To think this is cruel and genuinely unfathomable?

[StormCloud52]

An acquaintance of mine has a three year old child. My acquaintance is Chinese but has lived in Britain for a long time.

Today, she shared a story that her DD had had her last playtime with her little friends for a while. When people have asked why, she’s said that her DD is going to China for a year to learn the language. I assumed acquaintance was also going, but no. It is then filled with people commenting that she’ll miss DD but it’s a wonderful, selfless gift acquaintance is giving her daughter. Acquaintance agrees she’ll miss DD.

Her most recent post is them at the airport. AIBU to thinking this is barking mad? It had made me feel so sad for the little girl. Surely she’ll be confused and distressed? AIBU?

I was going to say the same. I used to work alongside many African nurses years back. Many of them had children that they chose to keep in Africa with Grandparents for education, family ties, culture, so they wouldn’t be in and out of childcare.

There is a saying that it takes a village to raise a child. I think it’s great for a child to have a number of loving adults in their lives. The nuclear family is a recent phenomenon in social terms and doesn’t really exist even now in many cultures. As many have said, in many parts of the world it is normal for a young child to be cared for by grandparents and raised amongst sprawling extended family. It isn’t right or wrong. It’s not cruel. It’s different.

100% this! A comment that should be inserted in all the MN threads where the art of debate is severely lacking and is replaced with sarcasm and nastiness 👏 👏 👏

My parents are Indian immigrants. I was born here and, despite a previous poster’s assertion, as British as the next person. Cut me down the middle and I bleed fish and chips and ice cold gin and tonics. But, I also have my Indian heritage and culture, where it takes a village to raise a family. Every member seems to have a say in your upbringing. If you did something wrong you didn’t just get bollocked by your Mum but also about 20 aunties too. We didn’t grow up attached and only bonded to our parents but to our wider family too. Did I suffer from this? Nope. It wasn’t perfect and at times it was suffocating. But I recognise I grew up in a community that nurtured and cared for me, that wanted the best for me, and I very much, 54 years later, still feel loved by them all.

No..I was just pointing out that some cultures do things that are not right.

Sending your small toddler across the world for a year is not right.

You can go "ohhhhhh but culture" all you like. It's still fundamentally wrong to separate a small child from its mother for an extended period if time.

Within China, it is very common for parents from poorer areas/rural areas to leave their children with their grandparents in their home village while they move to a large city to work in a factory.

Chinese rural workers need a Hukou permit to allow them to move from the countryside to cities and these can be very hard to get. So many rural workers move illegally to the cities to work but without a Hukou permit, their children can access schools or healthcare in the city so it is so considered better to leave them in the village and return once a year on lunar new year.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou

So while it may be suboptimal, millions of Chinese are not primarily raised by their parents so national cultural norms are quite so different about this.

There could definitely be an aspect of grandparents expectations i think. I live in northeastern China and its absolutely a thing. So much so that people meet partners with the sole intention of having a child and handing them to them to their parents, then just go back about their lives. Often not even living with their spouses once a child has been produced. I'm not saying this is what's happened here, but its possible the woman has succumbed to pressure from her parents to send them the child. (also, the woman herself was likely raised with her grandparents as her primary caregivers and not her parents). Its a strange concept, but over here it works as well as any other parenting model.

and the generations seem to live together more

I cannot understand why any one thinks that a small child being separated from its mother for a year on the other side of the planet is a GOOD thing and should be accepted as a cultural norm.

There's many cultural norms that aren't acceptable and this is one of them.

It's absolutely not in the child's interests.

Everyone is saying it’s fine because it’s cultural. Do you feel the same about FGM?

If not, why not?

And I agree, it's wrong.

But shall I just go "ohhhh but it's our culture to exploit children on Social Media" and say that you can't criticise or say that's wrong? And do you get people tying themselves up in knots excusing awful decisions so as not to appear offensive?

Some things are WRONG. And sending a 3 year old across the world away from it's mother for a year is wrong.

I can't see why any one agrees this is fine. Sorry if that makes me ignorant. But I'm allowed to think fundamentally separating children from their mother is wrong.

This UK based family do not have the same constraints though.

Who are you to arbitrate what culture has appropriate behaviour
Your arrogance is outstanding

@TURNYOURCAPSLOCKOFF You don’t like this practice and think it’s wrong. You have every right to feel this way. You are entitled to your opinion on this and to have the beliefs that you do. But it doesn’t make you right. It’s just your world view is different to others on this.

Pls do stop arguing like a child

I can see good and bad in all the cultures I can think of including ours

@YesHonestly We aren’t discussing FGM here though. Very different topic,

Bullshiiiiiiit

I judge and judge hard.

Before judging, think how absolutely staggering the task of raising a multicultural child is and how crippling the pressure is that is felt to raise your child equally appreciating and understanding both cultures. Its a heavy burden i can tell you!

I’m aware of what’s being discussed.

There are posters giving a blanket statement of “It’s cultural, so it’s fine”.

FGM, honour based violence, arranged marriages, women being seen as property are all cultural and we don’t think any of those are acceptable. I’d like to understand why some people think some harmful (either physically or emotionally) cultural practices are ok and some aren’t?

My nephew is 3 and his mother speaks another language but I can’t imagine them sending him away for a year. Because they wouldn’t. They’d miss their child too much, and he is already learning his mother’s native language as she speaks to him in that language.

I’m sure plenty of people around the world look at Britain with its rocketing rates of childhood obesity and poor mental health and think we’re cruel parents too.

I’m not sure we’re really in a position to critique others, given that what we as a society are doing to our children isn’t great.

The OP has a hill they are prepared to die on, despite evedence to the contrary.
Some folk will stubbornly refuse to learn what may make them a less uninformed member of society

This is the ignorance I'm talking about. It's fine for you to think its wrong and for it to not be something you'd personally do, but to declare it wrong is arrogance. The other things you list are abhorrent because there is no cultural or famial set up that makes it okay to abuse and exploit women; this isn't the case here.

@YesHonestly I would respectfully disagree with you on this. You have taken people’s responses and judged that this implies they are fine about EVERY aspect of other people’s culture. That’s unfair, We are all commentating on a specific topic and our responses are based on our opinion on that topic.