To think the "my child - I'll raise them how I like" attitude has gone too far now

[AggyCampbellBlack]

Inspired by, but not about, a recent thread by a grandmother.

Our individualistic culture, especially with its tendency for young adults to move across the country (e.g., for university/jobs), is isolating parents from broader family wisdom/traditions, and we just celebrate it.

I did this. DH and I moved city to study, and for our careers. We had kids and brought them up very "independently", as advised by current NHS/baby advice trends. It was really, really hard. Now, although we're all fine and basically happy, I wish I had stayed near my family, and that my kids had been brought up by the proverbial "village" (extended family and childhood/family friends). Because, surprise surprise, loving older women (in particular) who've done it before sometimes can contribute SO much better than NHS booklets, etc. Now my parents are old, and although we've seen lots of them, I wish we lived round the corner and that they could have had daily contact and input with my kids. As would have likely happened a few generations ago.

I feel like our society has done a number on us. We're increasingly individualistic, isolated and looking to centralised, state-endorsed advice/support, at the expense of extended families. And I think we're more miserable and disconnected as a result.

AIBU?

Migrants do usually build communities, though. Emigrants from specific communities tended to go to the same place, often because of ‘chain migration’ — a family member sending home the fare for a younger sibling or other relative, and setting them up with work in the new place. Virtually all the Blasket Islanders who migrated to the US in the years between 1900 and the evacuation of the island ended up in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the Irish of the Blaskets was widely spoken in the Hungry Hill area where many of them lived.

It’s not accidental, either that so many Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin in the early 70s ended up in Leicester. People will go somewhere where they know someone, where people speak their language, where someone will give them work, where there are places of worship, shops selling familiar ingredients etc.

Your title doesn't match your post. I thought it was going to be about if people wanted to discipline them a certain way, not get them vaccinated or not help with schoolwork or whatever. But you are talking about something completely different it it's not new. My parents were born in the 1920s and neither raised their kids on the same country as where their parents lived - in fact my father didn't even grow up himself in the same country as his parents lived! Boarding school in England while his mother lived in Africa.
We are far more child-centric now. Back in the day d say kids were pretty much left to their own devices until supper time. Do you remember your mum or dad sitting with you when you did homework? My husband said his parents had zero input into his post 18 life - he got himself into uni, they barely knew about it til he moved out.
I do know plenty of people who have a lot of help from their grandparents with their kids. But many who don't - due to location, working, infirmity or just not interested. I don't think that's changed. I certainly would not want to have my parents or their parents or me for that matter curtail our ambitions just to stay near family.

I live an hour or so away from my parents and scattered siblings. We don’t see them frequently but I’d say we are a close family overall. They parents are very close to the children exceptionally loving and kind and they disappear of for hours together having their own conversations and doing there own thing. My mum says children can never have too much love and children need lots of kind “aunties”. Mine are also close to their old nanny and we have family friends who happily rough and tumble and will chat to my kids independently on days out. I’m the same with theirs.

I don’t personally think it’s distance but I think there is are plenty of wierd family dynamics exposed on mumsnet which must be in people’s real lives. People being angry about family members buying kids “plastic tat” or feeding them something you wouldn’t, parenting in a different way, wanting to come and visit (not to mention showing up early or unexpectedly) and feeling endlessly violated because someone has “crossed your boundaries. Might be valid in instances of abuse and trauma, but not because you erroneously believe sugar will kill your child.

And yet a surprising number of Mumsnetters are up in arms at people working from home in case they put a wash on…

I think you’ll get very subjective answers, based on people’s individual circumstances, OP.

Your first post is very idealistic and for people who maintained good relationships with their
parents / family into adulthood, I can see that this kind of life would be wonderful. For anyone who was abused and unable to escape, or who didn’t want their parents to have any hand in bringing up their own children, less so.

I don’t have children. My brother has two: they all live in Australia, near his partner’s family. Do I wish they lived nearer so I could see him, his partner and their kids regularly? Absolutely. Am I glad they live far away from my parents so my mother can’t abuse them the way she did me? Definitely.

The problem is people are too wedded to the idea of “the village” having to be blood relations and traditional family structures. You can find those connections with friends and build your own village - but you need to meet like-minded people. Our society really doesn’t prioritise friendships and connections that aren’t either biological family or a romantic partner and I think that’s very sad. My friends offer me infinitely more than my bio family ever did or could.

All true. My wonder is why it doesn't seem to happen (at least by MN posts) for others.

If you've moved to Northumberland from London, what is the impediment to finding/cultivating a group of friends (old or young) that you support and vice versa?

We don't live anywhere near our family for various reasons but do have a good friendship group locally.

Incidentally I know three grandmothers who are the 'village' for their families and they're exhausted, when they get a phone call from one of their children the first thought is 'what do they want?' and will often tell me 'we have to do this amount of childcare as it's impossible for parents to work without loads of help nowadays' even though I do exactly that.

In unsurprising news their husbands are not exhausted or working their fingers to their bones to support their family.

Not all grannies were or are like that. Not everyone puts their pinny on and starts the cycle again. Some grannies were and are happily at work and small children are not their thing. I'm not a granny so can't judge.

No my mother said she had done her time and had no intention of helping with her grandchildren. She hasn’t seen them since June and the only thing she likes to do is criticise me (I’m never good enough). Even if we lived down the road she wouldn’t be that interested.

I want to be the village and be a support network for my kids.

Well we were the Northumberland to a new town then London and my parents never remade the connections. My father was at work and not naturally social - my mother was looking after a house in need of renovation, granny 1 and three children including my much younger brother. My father was and only child and my mother effectively so so there was no family help to be had, had that been needed.
Mum made friends but not close ones and I don't remember any babysitters or having to go to friends after school (we would have done that anyway).
Support groups are odd. Families are often splintered by distance and circumstance and character. There's no template.

