Do some parents secretly desire their children not to move away to preserve family bonds especially in old age?

[mids2019]

I have had a conversation with someone recently and was surprised that they held some reluctance to their child moving to London for university as they foresaw that the child may get a job in the capital and in future they would be living in locations 200 miles apart.

I think the parent was taken between looking to stifling their child's future but having a genuine concern that as they aged and their children started a family etc. There was a real prospect of loneliness or logistic challenges to maintain family bonds e.g. provide child care.

Now having seen this view I see it within my extended family with children going to local universities and looking to live in the same area and I think secretly this does gives parents some satisfaction.

How many parents do harbour that desire that their children remain local so that they can see grand children and possibly have a support source when aging? How important are these bonds and are they worth sacrificing career opportunities for?

Well I bet it is a blessing. Who wants to be lonely in old age? Doesn’t mean they want their children’s wings clipped - and the person you spoke about originally didn’t even say it.

This is all rather odd and in your head.

My kids went away for university but three of the four have ended up
Living close to us. They all have professional jobs and could have chosen to live elsewhere and I'd have never said anything to dissuade them but they chose to live locally.
it's amazing that they live so close. It means we can see each other a lot without it being a big deal. We see them very regularly. It's fantastic. I didn't realise quite how big an advantage it is until it happened.
Practically it's very useful too. There is always someone to help out with things.

They are close to one another so the fact three of them live so close means they can do things together as well.

Luckily the one kid who lives away from the area has a house with plenty of space for people to stay so we can visit easily.

I went to the local uni but I couldn't find a job in my hometown, and after four months unemployment I moved 150 miles. Met DP here (his hometown), in my heart I would love to move back but he adores his hometown and I do like it here myself.

All his family are here, my mum hasn't moved but the rest of my family / friends are scattered across the country. Also we have good jobs and housing is affordable, the weather is also better. Effectively, it would be dumb to move back based on nostalgia and place attachment.

Dp has compromised, I can go back and see my mum anytime I like, we also spend a week at Christmas at mum's every year and go visit at most bank holiday weekends.

You started a thread about something some one was supposed to have said - but actually they didn’t even say it.

This is all just musings in your head.

Bonkers

DH and I both "flew the nest" from our respective countries to a third country for work, which is where we met and have settled. Our industry has only a few areas in the world with a lot of work. We now have two children and neither of us would necessarily wish this lifestyle on either of them, as it can be tremendously difficult.

For example, I've recently read threads on here about saving sanity on Christmas day by going to relatives only for 3 to 4 hours then driving home. We both dream of this! To spend time with family we basically have to have a week or two in each others pockets, at ours or theirs, then wave goodbye again for months, often feeling like we haven't made the most of our time together because it's just not feasible to be "on" for the whole visit. If DD or DS decided to settle in the area so we could just meet for a tea and some shopping before all going home I have to admit I love that idea. That said, I would never try and influence their decisions in this.

Ideally is like to love bear my DCs so I can help them with GC if we have them and just to be close to them. Not because I want them to look after me in old age.. I accept that may not happen though.. DH and I have held off on long term plans of where to live in retirement until we have some idea where the DCs will settle..

I secretly hope DD will do roughly what DH and I did. Move away to study and start her career, then return to put down roots and maybe start a family. I would support her in whatever she wants to do and wouldn't pressure her to move nearby. It's just my secret hope.

Well,children moving far away us quite a modern thing. Don't get me wrong. I know it's always gapened, but not in such high numbers.
We live 5 hours away from my parents, and I wish we lived closer. It would have been so lovely to have them nearby when the children were growing up. Now my parents are old and frail and I'm too far to help. It's not so much about them wanting my help. The fact is I want to help them and I can't. It's a huge source of sadness to me.

Most of this is tied to work rather than class. Liverpool, huge amounts of employment at times, an old established city.
However there are lots of originally working class towns, which rapidly expanded - along the Medway, out along the M4 Slough, Reading, Swindon then Milton Keynes where people moved for work from all over the country. And that's everything from production line, hourly paid trade to salaried IT and admin.
Where I grew up, it was really unusual to meet a local or have grandparents living locally. My childhood home, a southeast 1960s semi is over 600k. We don't have much in the way of roots, my school mates scattered, our parents retired to the coast, we move for work or a partner.
Most of us are from many generations of move from Ireland to london/Southampton/Liverpool. Next gen moves to a railway depot, car factory, armed forces town. Next gen goes to Swindon for IT.
It's mostly an attitude to chasing down work or valuing family a bit more.
Many people for religious or ethical reasons were also motivated to escape the strict gaze of a community.

