I've had a couple different slide in camper set ups, before becoming a van convert
I started with no kids, Sold the 1963 Westfalia Camper Kombi, and bought a 7-1/2' Six Pack cabover caper to mount on my on a 6 foot bed Nissan King cab. With forced air furnace, fridge, it worked great for duck hunting the California refuges, goose hunting at Tule Lake and Modoc, and 4 season camping. Even after the first baby, as the car seat for daughter #1, then second car seat for daughter #2 fit great in the Nissan King Cab's opposing jump seats. After surprise baby #3, the king cab was all of the sudden too small. Most of my family got car sick, so riding in the back, the swaying you feel, not being able to see the horizon, no factory seatbelts, the wife was
never going to agree to put kids in the back while traveling. I'm not sure I wanted to put my family back there, either.
It took me a couple years, but I upgraded to a F350 dually 4 door crew cab, and 13-1/2ft Lance cabover camper. That worked great, towed my race trailer too, until the used Lance started to come apart from water damage and dry rot
If you buy a used one, look long and hard for leaks and rot. Prime leak locations are front corners of the cabover bed, under the mattress (#1 common place for leaks I'm told)
Having the flexibility of owning a truck most of the time, and being able to load a slide on camper within 30 minutes works out pretty well. So long as you are an efficient packer, can resist taking along too much,
You have to have flat storage and access on your property (in my mind) or it will be too much hassle to go get it from a storage lot, never convenient hours, to use it very much. if you just leave it on the truck 95% of the time, it's a hassle to remove it when you need your truck, so you wind up borrowing a truck rather than go through the hassle, which makes you wonder "now why did I get rid of my van, anyway?"
The other downside to a cabover is cost. You can buy a nice trailer that has 3x the space for the cost of a decent cabover camper. Handling can be dicey if you don't set it up properly. Set up properly for the camper, can mean a buckboard-like ride when your truck is empty.
With a family of 5, a cabover is cramped at bedtime, dinner, and getting dressed, but a van is worse.
How about a Ford class B motorhome with a 4x4 conversion/