Karen Burns says Cambridge is easier for raising children

Entrepreneur Karen Burns, who moved to Cambridge with her children more than two years ago, says raising her daughters as a single mother is easier and more pleasant in the UK than in Estonia. She spoke to ERR’s ETV programme Impulss.

“You cannot raise children with money alone; there also has to be other structural, systematic support,” Burns said. She noted that about 37 percent of women in the UK work part-time and said working hours can be arranged flexibly around childcare.

Burns has lived in the UK twice before. She first moved to Glasgow alone at 19 to study at university, and later lived in London. She chose Cambridge, a university city, for her latest move because it reminds her of her hometown of Tartu.

Her older daughter’s first language is English, and she has ADHD and dyscalculia. Burns said Tartu did not have an English-language secondary school for her daughter. She also said vocational education is stronger in the UK, where blue-collar work seems to be more highly regarded.

Burns feels that British society is safer for women. She said she can pursue her career for longer there and faces less judgement over her age and what she says. This spring, she wrote an opinion piece for Eesti Ekspress titled “Why I do not want to raise my daughters to be women in today’s Estonia.”

Burns said the piece was not about Estonia being a bad place to give birth. She praised the country’s parental benefit system and said Estonia has one of Europe’s best infant mortality rates. Her argument, she explained, was about raising children as they grow older.

One difference she highlighted was the response to domestic violence. Burns described a friend who received a free one-year restraining order within 48 hours, saying the process created a legal barrier against a former partner who had sent thousands of harassing messages. She cited figures saying 40 percent of women in Estonia have experienced intimate partner violence, compared with 30 percent in the UK, while restraining orders are issued six times less often in Estonia. Burns said she had supported a women’s shelter in Tartu for 11 years and knew how difficult it was to achieve such protection in Estonia.

She also praised road culture in the UK, saying her family cycles to school, shops and around town, and she rents a car only when needed. Burns recalled that when they moved, her younger daughter was six and cycled slowly over a bridge near their home, while drivers waited patiently behind her. When Burns lived in Viimsi, she said, travelling to work in Tallinn meant spending every day in a car.