My DS moved away for Uni and has moved back in with us for a grad role ( 3 years) but it is me that wants to move away to a coastal town. I was lucky to have my parents close when DS was growing up and wouldn’t change that but I don’t think it’s too big a deal if they live in other places in the Uk but I do feel very sorry for parents whose children emigrate to places like New Zealand I would find that very tough indeed. Working class here.

I have one of each instance with my adult children. Both went to uni but one here and one in London. I am inevitably closer to the one who lives near me and see her and her family weekly usually. However I see my other daughter about three times a year and we have a lovely time. Once she has children it will be harder to be as close but my own parents managed it and built close bonds with my children who were 300 miles from them. I think as I become very elderly it may get more difficult but I can't imagine my London child living her life here in her home town.

A wish my kids lived nearer and it has everything to do with wanting to see them more often and sod all to do with wanting them to look after me in my old age. In fact I’ve told them not to ever feel guilty or tie themselves in knots trying to visit when I’m old because I know how hard and time consuming it is and I want them to live their lives to the fullest not running round after me and their dad.
One of my sisters, bil, dh and I have spent the last few years caring for my dad with Alzheimer’s until he went in to a care home earlier this year and are still the only two siblings out of four who run around trying to fit in 90 mile round trips to visit him in the only home that could accommodate his needs. Whilst writing this my phone keeps pinging with messages from my mum because a smoke alarm is bleeping in her house and she wants me over there immediately to sort it, even though my 19 year old niece is there, it seems she is incapable of changing a battery. Best go and do a 15 mile round trip to fix it before I get a 7th message

I moved away as a student, went to another country for a bit and did the London thing in my early 20s. Then moved back to my original area - had lots of support with kids and am now supporting elderly parents.

I hope my DC do similar, but I won’t be trying to influence them, my parents didn’t influence me, it just seemed like the right choice for me as I got older.

@TinselTuesday
It's mostly an attitude to chasing down work or valuing family a bit more.

I disagree. I value family much more than work. I would live near my family in a heartbeat. But the fact is, the work is just not there. If I'd stayed there and DH moved rather than the other way round, the likelihood is we'd both be stuck in jobs with very few prospects, security or flexibility (evidenced by my family, who obviously had the same opportunities as me education wise). Which in turn, makes it much harder to provide for a family, or have any semblance of independence. We live where the work is to provide for our family. Which is the most important thing to us. We have the money and flexibility to give our children a good, secure life and to still be able to be active members of my family despite the physical distance. We couldn't have done that living in my hometown.

I had a similar discussion with my teenage daughter yesterday, but I see it from a different angle. Wherever she ends up, when we are retired, we will make sure we live within an hour of her. This isn't for our sakes, but for hers. If she needs help, we will be near enough to give it, and when she wants to visit, she isn't going to have to make an epic journey to do it. Or if something happens to us, she won't have to take a fortnight off work to make sure we are ok.

She is an only child and much as I want her to live her life, and spread her wings, the reality is, as an adult with aging parents, there is a shift that happens and you become responsible for making sure your parents are ok. I saw my mum exhaust herself, having to travel regularly to visit her mum after her father died. Despite having 3 siblings, she was the one who, when grandma was ill, had to take time off work to make sure she was ok, staying with her until she recovered. Every other weekend meant a trip to visit her, meaning she could rarely take time for herself.

My parents live 3 hours from me. I rely on my sister to be the go to emergency person (despite my brother also living close to them). If she wasn't there, I'd probably be looking to move closer.

How often do we hear adult children being berated for not visiting their parents, particularly when they need more looking after in their later years? Care services are stretched and in some cases non existent. My parents rented their granny annex to an older guy. His kids lived hundreds of miles away. They had been trying for years to get him to move closer to them but he refused. He claimed he didn't need to be close to them, but with the things my mum had to do for him, it was clear he did need someone looking after him.

I don't want for my daughter to have to upend her life or to stress unnecessarily when I'm in my later years, so, I will always make sure I am near enough to her to ensure that won't happen. I'm actually quite excited about where I might end up!