I understand what you are saying, but being able to stay in the area you grew up in is a privilege of sorts. I was raised in an expensive area with few career opportunities. The only way for ordinary people to be able to afford to live there is to either inherit a lot of money or move away to build a well paid career.

I don't think it's new OP. My paternal grandparents met in China in the 1920s. Both of them had moved there for work, he from Scotland and she from the US.

My parents also moved 200 miles away from both their families for Dad's job and that was in the early 60s. We still had a "village" though and I remember friends of theirs babysitting if they needed to go out .

Everyone knew everyone else as we lived in a village. I think what another pp said about people not daring to tell kids off these days or being too worried about helping them in case it is taken the wrong way is very relevant. When I was little if you were doing something you shouldn't have been you would get a telling off from any passing adult and they would usually tell your parents as well.

If I’d stayed near my family I’d be unemployed and my kid would be growing up in a shithole with no opportunities.

I think you are looking at it through rose tinted glasses.

My dsis left her three dcs with my dm for about two hours, one evening a week. DM used to wait until she was out of sight then feed them sugar & e numbers specifically to contradict dsis. She looked after them in a room with no fireguard and would fill small dnephew's head with all sorts of sexist nonsense.

I raised my DS by myself. Ex had done a flit and couldn't be bothered to parent his son. DM had died, dsis was the other side of the country. I was delighted not to have any interference. It was so easy. I have a happy stable teen who has no confusion his life, no contradiction. He has a decent diet, security, a good life, we get on well.

The last thing I wanted was DMil or d aunt with their out of date views, bigotry and weird values. I didn't want ds' half -sister try to persuade him to like energy drinks or any other upf rubbish. I want as little input from them as possible.

You can't blame your choices on society nice try though

I agree OP.

Of course there have always been some people who move long distances away, and this can be very good for society overall (though mass movements often create a lot of problems.) it's particularly the case that some economic sectors move a lot - academics being a good example. It's important they are a more peripatetic profession. But even these people are better off when they come to live in a community with a strong structure and supports.

However, overall very strong, multi-generational communities with a lot of links are really healthy for families and society generally. They are extremely protective of mental and physical health and offer a layer of protection against problems that the state really can't. The effects that societies like this have on health outcomes are well documented, they are among the strongest protections available,

People also underestimate how much distance can matter in terms of real support from family and close friends. It has to be close enough that there isn't a really significant disruption in the day to get to your support people. An hour away isn't a lot on some ways, but it may not be close enough for active support and an integrated community network.

These strong social networks are not easy to create from scratch however. If people are moving in and out of communities frequently, they never really develop or they degrade. So a society where there is a common expectation or need for people to move for work, where housing needs mean people often have to move away from family, supportive communities will be hard to find.

I never wanted my family to have any say in how my children were raised. At the end of the day they fucked up mine and my siblings upbringing, I wasn’t going to allow that to happen again.

DH is from a very rural farming family, they were so different to mine and had a completely different upbringing but they understood our boundaries and why those boundaries were in place. It doesn’t take a village to raise children, it takes two competent parents.

A few reasons I think:

A strong community network isn't just a few people I think. It's like a web or net of integrated relationships. It's not something you can manufactire.

It is one thing to have friends, another to have people you can call upon, and who we come, for certain kinds of things. One off babysitting is not so hard, watching you kids for a week when you go into hospital is. Someone who will come to your house and help you clean it when you've become overwhelmed, is too. There are some boundaries that require a lot of comfort and a pretty deep relationship.

And I think what is most significant and relates to both those points - it takes a lot of time and repeated regular interactions to nurture these kinds of relationships. And often people can barely even find a way or place to connect with other adults, much less see and spend time with them every week. And multiple people? It's really very difficult when you start knowing now one.

Yes, but isn't that kind of the point?

You are talking about people who had to leave under difficult circumstances, and even so, understood and tried to create a supportive community for support.

The OPs community is where she was born and her parents live. But society here seems to take the view that people should usually be prepared to move around a lot for work and housing,which undermines the development of strong supportive communities. People just aren't stable enough and often are so busy making it work they don't have much time for getting involved in things like community organizations.

We're not designed at all.

I'm a bit confused. You know sugar and bad eating habits cause diabetes and increase the risk of many illnesses right?!

Though I think a challenge these days is how fast knowledge and viewpoints change. They used to say newborn babies should sleep on their front, now they shouldn't. Some people think its ok to cry it out, others don't. It means there isn't so much 'wisdom' anymore and where it does actually exist it's lost in the noise. And these are not trivial considerations.

I get this. No one would look after my eldest and help me when I was pregnant the way my mum did. No friend is going to do that for you. I have a friend who would do that but she's busy with her own kids so often only your parents are actually in a position to help.

Sure sugar and “bad eating habits” as you put it are a risk factor for diabetes and other illnesses. However if you feed you children a healthy diet overall - as I do - then it’s ridiculous to be concerned that your MIL allows your children a mars bar when they see their grandparents. The additional risk of diabetes is negligible from being given a treat so I think people complaining that family members cross their boundaries about something trivial like this are ridiculous.

I am a granny but I made it very clear to my offspring that I won't be a doting 'put my life on hold for my grandchildren' type of granny. I work two jobs and I brought my five kids up on my own. I'm tired, I'm babied out and I have no desire to start again with the next generation. Yes I will babysit, but taking them for overnights or switching my work hours to care for them? Nope. I had no say in their conception so I'm not up for the grunt work. Love them dearly but they Aren't, My. Children.