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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to consider leaving my children for a year to study?

546 replies

secondcity · 06/02/2011 07:36

long-time lurker here. I am braving AIBU and am bracing myself for the onslaught....

I live in New York with my husband and children, We have been here almost two years and everyone is very settled......except me!

I have been offered a (fully-funded) post-graduate course in the UK in september 2011.

If I were to accept the course, I wouldn't bring my children, but I would aim to come back once a month, and they would obviously come to me for all the holidays. My husband is very capable and we would probably get some part-time childcare sorted (secondary aged kids)

I swing between thinking it would be absolutely fine, (their father used to work away for up to 2 months at a time!)to thinking what kind of mother would contemplate leaving her children.

Anyone have any experience or advice? Thank you

OP posts:
freshmint · 07/02/2011 14:01

I think you are termed "economically unproductive"
unlike the OP

just to clarify that my objection is to your ridiculous arguments and not your sahm status

traceybath · 07/02/2011 14:15

Joy - another thread which actually has some really interesting post spoilt by people being offensive and snide.

I do think the key thing is whether or not the OP's husband is going to step-up to doing a lot more of the parenting - if he's going to be working long hours/away with work then it will be very hard on the children.

And again I do think if anyones DH was considering this - a similar response would be given.

gramercy · 07/02/2011 14:19

I think if anything the OP has been given less of a hard time because she is a woman.

If a woman posted that her SAHD husband was considering going to NY to study for a year but it was difficult because she works full-time and is sometimes away, the response would have been "burn the selfish bastard".

freshmint · 07/02/2011 14:27

might have been your response gramercy but it certainly wouldn't be mine

BuzzLightBeer · 07/02/2011 14:32

me neither. I would have said "whatever works for you".
But if it was a man the talk would have been how selfish he was to her, the wife. For a woman its about how could she possibly leave her babies teenagers?
We are not judged the same way. Personally I think it would be an excellent lesson for her children that motherhood does not equal martyrdom.

ThePosieParker · 07/02/2011 14:41

Yes because putting your children first is martyrdom isn't it?

Wondering what sort of 'good job' employs someone that with very little information makes ludicrous judgements....SAHM v SAHM surely means the same. Or are you presuming I do nothing else? No voluntary work? No caring? No studying? And the OP's dcs are much older than mine. Surely you either work or raise your children full time, you cannot do both. If you objections are with my arguments why are we talking about me?

Buzz....You must be new, feeling your way around the boards..it's fun to watchSmile.

BuzzLightBeer · 07/02/2011 14:49

No, I've been here five years.Hmm

Putting your children first to the exclusion of anything else is martyrdom, yes. If you turn down opportunities for yourself because you are expected to be in the kitchen making cookies after your kids have been in school all day is martyrdom.

I am a mother. But I am many other things as well. Letting the rest of yourself shrivel up in order to be the "Perfect Mother" does your children no favours at all, IMO.

spidookly · 07/02/2011 14:52

"Personally I think it would be an excellent lesson for her children that motherhood does not equal martyrdom."

WTF?

So if you arrange your life so as not to leave your children for a year you are teaching them that motherhood does = martyrdom?

BuzzLightBeer · 07/02/2011 14:54

thats not what I said. Giving up a thing you really want that would make your life better, and then by extension theirs, because you have to be there for them at all times, does give them the impression that you are only alive to serve them. And yes, that motherhood is martyrdom.

spidookly · 07/02/2011 15:05

"Giving up a thing you really want that would make your life better, and then by extension theirs, because you have to be there for them at all times, does give them the impression that you are only alive to serve them."

I barely know where to start with that.

First of all, just because you really want something doesn't mean it will make your life better.

It's even more of a stretch to claim it will make the children's lives better just because you want it.

In this case the case has not been made either for or against the OP's life (never mind her children's) being better for making this choice.

Why would you tell your children that you made the adult, complicated choice to pass up an opportunity because you felt your parental responsibilities clashed with it?

That's just shit parenting. The kids don't need to know about this if she doesn't take it.

And I don't think most people think that they make their parents so miserable that if they don't get to do whatever they want all the time that that is martyrdom.

Jesus, what a juvenile argument.

BuzzLightBeer · 07/02/2011 15:14

Read the bloody thread spidookly, and you might make less asinine assumptions like those above.

