Foreign mothers Vs British mothers (nature V nurture)

[Condescendingtwats]

Looking for an interesting discussion on this as I’ve been pondering it for years! More so since becoming a mother myself. I don’t want to ask anyone in RL as don’t want to offend.

So in the UK and maybe other western countries we don’t tend to leave our babies with family and move away. In fact society in general can even be judgey about a mother going on nights out/holidays and leaving their babies with others.

A lot of mothers in the UK would say they couldn’t physically leave their child, it would make them ill/depressed and it unthinkable. A lot say it’s an instinctual thing and babies/children need their parents. They need their babies bear them.

But then, over my adult years I’ve met many mothers from all over the world due to work as well as travel.

In Thailand I met baby mothers who’s small children were still being raised by grandparents in their home village whilst they worked in the city to provide. Under stable and no choice due to poverty.

Then at work I met about 5 mothers over the past decade from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ghana who have children in their home country with family as well as other children here in the UK. They are doctors/nurses so not poor and no visa issues. Ann example is one mother who has a kids 8,5, 3 and a baby. The 8 year old and 1 year old baby in the UK with her but the 5 and 3 Year old are in Nigeria.

Then I met a Romanian mother at my baby class a few months back who has a child who’s 4 years old and living in Greece with relatives (same dad and both good jobs). Her youngest baby is here with her.

So it’s not always poverty related but seems to be ‘the norm’ in their cultures.

But there doesn’t appear to be any devastation of not being their their small kids or an urgency to see/send for them. They sound perfectly happy.

So that makes me wonder is what we (British mums) feel about being apart from our babies/children is more societal condition as opposed to a biological/instinctual need to be near our kids?

Does anyone have any experience of this and can explain it more clearly to me?

Im not judging by the way, just interested in the differences.

Also before anyone says it.. in regards to dads, well they seem to be able to walk away from their children all over the world so not really surprised at that.

It's partly a more inter generational way of living. It's normal to grow up with aunties and grandmas living with you, to have a family culture of child raising rather than a 'my child my roolz' way of doing it. I'd say they have a different relationship among family members though- perhaps closer to more adults, less close to mum.

I don't think anyone really does this because it's their culture. It's predominantly for financial reasons. A Nigerian nurse in London is going to be financially better off coming here alone and sending money back home. If she brings her child with her she's going to need a family home (rather than a house share), wrap around childcare, no family support etc.
I do think though in the UK we have moved to a "just us" mentality wrt who you consider your family to be, ie just the nuclear family. In other cultures its much more extended than that and people aren't as possessive over a dc, recognising that it takes a village.

@LisaJool @picklemewalnuts

Yes I suppose multi generational living must be the thing that mainly accounts for it.
When Britain was more community/family focused a few generations ago, I wonder if parents left their children more then to live away for work and opportunities?

If someone told me they were leaving their baby with their grandparents to go and work/live in dubai I think I’d be very suprised. I think most people i know would be. Even if they were super close with their parents/grandparents. So their must be a lot of societal conditioning there.

I do not know, if I am foreign enough (GER), but whenever I read threads on here I cannot help but notice the differences in child rearing. I do not comment on those threads, but it seems to be isolating and therefore more stressful. Other aspects like the opinion what a child at what age is judged as capable of doing are also different.

I've worked on cruise ships and there were lots of women who were working on 5, 6 even 9 months contracts, leaving their children in the care of others. They did it for the money to make their children's lives better. All of them were torn apart by it. and would have loved to be in a British woman's privileged position of saying they could never be parted ftom their child.

And the men were the same. I saw them cry when they were face timing home from the different ports. They couldn't wait to save enough money so they could set up a business or learn skills to get themselves a job at home.

I don't think it's social conditioning. It's just common sense to citizens of some countries that children need to be fed, clothed, etc, and govt aid isn't going to be able to do that satisfactorily. In the UK, we'd protest that the govt should do more.

I think your misinterpreting the poverty thing. They absolutely will be sending money over to family, I don't think it's a cultural thing, it definitely a poverty thing.

I have Italian friends who send their kids to Italy for the whole summer to stay with relatives while her and her husband travel and have a great time. She says it’s common there.. not sure if it is but can’t imagine six weeks away from my little kids.

But in the UK, boarding school and Nannies as the norm, if you could afford it, are not that far in the past.

And definitely poverty- but more of the whole family combining their resources to improve the position of the whole family. The eldest sister might work abroad as a maid or on a ship to finance the younger sister becoming a nurse. The younger sister would then be able to finance the grandparents who are raising the DC of both girls.

The whole family can be lifted out of poverty by pooling resources.

It’s a poverty thing

doctors in developing countries are not rich

A decent education is very expensive in those countries, but not in Western terms usually. So working here, living as cheaply as possible and sending money back to your home country can really drastically improve life chances in the future, similar to how if your own dc went to private school here.
It's more of a long term thinking about the children thing. Sacrifice time now to improve their futures and ensure the family survives.

The parent I’m speaking of that are doctors/nurses are colleagues and own their own homes (not lavish houses or anything just average ) and have some kids here in the UK and others not.
so I don’t think it could be poverty as if they brought all kids here they’d just be the same as the rest of the British parents eg working and paying for nursery.
Although it does make financial sense to not use childcare when you have grandparents in Nigeria/Philippines that will do it perhaps.

Also that is a very interesting point and pooling resources. If families in the UK all lived together and pooped their salaries together than a house hold income could go from 40K to 160K meaning a bigger house, shared childcare etc. Definitely something in that for sure.

