* Paid maternity leave for both parents
* High job security (it's hard to fire someone)
* Working health care system which doesn't cost you anything if you get sick
These are big reasons for Germany. And with remote work you don't have to work for small companies in the small Bavarian town you are moving to. You can work for any in Germany or sometimes even in Europe or the US.
If it weren't for her parents, she said she would push for the US. For all its problems, she likes how friendly and open people are. She often complains when interacting with other Germans about how unnecessarily unfriendly and closed off they can be.
We've discussed the possibility of bringing her parents to the US, assuming we moved there, but that would be a long process, and challenging. She would need to live there 5 years to qualify for citizenship, then she would need to revoke her German citizenship (which she would find very hard to do), and then the process of getting visas for the parents can take another few years. So we're looking at like a 7-8 year process.
Her feelings about Germany do give me a bit of pause about moving there. I've always enjoyed myself in Germany, but my German is rudimentarily (I'm taking classes now to fix that) and I've never actually lived there, so I don't think I can rely on my experience as a visiting foreigner to my experience as an immigrant.
Or those incredible active shooter SIMULATION DRILLS, where they bring a guy with a fake gun in?
More like 1.5 months realistically. Four weeks is literally the legal minimum.
You get like an entire month paid vacation. Companies are incredibly thirsty for talent there and job security is high. The people are very nice and the job pay isn't worse enough to worry about being poor. Most large cities are within a few hours of whatever small town, so you don't have to be in the middle of a field somewhere if that isn't ideal. And for your kids the education system is waaaaaaay better.
More importantly what does your wife really want?