[quadrifoliate]

> When I go to visit family and family friends outside the US...

I was raised outside the US, and this has been my experience as well. My friends/family outside the US with kids do talk about them sometimes, but it's usually blended with other anecdotes, like "We were going on a trip to this place, and Timmy was well behaved for a change (eyeroll)".

In the US these conversations tend to be more along the lines of "Timmy had underwater basket weaving practice, so we had to drive 5 hours to take him, and he threw in the car on the way there and back. Did I mention he's getting really good with those baskets?"

Agree with CalRobert that this could very well be because of stingy PTO and parental leave policies in the US which seem to have been designed with hard-driving male car salesmen in the 1960s as the target group.