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 can only imagine the OP has a partner who was brought up in this family and is now having their own attachment issues.

It’s certainly not conventional in the UK but the issue is how it is impacting on the child now OP surely? Not whether it’s odd or not?

This sounds like there is some social services involvement of some kind to be honest as this was common when I wprked as admin there. They don't have to tell anyone if ss are involved either. Why would you want anyone & everyone to know really?! It's highly confidential. It also might be a cultural thing or a money thing . Why do you need to know lol?!

Worked*

This made me smile -thank you:)

Ps* you said "volatile relationship" which screams domestic abuse (violence or just being abusive e.g. emotional/mental etc -there are 6 types of d/a) to me .....my years as an admin person taught me you never know what goes on behind closed doors or how close to home...and it isn't specific to any religion/class etc....

This is one of those intriguing posts that makes you itch to know more. Who are they to you? Why do you care so much - enough to take to mumsnet? Is this a weird situation or are you making it so in your head for reasons we don't know? The bottom line is our answers are only based on your perception and I'm guessing for one reason or another that's skewed. I think there is some level headed responses above, a continuous theme being other families always feel a bit weird!! This does seem an odd set up but I'm guessing some parts are exaggerated and/or we're missing key details.

I would say its non of your concern if you're not part of the family, why would they discuss it with you

Definitely not the norm. I'm too with Havelock on this.
I can understand a child being with relatives due to work commitments of parents but this is very very odd to me. If the children are damaged as a result I'll bet a lot of it is to do with this.
Is there some kind of abuse going on? Are some relatives unable to have children so it's something to do with that?
I'm guessing social services never knew about any of this regarding the 6 week rule.

This sounds cultural to me come to think of it as well.

The family set up is decidedly odd and, no doubt, contributed to any emotional problems the children had growing up.

My DM, one of eight children growing up in Ireland, was farmed out to an ‘aunt’ and her husband, a childless couple, living on a remote farm. DM Was about twelve at the time and she never gave any details about it but I am sure the experience scarred her and suspect the farmer might have taken an other than fatherly interest in her. The whole episode was cruel and horrible.

Yes it does seem odd to me. Children swapped around to other family members.... strange. For a few days, yes, but a year or two at a time - not usual at all. Is this a cultural thing? You say the family are comfortably off but they never have family days out? Also odd. It seems they have created their own extended family 'bubble', I wonder though how the children will interact when they eventually go out into the world (if they do).

Edward Austen/Knight did remain close to his family, though. Cassandra and Jane often visited them at Godmersham and Jane was very close to her niece Fanny. They were very fond of Edward's wife Elizabeth too, and devastated when she died leaving a large, young family (death due to childbirth, I think).

Where did I saw there was no further contact?

What I've read suggests that while they stayed in contact there was distance between the siblings due to change in status.

The Mother was being very practical - the son would be set for life and in a position to help her and her daughters later on.

Cassandra and Jane were expected to entertain nieces and nephews ie work for the privilege of stopping with family - that was common with all the families. Edward did provide accommodation to them later – as did their other brothers - he had better properties he could have provided and didn't.

There was also a lot of legacy grabbing after her death as her fame grew.

My Great Grandparents generation had family swapping children going on – sometimes for work sometimes to families with fewer or no children – they kept in touch it's how some of my great grandparents met unofficial adoption between relatives and families keeping in touch and stopping with each other. Though they didn't swap every few years as OP family seems to.

I think some communities the practise is still common but in UK as a whole it wouldn’t be common now.

Really depends on circumstances. Are all the extended family members close, so the siblings see each other frequently and feel supported by the whole family? Or is it a fragmented and unstable family so the kids feel like they are drifting?

This happened my cousins. They are well into their fifties and sixties now but it was down to their mother having untreated PND and it eventually led to a complete nervous breakdown for many years. One cousin went to an Aunt, the other two went to the grandfather and the baby was raised from basically newborn to 5 years of age by a close friend of the family.

In that case the older three understood the reasons and were fine - the boys even enjoyed the experience living rurally for a change. They returned to their family a few years later with no apparent effects. But the baby of the family though he stayed part-time with his biological family after the mother was well enough to return home to this day he feels like he's got two families and is closer to his non-biological one.

So I can imagine it can play havoc with attachments especially for the very young and causes all sorts of issues in adulthood if the reasons for splitting up the family are unclear or due to parents simply not wanting them around.

apologies that i can't stop to read all of thread - If child lives outside family/parents' home, don't they have to have the place where they live and the people responsible for them accepted by Social Services? I thought you couldn't farm out a child of yours for more than a holiday unless it was authorised/registered by the "authorities" .

www.gov.uk/looking-after-someone-elses-child

"You’re known as a family and friends carer if you’re a grandparent, aunt, uncle, brother, sister or family friend looking after a child who can’t be cared for by their birth parents.
You must be approved as a foster carer if the local council has officially asked you to look after a child.
If the local council didn’t ask you to look after the child you don’t have to tell them the child has come to stay with you."

P.S. If they did register as Foster Carers They would get paid. They would also be subject to a lot of checks.

The changes made after Victoria Climbie’s death involve extended family. She was with a random Great-Aunt (or her mother’s great aunt). Private fostering doesn’t apply to what is considered family/connected persons - Grandparents, siblings and aunts and uncles. There are far too many family arrangements for SS to get involved in.

The changes were made to stop children being farmed out to people who are basically strangers to the children and parents without it being recorded somewhere (& most of the changes were actually made to the services who were in contact with the child and did nothing - that was the bigger issue in terms of the authorities in that awful case. The missed chances).

Children staying with extended family is relatively common in Britain in the past and now, I can think of seven cases off the top of my head. What's less usual is the swapping about you describe of a year on one home then a year elsewhere with a different sibling; I'd imagine there's an explanation but it sounds unsettling for children. I can't imagine not having my boy with me, no idea how the mums do it.

Again I think this was less unusual in the past - and especially in some wealthy families where children were at school during term time and spent holidays with various relatives as the parents were often working abroad - you only have to read books from earlier on in the past century such as swallows and amazons or the Famous Five to realise this was fairly normal.

No idea where people have got the idea that SS need to know if parents are not raising their kids - they would not be interested at all. I had my Grandchildren for a period of time when my daughter was ill and one of my best friends has her Grandson permanently and SS have never been involved or informed.

It’s not normal here. And obviously, in this case it’s left lasting issues.

But in lots of other countries, children go to live with grandparents whilst the parents work and provide for everyone. But that usually involves all children still being together under one roof, which I feel may be the key issue here, a lack of stability and absence from siblings.

SS have never been involved or informed.

Its difficult enough to get SS to be interested in kinship carers set ups they organise let alone ones that families sort themselves

As this article shows yes, it does happen in opther cultures but because the parents go to work far away from home, sometimes abroad.
The children growing up in a ‘motherless village’

The children still crave a relationship with their mother and many facetime (I hate this word) but it is their only option. Some have attachment issues and have naturally bonded with their grandmother or aunt who raised them instead.