Life is short and living with the Celtic Tiger grunting past my door has become wearisome. Many of us are prosperous beyond our dreams; many who had given up hope of work have jobs, but I'm not in the business of making money and I'm not happy with the hidden costs of all those BMWs and branches of Next. This Dublin is a stressful, grim place for working parents with small children, particularly where big mortgages mean slim choices.

My small family started 2000 with a string of mishaps. By the time things started to look up after months of struggle, we were well on the way to a decision to change our circumstances.

The upshot of it all is that we're off to the south of France, taking as much of our work with us as we can, in an attempt to get back in control. We're in search of a sensible way to live when you have a young family - a way of life that doesn't revolve around always choosing the lesser of two evils. I'm standing back, for a few years, to spend less time working - and, indeed, to take a good look at my career.

Why the south of France? Alongside reasons such as sunshine, reasonable property prices and good food is the way the French instinctively put people at the centre of their society and they let everything else follow, instead of the opposite.

We love France, and have spent a lot of time there, so we'll save on holidays. There are cheap flights now, so people can come to visit us. And France is a good place for teleworking, too, because the technology is already there to allow us to do this - if we can make it work. The availability of the Internet and its allies is the key: we're not independently wealthy, and we're not planning to raise organic pedigree goats. We're going to be working as much as possible from home, as journalists, in English. There is a France Telecom advert that can be paraphrased as "work is where you're at" and we're taking them at their word - reasoning that if you can work from home in Ranelagh then you could telecommute from Ennis. And if you don't have any particular reason to be in Ennis, wouldn't you be as well off doing the same thing from France?

Some 95 per cent of French homes have immediate access to ISDN lines, which are necessary for any kind of serious attempt at teleworking. The lines for the next generation, ADSL, which is faster and more aggressive, are being installed now, all over France.

Leaving Dublin will be a wrench; I did it before, in the 1980s, so I know. Then, unlike now, I didn't have to give up a job to go, but we're not doing particularly well out of the Celtic Tiger - we're the wrong generation. We're The Young Europeans - remember us? - not Celtic Cubs. A burgeoning cafe culture is all very well if you're 23, but its benefits to people who above all need to be with their children are limited. To be honest, I grew up in another Ireland, and it wasn't this one I chose to come home to. When I came back from England in 1990 it was to unclogged roads, easy access to the countryside, to a place where a modest enough wage could buy you a great quality of life. It was a place in which shop assistants were not reflexively rude, where our gladiatorial attitude to driving didn't matter so much because there were fewer cars on the road, where people didn't think quite so much about money, worrying that they were missing out or falling behind. Where there wasn't always a little edge of fear about when the good times would end. Of course, my own life was different then. I was in my 20s, not my 30s. I wasn't trying to combine a job and a family. Back then, I was falling in love and getting married, building a career and doing up a house. (Just as well, since it's the sale of the house and the technological know-how of my husband that are making the move possible.)

Not everyone could do what we are doing: to get this far we have made a large investment in computer equipment and have had considerable support from our employers, colleagues and families. We are taking a chance. But it is a calculated one and, if it pays off, the rewards in terms of quality of life will be impressive.

The biggest wrench, of course, is leaving those families, friends and colleagues, without whom we'd never have survived even this long. We're banking on them coming to us, hoping for a constant stream of visitors (no, really!). And we're The Young Europeans. We're mobile. The EU wants us to be able to work anywhere. . .

So we're choosing to live near Toulouse, in a part of France with easy access to several airports and autoroutes. The idea is that we'll still spend a portion of time in Dublin.

In France, we've rented a white-stone house surrounded by oak trees and vineyards, on the edge of a village with two bakeries and a pharmacy, set on a hill in pretty countryside. I'm hoping that what Sarah loses by not being in daily contact with our families, she will gain by having more time with less-hassled parents. And we will remain in daily contact with our families, interspersed with times when we can sit together in the sun and talk and talk at length.

Life is short. The new century brought us a broken leg, then a broken arm, then the near-death of a close friend who also minded Sarah for us. The turmoil these events brought to a household with two full-time working parents was considerable. But as every working parent knows, it is the small choices that wear you down - is she too sick for me to leave her?; if I spend an extra 10 minutes at work will she be too tired to eat by the time her dinner is ready?; is that cold gone, or do we keep her in another day and lose another Saturday in the park, another Sunday swim?

And life has too many good things to offer to turn our back on them even for the few years while our children are tiny. In a rich world, we can choose to be a little less wealthy. (Nonetheless: competent journalist, specialises in sub-editing, ever-firmer grasp of French, seeks work over Internet.) Moving country in the new millennium is an adventure, not a life-sentence. Taking life seriously can mean taking chances.

Watch this space.

Alva MacSherry is at: amcsherry@irish-times.ie