I recall my mum delicately suggesting that Scottish universities would be particularly difficult for me to get to/from… She also admitted to me that when I was dating a friend from my hometown in my 20s she spent about five mins thinking “how lovely, she might stay here” before switching to “how awful, she might feel so constrained”.

I do think there’s a class aspect to this which is more about culture than money. I would consider myself middle class, I remember talking to a colleague saying I was happy that I’d moved closer to my mum - at 35 mins drive it was the closest I’d been since leaving home! She was working class and horrified at the thought of living a whole 35 min drive from her mum.

Which obviously isn’t to say that everyone is the same, just that there is a predominant culture. Anecdotally, people I know who are working class are much more likely to live in the same town as their family, most who are middle class have moved around more. Income does not divide so neatly.

I now live 15 minutes from my mum, which is lovely for both of us. I didn’t appreciate before having kids just what a godsend it would be.

I want my kids to do whatever makes them happy and fulfilled. I’d love for them to stay close, but I’d hate for them to ever feel influenced or constrained by that.

Having been bought up in a shamed based toxic home, knowing my contractual duty was to look after my mom in her old age, these types of parents make me shudder. (Additional - also, my father was a difficult violent man, and my mom could not leave him because of her status)

I was given no autonomy from birth.I was born as a contract not out of unconditional love and choice.

Yes, it had a major impact on my life. I was bought up in a middle-class family, which was all very naice on the surface. It's called today "affluent neglect"

I knew deep down this wasn't right, and I changed this for my now adult children. I was married to their biological dad, who was equally fcuked up by his parents, so I recreated a lot in my adulthood before finally fleeing with them.

20 plus years of various some, which were specialised therapies and a 12-step program, my life is very different.

I have a happy well adjusted children who I have ensured have permission to live their lives freely. I am a nana to 5. They are all uni educated with good careers and autonomous lives.

3 of my 4 live abroad with 1 local to me as his wife, my lovely DiL, and 2 cublets (grandchildren). My adult children are still my cubs. I am very involved with them living locally. I've made my own life.

2 other cublets live abroad with my daughter. What a blessing in this day and age to live in messenger/WhatsApp and Zoom time, where I can see my cublets, daughter, SonIL 2 or 3 times a week, go out yearly and possibly twice this year. Plus all the holidays I get, too, which are budget flight only.

Another cublet who is in the U.K. is grown up now, as my son and his partner had their baby in their teens.

My youngest and my 3rd are abroad too. My 3rd is the one with a child in this country.

I also told my eldest that when his gran died, it was not his duty to look after me in my old age if I had significant health issues. I just wanted him to be my son. That's it.

Yes, my story is extreme. However, the same principles apply

This poem sums it up by Kabril Gibran (our children are not our children)

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of children."
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet, they belong not to you.

 You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
 For they have their own thoughts.
 You may house their bodies but not their souls,
 For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you can not visit, not even in your dreams.
 You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
 For life goes not backwards nor tarries with yesterday.
 You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
 The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
 Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
 For even as He loves the arrow that flies, he also loves the bow that is stable

My children are spread about, 2 of them on different continents - it means I have interesting places to visit!

Hell would freeze over before I decided to stay where I grew up.

The moment I got the uni offer, I was off. Went up north, then far south, then London, then Europe. Back to the south now and parents have moved to be nearer to us, 35mins on the motorway.

My parents really wanted me to stay near them after university.

Personally I didn't see the point of them paying for uni then me moving home again. The whole point of uni is it's a springboard.

DD is nearly uni age and wants to study abroad. I don't think she will ever come back once she leaves and I am DELIGHTED for her. She deserves every chance and it shouldn't be with us.

I dont think its a secret. Nearly every parent I know hopes thier child just happens to find a fulfilling life near by.

Nothing to do with wanting to be looked after. Just they enjoy thier child's company and hope any grandchildren will be a regular visitor not a once every five year thing.

I think some parents are better at being genuinely happy thier child finds a fulfilling life elswhere though.

I'm in the opposite position my mum has moved an hour away from all of her family. Because I've had children later in life, I worry that when she's elderly (which is not actually that far away) I won't be able to drop in and look after her etc.

Working class people in the very recent past would have had their children leave in far greater numbers, if there was no work locally. I left a sink estate school in a deep recession when unemployment was 18%, and about half my year group emigrated within a year. When I returned to my home city, I realised that the few people I knew who’d never left were the prosperous ones, who had family businesses to inherit.