You don't think getting the job you've been working towards for 10 years would be good for her and her family? What would you know?

How juvenile to think that studying and working hard and making sacrifices is trying to "get to do what they want all the time"

Hmm
BeeBox · 07/02/2011 15:17

I cannot possibly see how anyone but you and your family could make this decision. All you will get here are lots of people thinking about what they would do.

Personally, I couldn't leave my children for a course, a job etc - no matter how amazing an opportunity. But I would not condemn someone for doing it, if they felt it was the right thing to do.

Go away and think about how this will affect your lives, in the short and long term. Then make your decision. Good luck!

NiceShoes · 07/02/2011 15:26

Posie Parker,You have bitched and moaned your way through this thread.Attacking posters and opinions you do not agree with. You have argued with anyone on thread who disagrees with you,asking them if they are new or being unpleasant. Accusing secondcity of grant application scam.Making much out of attacking OP character and that she is somehow robbing a legitimate UK taxpayer of an entitlement.Clutching at straws to try discredit the OP, very nasty.

And, No before you ask I am not new either.

BeribbonedGibbon · 07/02/2011 15:40

Having only read the first few and last few posts I am assuming a bun fight is occurring?

To answer the OP, I think most children would feel abandoned if their mother or father chose to live in another country for a year. Whatever the reason for doing so.

You have to weigh up which is more important(and I am not saying this in a passive aggressive guilt trip type way, I am just giving my honest opinion)

ThePosieParker · 07/02/2011 15:45

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by Mumsnet.

spidookly · 07/02/2011 15:48

I have read the thread.

"You don't think getting the job you've been working towards for 10 years would be good for her and her family?"

  1. This is not about getting a job, it's about doing a course
  1. The course may, or may not, mean she gets this (as yet imaginary) job
  1. There could be other ways to get the job that do not involved moving away from her children from a year
  1. Getting a job is not necessarily an unalloyed good for a family, never mind the person who wants it, no matter how hard they have worked for it

This is a complicated, nuanced decision. The simplistic idiocy with which it is being approached is maddening.

BuzzLightBeer · 07/02/2011 15:51

The course leads to the job, do keep up.
And its none of your concern what OP does, nor mine. Of course its a complex decision. For her, not you.

Good argument Posie. Hmm Can't be that stupid if I'm on course for a doctorate using your taxes, can I? Smile

kissncuddle · 07/02/2011 16:01

Secondcity - have you been offered a scholarship because you are very clever? If so, is there not an equivalent course in NY?

I think you will find it very tough and so will your children, plus it will change things in your family unit.

See, if I was your early teenagers it would have to be a course like training to be an astronaut or something truly spectacular, where you could not do it at any old University and had to move.

I think they may just learn to live without you. My mother left me around that age and I never really felt close to her after. It was no problem for me, I have not been adversely impacted by it but she has I think.

spidookly · 07/02/2011 16:03

"The course leads to the job, do keep up. "

Maybe. Does she have a job offer conditional on doing this particular course? She hasn't mentioned it if she does.

"And its none of your concern what OP does, nor mine. Of course its a complex decision. For her, not you. "

:o :o :o

She posted for opinions on the fucking Internet!

It's as much my concern as I choose to make it and the OP is free to ignore my comments to her heart's content.

Not my concern?

You win the prize for the stupidest ever comment on MN, and that takes some doing.

nancythenaughtyfairy · 07/02/2011 16:08

Good luck with your decision op! When I think back to being 11, I would have hated my mum to leave us. Saying that we would have no doubt survived and in some ways it would have been good for us.

ThePosieParker · 07/02/2011 16:10

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by Mumsnet.

kissncuddle · 07/02/2011 16:12

It's getting hot in here...

not1not2 · 07/02/2011 16:25

Blackduck there are different degrees of residence (and non residence) ie for tax etc last time I looked, which was a while ago, to be a resident for HE funding I'm sure required being present in the UK for the previous 3 years (amongst other things.)

not1not2 · 07/02/2011 16:27

Buzz would you really be 'committed' to the NHS for several years? Clearly I'm asking about your compulsory committment not your personal. Even medicine ties you in now for only 2 I think.
One of the issues has been (and possibly still is) that for PAMS there is usually no tie-in

not1not2 · 07/02/2011 16:29

Although to be fair the OP didn't tell us she had been studying towards this for 10 yrs until quite late in the thread