The lives of these families are cloaked in glamour and often the subject of envy. Living in Cairo with your winter holidays spent in Morocco and your spring holidays in Italy--who wouldnít want that? Or based in Delhi with weekend campouts in the Himalayas and tiger watching in Rajasthan? Then there are those paid home leaves and the R&R breaks twice a year for "hardship" countries. And wait there's more! All those airline miles that the working spouse collects on his/her trips back to the home office, the regional office and just about every other office you can think of. It is an exciting and privileged life.

Except in "expat" circles, however, little thought is given to the immense adjustments that families have to make in choosing to live away from their own country, often in a difficult environment. Without this wholehearted participation by the families, most foreign investment would be doomed before it began. Power outages, dangerous driving conditions, and difficult weather are only some of the challenges. Not being able to sip a drop of water till it has been thoroughly sterilized is a widespread reality. Shopping for groceries becomes a never-to-be-forgotten experience. In some countries you wander from aisle to aisle in the supermarket, dictionary in hand. Other countries don't have supermarkets--so you trawl from shop to shop, driver in tow because you can't even read the script in the local dictionary.

A big challenge is the adjustment that the children have to make--new school, new friends, new teachers, new routines. Families who accept global living have to help their children with this over and over again. Typically, international schools have a 30 percent turnover of children every year. Staying behind and losing your friends is as difficult as moving on and losing your friends. In the international lexicon, these children are "global nomads." Home becomes where you live at that moment of time.

Perhaps the biggest concern that has faced "expat" families for years has been the threat of terrorism or war. Both in London and Brussels, our children's schools had emergency plans for evacuation and the placement of children in safe houses, if there was a hostile attack near or at the school. This was years ahead of 9/11. Living overseas means coping with the unexpected fallouts of international politics, even if your family's being there is unrelated to politics or government. So a war in Kosovo, or in the Middle East makes British and American schools around Europe soft targets. You have to make your peace with this and continue sending your children to school, often in easily recognized school buses. Just recently, the American and British schools in Jakarta were closed because of a credible terrorist threat against them. Yet I have not read any story about multinational corporations closing shop in Indonesia. So presumably the families of "expat" workers are still in Jakarta waiting for this latest threat to their environment to play out.

Living overseas is a choice that managers and their families make when they agree to follow investment around the globe. The rewards, not just financial, are immense. How do you measure the impact on your child's mind of being able to learn about the cold war and the coming down of the Berlin Wall with either foot straddling the line where the wall actually stood? The gains in terms of cultural tolerance and understanding of the world we live in cannot be quantified. You start taking for granted that your family will participate in Ramadan celebrations if you live in an Islamic country or in the New Year celebrations if you live in Hong Kong. And your children will play with the dreidels that their classmates bring to school on Hanukkah. Finally, what it boils down to is that while corporate plans and bilateral agreements facilitate global investment, it is people who make them possible. The families of international corporate mangers contribute as much to the world order as any set of treaties or diplomatic initiatives.

(Ritu Banga is a writer living in New York.)