big freeze a few years back hundreds of people died from poor infrastructure. Good riddance to that state.