Parenting Like an Australian: One Family’s Quest To Fight Fear and Dive into a Better, Braver Life

As a New York Times international reporter, Cave, who lived in Baghdad during the war and in Mexico City during a challenging period, pined for adventure and informed a colleague that he would love to leave the U.S. for a while. Meanwhile, the newspaper was trying to capture more world subscribers due to changing demographics. Those two factors led the author and his family to move to Sydney, Australia. He and his family became involved in the intense water competitions that are part of Australian culture. His children learned to embrace the Australian emphasis on school recesses that lasted an hour and a half. Meanwhile, Cave found that the continent’s focus on encouraging outdoor time changed his life perspective on how to help his children become happy adults. The epilogue explores the effects of both the brushfires and COVID, analyzing the differing responses between the United States and Australia.