To be worried about school shootings/guns?

[Nogbreaks]

DW, American, has the opportunity to take a great job in a US East coast city. She's keen, having lived her for 20 years, to go for a few years ( maybe more) with the kids. She was approached for this role, wasn't seeking it, nor have we be planning on ever living in the USA, though it has come up from time to time.

Apart from the obvious - we'd be uprooting our 11 and 13 year olds who are very happy, settled in school, I'd have to find a job ( though could get a green card as we're married), we have a fantastic community and network around us which I find particularly helpful as I do the most of the 'wife work' on top of my FT time job as DW is the main earner by a long chalk, we'd be moving to a city where we know no-one at all...

I'm really GENUINELY worried about the safety of our kids going to a school in the US. I don't want them to have shooter drills and all that comes with it. I don't want to take them on what we could dress up as an adventure where we have to worried about the gun culture in the city were in. As an East coast city it does have stricter gun laws, but pretty much anyone can still have a weapon.

Is that a daft reason to refuse to go? My career and aspirations there are 2nd as I could maybe maybe transfer with my current company, and I'm acutely aware of all DW has given up to live in the UK all this time with me.

'How often are you planning to make the 24 hour round trip to the in-laws?!)'

That's driving! Flying would be like flying from London to Paris.
I guess, on school breaks, Easter, Summer hols, Halloween, long weekends, Thanks Giving or Xmas... the usual.
Plus they are hail and hearty so more than capable of driving to us, or to somewhere halfway. Or we can holiday together near DSILs where it's hot and sunny all the time.
We also have other family, aunts, uncles, cousins there who DW would love to spend more time with than once a year at Easter or Xmas.

Everybody is mentioning school shootings. That’s the least of the problems over there. The big problem is general gun-ownership and the blasé attitude about owning guns. Everybody can be in possession of a gun and millions and millions of Americans are, a lot of whom are drug-takers and loco too. That would worry me more than school shootings.

@Tescoland its all of it - guns in schools, guns in society, the violent crime rate is huge compared to U.K.

Just don't be a teacher, I see in Virginia a six year old took their mothers gun to school and shot the teacher.

Little kids getting hold of mum or dad's gun and shooting themselves or someone else seems yo be a common theme.

I think I'd let the children have a one third choice in this. At those ages they will effectively be teens growing up in the US and likely to form their own relationships they may not want to leave to return here. So returning may never happen unless you leave your young adult DCs there.

The move sounds great for your dw. But it would mess up your dc. I think anyone with thought for their kids would realise that slicing through the lives of kids this age with a giant culture change is going to have big ramifications. I speak from a nearly identical experience as a kid. The gun culture thing is not the big concern here.

It’s a term from Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine (not sure if she coined it or just popularised it) that refers to the work done in a domestic setting that is traditionally done by the “wife” in a traditional, heterosexual marriage

No it's originally from this book, called wife work by Susan Maushart written in 2003. It predates DOG by 7 years.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wifework-Susan-Maushart/dp/0747561729

I'd be more concerned about checking the legal situation with custody if you split.

Afaik you wouldn't be able to take the DCs from USA without ex's permission.

Without your own citizenship there you have to go back to the UK alone wouldn't you?

That's such a precarious position to be in.

FWIW we don't have a record of school shootings in France but we do have active shooter / threat drills in all schools twice a year. I know some UK schools do them and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they became mandatory.

I have just sent my ds off to the US to uni. The positives outweigh the negatives, and the tiny possibility that there may be a shooting. I would go. I teach in a school where dc parachute in for a few years ( or less) and then move continent/ language system. Their skills build all the time and are infinitely transférable.

I'd be more concerned about checking the legal situation with custody if you split.
Afaik you wouldn't be able to take the DCs from USA without ex's permission.
Without your own citizenship there you have to go back to the UK alone wouldn't you?

No – because neither child has US citizenship or US passports. Born outside of the USA you have to apply for this, and we haven’t.

There’s no intention of doing so either at the moment.
Plus, we are solid as a family and a couple, and this move would be temporary, not permanent. Which is why I would ask my company ( who are actually a US HQ company) to move me rather than go down a green card route.

I'm normally a big advocate for feeling the fear and taking the harder path etc... but having moved to the US ten years ago and moved back just over two years later I would approach with some caution.

Not because I wouldn't want to move to the US but because disrupting your kids at that critical time in their education and formation of social bonds is a real gamble. It could be the opportunity of a lifetime and a great time etc but it could also be profoundly difficult and knock them off kilter at a really important time and you may not have much control over that.

As much as I love America as well it's a pretty unforgiving place to move to in many ways, very sink or swim. Your DW will be fine but I wouldn't underestimate how hard it could be for you.

The school shootings thing wouldn't come into it for me. It's obviously horrific and far more common than it should be but statistically speaking it's a bit like saying you don't want to move to Australia because you might get eaten by a Great White Shark.

‘It could be the opportunity of a lifetime and a great time etc but it could also be profoundly difficult and knock them off kilter at a really important time and you may not have much control over that.’

thats what I’m worried about, although another discussion with DW ended with her calling me a coward for not being more positive towards the idea…
Out of the children, the oldest would love to go and the youngest doesn’t.

it's a bit like saying you don't want to move to Australia because you might get eaten by a Great White Shark.

Or a crocodile or bitten by a poisonous spider or snake. That's Australia for you.😄

'it's a bit like saying you don't want to move to Australia because you might get eaten by a Great White Shark.
Or a crocodile or bitten by a poisonous spider or snake. That's Australia for you.😄'

Is it though - given the level of violent crime, gun crime and that guns are now the no1 killer of children in the USA? Not sure the two are comparable.
Every American I know is concerned about guns and gun crime - and that includes the ones who support the right to own them

From what I can see, (quick google) around 70 people are killed by sharks worldwide annually.

An average of 40,000 people in the US are killed by guns annually. Just over half are suicides so around 20,000 are murdered via firearm annually.

It is a very real concern