To think this family set up is odd?

[Milkybars]

Nc for this. It's a bit random, sorry, but I'm trying to get my head around something.

Family - mum, dad and six children aged between 4-16 when this occurred. White, working class but with money, British (just for background)

Eldest child is now mid 30s so this is all fairly recent.

They live in the same area of the city as extended family, so within a few minutes walk of various cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles.

From the age of 4 or so, the children have been sent to live with members of the extended family - so child 1 lives with Aunty A, child 2 lives with Granny B, each child living with a different family member except the youngest two. Sometimes there is a swap - so child 2 might go and live with Aunty A and child 1 goes off to Aunty C for a year or two. No particular reasons given for the swap. Children would have dinner at home at the weekends. No social services involvement of any sort. Parent's relationship volatile by my standards, but joked about by the family. Children never seem to be taken out/no family days out

There is no real reason ever given for the children living with these relatives, and nobody seems to have a problem with it, however as adults there is some dysfunction/poor grasp of boundaries/mental health issues/poor parenting. The parents of these children both worked, one parent worked school hours only, there was plenty of money, and the family home was big enough to house all the children, so space didn't come into it.

I think this situation is really odd, and a contributory factor to some of the issues within this family, but others disagree. AIBU?

I had a friend at school who was the second eldest out of 15 children... All sent to different relatives each after the age of 3 as her mum got bored of them.....

the 'solidarity' isn't coming over tbh

Weird. Why have all those children to outsource parenting?

Totally fucked up imho....

In my extended family we have 1 family with 4 children.

2 NT girls followed by 2 boys with ASD and MH problems.

The girls were essentially brought up by their aunt and uncle, who couldn’t have children of their own, so they essentially (without paperwork etc) adopted the girls...

There was no swapping around as in this family, it was always the girls with auntie and the boys with mum and dad.

However essentially the girls brought themselves up and now they are married and have families of their own. However the Auntie isn’t coping with the fact that, in reality, she is AUNTIE, she isn’t Mum despite doing that job. When the girls started to have their own children, Auntie was giving up work and all social interaction to spend time with the babies... but that was the point the girls wanted to move away and create their own little families

Sounds like the extended family stepped in due to inadequate parenting. Way more common many years back in - to avoid social services radar.

@CodenameVillanelle, I’m not sure why you’re so exercised about this. Should I be intuiting from your username whether you are pro- or anti-fictional serial killers?

AnneTwackie "Is the family British? Or could it be a cultural thing?"

It's in the OP "White, working class but with money, British (just for background)"

Could be that extended family saw a need and stepped in before social services were ever alerted - dealt with it themselves. My family would do that and in fact, have done that.

It's not "normal", but if there were problems at home, at least the children had people willing to take them in and care for them.

Thinking about it, even my best mate lived with her Nan when we were at school
I wouldn't think that's a usual thing, though. I knew a couple of people who lived with other family members- 1 because her parents were drug users and she got placed with her granny and grandpa, and another who was with an auntie because her mum died.

I would say there are normally complex circumstances at play if children are with other family members, even if children don't discuss them with their friends.

Well, it's a horrible condition, you just made me picture those awful pictures in my head and I couldn't possibly think why anyone would choose to be called that. That's it.

It's a traditional type of family set up. Think what happens in Traveller community, for instance. You see a lot of this historically, kids moving around different parts of extended families. Remember when lots of people became orphans & were made wards of other randoms (sometimes serially).

It didn't have to lead to issues like OP describes, so I think there are subtle aspects OP can't express but are what contributed to the poor ability of the adults to bond to their own kids.

You say they were healthy but you can't know that for sure especially in terms of MH.

In the past, farming out to relatives was done when necessary, not for the sake of it. Think illness, death of actual parents, to be apprenticed, to learn a trade, to improve the child's chances with a wealthier branch of the family, because of lack of physical space, etc. Can anyone claiming this is normal or traditional name a culture where it was done just for the sake of it, just for the fun of sharing children around and trying out different combinations of kids together every so often?!

I think poor mental health must have been involved!

Milkybars this sounds like a very unusual and unfortunate set up. One which would lead to a real sense of disconnect from the wider family, no wonder the children do not relate well to their parents.

I wonder if those children, now adults, have had any counselling to come to terms with how they feel?

Re "The children were treated very well by the family members and very much loved by them. I think that is partly why the issue is clouded with some of them today - can you really complain when Mum and Dad are only a five minute walk away, and Granny is letting you stay up late and eat all the custard creams?"

I would say that however good the care may be the element of being moved around is really going to mess kids up.

We adopted our son at age 3, he had only had a couple of moves and has so far grown up to be a lovely lad but he does have some anger issues (which we are addressing) and I am pretty sure these are because of his early life experiences and the uncertainty etc.

Attachment problems in adopted children are a real issue and I'm very thankful our son doesn't seem to have any. However, I know he does have other parents and coming to terms with not being able to live with them is part of his story.

For me the issue with this family situation described above is that just because people the children live with are blood rated it may still be distressing for the kids not to be able to live with their parents. Having the parents close by in some ways might actually make it even harder, IMHO.

"Sometimes there is a swap - so child 2 might go and live with Aunty A and child 1 goes off to Aunty C for a year or two. No particular reasons given for the swap."

Nowdays the policy with adopted children is the truth, in age appropriate terms. Understanding why things happen is very important for children, and no reasons given may well have been quite distressing. Potentially children may have even felt it was 'their fault' for them being moved.

Sounds very strange and possibly damaging for the children's mental health. Since it apparently wasn't done out of necessity, it seems extremely selfish of the parents to do what was easy or what suited them best rather than what was best for the children. Why keep having children after you realise you can't cope with raising them?

It's particularly infuriating that they now expect to be treated as "real parents" when they couldn't be bothered to do the work!

I would worry about long term MH effects too,

That’s very sad. I feel sorry for whoever partners up with those who did not form proper attachments with their own parents. Ultimately, it would make any relationship between the parent (who was the product of a dysfunctional childhood) and their offspring incredibly difficult. Human beings learn by behaviour and this is not normal behaviour.

My mum was raised like this. Her stepfather was known within the family to be a paedophile and in those days you didn't talk about that. She was just passed around as much as possible to keep her out of harm's way.

I'm convinced I once read that the children in Jane Austen's family were each handed over to a 'village woman' for the first two or three years of their lives, to live in the village with her (wetnurse presumably) and her family, then returned home once weaned, toilet trained, basic speech and 'ready for use' so to speak. This seems so bizarre I can scarcely credit it and I can't find any reference to it.. Did I make this up?

longwayoff they were dry nursed -kept at home till weaned - I think that means stopped being bf - then sent off to the village then returned when they could walk – not sure how common place that practise was but the mother was helping to run the house and boarding school bit. ( Lucy Worsley Jane Austin at home has it in)

Jane Austen mother's motivation for marriage apparently was providing a home for her mother only way to do that was marriage.

What I found odd was the custom of taking friends/relatives children on honeymoon with you - the couple that took one of her brother’s didn't have children themselves and later they asked to adopt him - her mum was all for it though the dad wasn't keen. He did then inherited a large estate.

@longwayoff I had to Google this! Jane Austen's wiki page says that her mother's "custom" was to keep her baby at home for the first few months, and then to place them with a woman in the village for 12-18 months. I just can't imagine this, they'd be like a little stranger when they came home.