Yes doctors working in the NHS here will be able to afford a home here, but the case might not be in their home country. It’s totally a poverty thing

They may technically be able to afford childcare, but might prefer their children to be raised within their culture and by their own family

And definitely raising your children in your own culture. People want to keep at least an element of their identity. Sometimes that's long family trips every year, sometimes it's the children living back home for a while.

Also, once you have left home, it's not as big a wrench to send your dc back there as it would be to send them somewhere else. You may be thinking 'Gosh, fancy sending your DC to the Phillipines to live'. They are thinking in terms of sending their DC home. This is the strange scary place.

Especially when you are an ethnic minority here. You may well feel the need for your DC to be raised somewhere they are the majority for at least some of their life.

They might technically be able to afford to have their kids with them, but if nursery and living expenses take all their money they would have nothing left to send to their family, who will have sacrifice a lot to get them the education and will be depending on them.

I find this a really interesting question as well, and it is absolutely our privilege to be able to say 'I'd never leave my children'.

I feel like that, but if their life chances were - this is a real example - factory worker, but if I work abroad they can be nurses or teachers, I absolutely would. The women I know in this position don't find it easy and they really really miss their children, but believe they are sacrificing so their own kids won't have to.

It's more culturally normal in other countries, but I don't think it's 'easier'.

Keeping more cash to send home is another element - much cheaper to raise a child in Kenya or the Philippines than the UK!

Also remember that generally speaking in the UK we live as a nuclear family, so if the mother left for work the child will essentially only have one carer. This isn't the case in many countries, where families are extended and close knit, and even neighbours etc could be fundamental in a child's upbringing.
The last time I stayed in a hotel in London the room cleaner was chatting to me about her 2 dc back in Brazil. They were 14 and 12 and she hadn't seen them for 2.5 years. She was working 3 jobs to pay for good schooling that would enable them to go to university, which would be life changing for them. That is the ultimate mother's sacrifice in my book.

It's only fairly recently that the UK has changed from thinking mums should be at home with dcs, at least until they start school to seeing mothers as workers.

It was only in the last few years single mums stopped getting benefits to stay at home full time until their youngest was 16!

There's been quite a quick shift here.

In most of the world and through most of history mothers have worked and children were left to fend for themselves, worked themselves or were looked after by female relatives/ sisters/grans.

Attachment theory was invented by a British man (Bowlby) who was raised by nannies then sent to boarding school and who blamed his mother for abandoning him and causing emotional distress. A lot of UK post WW2 social/family policy was based on his ideas of society providing for mothers to have time to spend with young children.

But it was only a theory...

I was sent away for a year by my british mother and never really came back, followed by her becoming a secondary care provider, so it does happen sometimes at least. My niece was in a similar position for a year or so too. I agree you don't see it so often though.

I have noticed that all my polish friends send their children to poland for the full summer holiday, sometimes to family for part, but mostly to summer camps. My vietnamese auntie (in VN) works away in 4 month blocks too, leaving nephew with his grandparents - this is absolutely choice not poverty (uncle is well paid); she found my confusion funny and told me British people are wierd and it's normal 😆. I find these cultural differences really interesting too OP!

To put a different slant on things I have a new neighbour who is a doctor from a war torn country in the ME. She's doing training in the hospital my (disabled) dc attends, and I was asking her about the differences. One of the things I wasn't expecting was that she said parents here don't like to sacrifice for their dc. She went on to explain that as doctors they get free tea/coffee but her colleagues still pay £3 for a coffee from the shop. For her that £3 would be much better saved for the dc and she was very shocked her colleagues weren't prepared to forego this.

OP is completely correct our attitudes to family and motherhood are cultural and contingent rather than biological. Also, it's not just cross-cultural - historians have been arguing the same thing for several decades now. Look for authors influenced by the originally French school of history of mentalities and history of everyday life. Essentially, our view both of children and of motherhood has completely changed over the centuries, first with the concept of childhood as a distinct period in a person's life and development, and then with changing female roles. Until the 19th century, women were never seen as mothers first and foremost, and even then, it was very much a class thing - working class women couldn't afford it and many upper class women outsourced childcare to staff.

Lots of literature but here's a good summary of the changing attitude to childhood- mainly concentrates on the seminal work by French historian Philippe Ariès:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_childhood

Unless the doctors and nurses are senior so well paid if they are in London childcare would take up a large chunk of their wages.

Regardless it makes no sense to get their children cared for by paying strangers loads of money, when they could be cared for by close family members back home.

A friend of mine worked in Belgium for a while and said most of the people she worked with had their children at boarding school. So only saw them for holidays they didn't seem to have the attachment that we do.

Some of this is definitely cultural, as someone who is British with Nigerian Heritage.. I sit somewhere in the middle. I genuinely have a village of women (Grandmothers, Aunties & Godmothers) who support me with raising my children so I do not feel the same anxiety I often see described here if I was to leave my children for a week or so but societal norms often have me on edge. For women sending children back home whilst working long term.. I think the idea is they know children require heavy supervision and that doesn’t align with working long hours.. as Nigerian parents there is often a heavier emphasis on their roles as providers and being emotional care givers can often be secondary to that

Sometimes it is poverty. Sometimes it is cultural. My relative ( E Asian) got sent to stay with cousins because his mum was widowed with 7 kids in the 50s.

But I have sent my kids on long holidays (3-5weeks) with grandparents to home country (without me or DH). I was happy my kid was having a good time with GPs (my other kid stayed with me and DH). Me and DH had more time and energy to look after the other one (they swapped round the next year so they each got a turn). I think it’s great for the kids to develop a strong relationship with wider family - and also get to experience different parts of the world.