Seeking to address the lack of information about the experiences of families with preschool children in rural environments, this action-research study brought practitioners and managers from various settings together with researchers. They investigated the characteristics of municipalities within one rural territory that were seen as favorable or not to families’ well-being. Forty-two key informants participated in semi-structured interviews. The analyses identified favorable and unfavorable factors along two dimensions : the degree of rurality of the families’ environment, and the families’ degree of rootedness in their communities.