Yes, some parents will have those desires secretly
Some parents will be overt about it - some positively, some negatively.
Some parents are happy as long as their child is happy. I think many are a mix of that and having some desire, overt or otherwise, for their child to be close.
Some parents can't want to see the back of their kids and joyfully go live their own lives as soon as they can.

Having had parents who were in the last group and having not seen them since the year I left school, I can't really say those bonds were important to me and I definitely can't say how important it is for my kids - that's for them to decide. I can say working through and being open to different options has been very important skill I want to pass on. I do discuss logistics and the types of lives they want to live, not in terms of childcare or family bonds, but in terms of considering different parts of their future to help them see their potential futures and their options. This type of thinking doesn't come naturally to them, and is a very important skill that I want to help them develop.

I don't think it's clipping wings or sacrificing careers automatically for families to remain close together, that depends on a lot of factors in the area and people. I also think things that were spreading their wings in the past may now be more a stone around their necks - the expense of big cities especially London for students with unis 'updating' accommodations to ever higher costs and struggles in finding graduate work is a nightmare for many. Being in a work area where a degree is nice, but still not essential, I've a few colleagues who grumble at times about not being able to really use their degrees even over a decade after they left university.

Having emigrated as a teen many years ago, I do discuss with my kids that while my choice was the best for me, I hope they never feel as I did that leaving everything is the hands-down best option as I'm very aware that starting over like that even as a young adult can be very difficult. I have a lot of immigration in my family tree, most with unhappy stories that pushed them out and into other communities.

I can see it feeding into uni conversations for some, but distance hasn't come into it for us. My kids all in the 'maybe, if I can get it paid for by an employer we want' or 'absolutely no' mindset and more interested in other career routes so our conversations are more around the different routes and the options they open up or close. How those fit in the lives they want & how what they want will likely change.

My 20 year old has a sponsored cadetship place & wouldn't have gone otherwise. After he was given the offer and placed 3 hours away (he could pick preferences, but the sponsor had final say where he would study), I was thrilled for him as he was pleased with it and also overtly with him and his father look into job availability in his field in our area to see the likelihood working in that field here if he chooses to return after. I've also looked up caravan sites near the area he's studying in so that if he stays out there, we could holiday there.

My 17 year old is in an Level 3 apprenticeship where she was offered Level 4 continuation at the start of her second year, but after trying the work and discussing with her line manager what the Level 4 would likely lead to for future jobs, decided that wasn't a path she wants to take right now. Having done Level 4 work, she has absolutely no interest in university, she is my opposite in this as she hated the research and referencing involved so she isn't looking into sponsored places or uni at all as an option. She likes her work and her main interest is a shorter commute than the hourish she has now & hoping people are as nice at closer places.

Her and my 15 year old have recently starting making plans that they plan to live together and, once they've worked to gain money and experience, to start a business together, potentially roping their 13 year old and 20 year old siblings into it too. None of it involves whether to care for their father or I (though the 15 year old dreams of having a big car so she can pick everyone up for trips, with the meme 'get in losers, we're going to X' getting a lot of use) or childcare, it's involving discussion on rural vs urban areas, commutes and transport as the 17 year old likely medically won't be able to drive (she currently has an adapted bike), what types of animals & how to keep different types safe from each other and happy, and who handles which aspects of business or home life, which is lovely to see them starting to consider and how they're thinking of the wider family as they plot business domination.

I'm a mix of overt and happy as long as my child is well in their choices. It's nothing to do with needing support in old age - I already have multiple disabilities so I already have support in place and have been setting up my environment for likely further health needs for many years. It's also nothing to do with grandchildren - no idea which if any of my kids will have them, only one of my kids has ever mentioned considering having kids in the future, and it was a big IF. It's just I like my kids, like being around them, I think they're awesome people, and I'd like to be able to support them and just enjoy being in each others' lives. I do think there are benefits to having people who care around and want them to have the security in that which I didn't have as long as I can provide that for them, even if it's just being a supportive face.

In fact I’ve told them not to ever feel guilty or tie themselves in knots trying to visit when I’m old because I know how hard and time consuming it is and I want them to live their lives to the fullest not running round after me and their dad.

My parents said exactly the same to me. Doesn't stop me feeling guilty.

Lots of my extended family have moved a long haul flight away and it makes me hugely sad that I can't see them regularly or watch their children grow up.

I think it can be hard to be the ones left behind! But of course happy for them.