Does moving four hours away from adult children make parents selfish?

[Whatthefork1]

Does moving 4 hours away from your adult children make you a bad parent?

Around 7 years ago my mum and stepdad moved a 4 hour drive away, down south. It was very upsetting for me at the time as I have always been so close to my mum. This was before I had children, my eldest is nearly 5 so a couple of years before that.

I was at the time 24 and in a long term relationship with my now DP who I have two children with, we owned our own home and had our own life, as we still do of course. However mum and stepdad knew that we were going to start a family very soon.

DP has always said it was selfish and makes them not great parents; because why would they want to move so far away from us. I have always tried to defend their actions by saying they have always wanted to move there it’s their dream etc. but on the other hand, even though my children are still small, I can’t see me ever wanting to move that distance away from them, and not having a close relationship with them and one day their children.

dont get me wrong, we are still very close and I chat to my mum on a daily basis. They visit us / we visit them probably every 6-8 weeks. But I can’t help but feel how much easier and how much nicer my life would be if my mum were still close by, being able to pop over to her for a cuppa tea, go out for the day together, spend time with the grandchildren etc. it’s been really hard not having that especially during the early postpartum days.

So i’m interested to hear other people’s views on this.

I think young people are very used to a comfortable life and their expectations are that it should stay that way. As parents we are much more involved now - we probably do too much for our kids and they have become very accustomed to having help from us whenever they need it - this is only possible because we have fewer children now - but also society expects us to be a lot more involved. So it's not surprising that adult children have been socialised into believing their parents should be on hand to help them through all their life challenges - where as our generation were much more accustomed to just getting on with it - making our own decisions and dealing with the consequences - our parents rarely stepped in - and we rarely asked.

I don’t remember latch key kids at all. My mother didn’t work until her youngest child was 12. I would never have left my kids alone until they were teenagers. Neither my mother nor myself had any help at all from grandparents. None of my friends were latchkey kids either. I don’t know where you got the idea that this used to be normal. We did walk to school though.

I remember loads of latchkey kids from the 70s - but I've asked AI because maybe I was the one who grew up in a bubble.
From AI
Asked - Were latch key kids normal in the 70s?
Answer - Yes, latchkey kids—children who let themselves into empty homes after school—were considered normal and common in the 1970s. This was largely driven by a rise in dual-income households and divorce rates, with many Gen X children (born 1965–1980) managing themselves between 3 to 6 p.m. due to limited daycare

That’s exactly how I feel when it comes to my own children.

I would’nt exactly call that privileged. It’s a very unfortunate and sad situation to have a parent who you wouldn’t like around your children and I do have that situation with my MIL (not my step MIL who I have mentioned in previous posts by the way), but the opposite doesn’t mean your privileged.

I guess it all depends on how long ago we are talking. From my own experience, when I was a child my mum never worked, she was always there to take and pick us up from school and we had many weekend visits and sleepovers at our grandparents.

None of those things were ever my normal. Extended family. What's that? Grandparents? Never knew them. My kids grandparents work full time. What village? The ones I get together with together with the children? It's a huge assumption that there was all this help and that families had each other and didn't have to work 'back in the day', whenever that was.

I agree. I also notice young adults often don't want to start where their parents had to start. They don't want the small starter home. They want to get straight into a big new one. They don't want to start with second hand furniture like we did. They want nice stuff now. Nice cars. A job isn't just a job that pays the bills. It has to be fulfilling. I think they are maybe more likely to achieve those things by delaying childbearing now, but expectations are so much higher.

@Whatthefork1 did your DM previously live in her home town when she had you?

I don't. I've seen friends do the relocate and leave some kids behind thing, but I wouldn't do it. That said, I don't think it's wrong for those who feel they can do it.

I don't think that was the norm. I remember my friends visiting grandparents at weekends but I never had any. My mother worked. I was a latchkey kid from the age of 12 until she got home around 7. It was no big deal and very common.

Reading many of these posts, I can only assume it is a geographical different then, i did grow up in a small town/village. when I was a child we were all a very close knit family, and we would spend a lot of time with grandparents, aunts, cousins.

Even now I know many families where the grandparents are heavily involved in their grandchildren’s lives and seemingly happy to be.

Aren't you privileged then?

I don’t remember latch key kids at all.

DH was a latchkey kid - though MIL did get more help from her parents and sibling than she likes to remember but most of that was preschool ages.

My parents got no help from DGP - though we saw them regularly and they got all the elder care responsibility when that was needed.

Both my DP were latch key kids - and it was important to them to have someone at home for us so DM worked school hours and then evenings and weekends when Dad was around. By secondary school most of my peers were latch key kids but it was rarer in primary - they often went to neigbours rather than family in my village - reciprocal arrangments as most didn't have family in the village left - my parents occaionlly had them but often felt they ended up doing more of the work.

My parents massively helped sibling partly because they got no help - but even when we lived nearby we didn't get that support - we got nothing even in emergencies.

Yes she did, when I was around 2, we moved 12 miles away to a smaller town and that is where she lived until she made the 4 hour move. I moved out and in with my current DP when I was 19, this was in the same town. Me and DP now live in an other town around 30 mins away.

Did you consult your parents whether they were happy for you to move 30 minutes away? I'm guessing not. But it's not okay for them to make a decision to move away themselves?

Your DH's attitude of thinking your parents need to live their life for you both is still not covering him in glory.

If that is what you’d like to call it then so be it. I fully understand not everyone lives in the same way, but I can only comment on my own experience and I’m not going to feel bad because of the way I were bought up.

I lived somewhere like that for bit of kids childhood. Was awful for us as paid childcare was hard to find as everyone else had family and HCP and schools were very off when you had no chillcare and had to take kids often refusing to belive you.

I really envied it - and was constantly amazed how taken for granted it was to point I got lectured on going back to work and then had to go through childcare costs for kids we had and point out how high it worked out being and many argued it couldn't be that high .

You are massively privilaged - maybe be start being greatful for that rather than feeling hard done to you haven't got even more.

Nor should you. You are very lucky to have had extended family around you. I miss that my parents chose to take that away from us completely.

I do think you are mistaken that your experience is the norm (there's a huge range of experience).

I also think your DH is a brat for expecting your parents to live their lives constrained by his wants.

So you have never lived more than 30 minutes from where you were brought up, never went away to university? Do you think you will never want to see/experience another part of the country? Do you want your DC to have such a narrow experience?

We made that move after they moved, but regardless no I wouldn’t have asked them if they were happy about it. It’s 30 minutes away! A little different to 4 hours away.

for the record as I’m getting sick to death of saying the same thing over and over, I did not say it were not okay for them to move and I supported their decision.

Also my DP does not think they should “live their lives for us”, he simply can’t understand them wanting to move that distance as he wouldn’t do it himself and yes he has said it is selfish of them- we’re all allowed to air our opinions.

My mum moved to Spain and told me it had always been her dream (except she had never mentioned it before). Our relationship deteriorated to the point where I rarely see her now. My kids don’t even know her. It makes me sad and angry

You should ask him why he thinks it is selfish. I bet he'll come up with some self-serving reason, or some reason that comes from an expectation that your parents should sacrifice their wishes for someone else.

I can understand not wanting to move that far away but that's a different thing to saying it is selfish. Saying an action is selfish often comes from a place where you think the person is not giving what someone else thinks they are owed.

No I haven’t. I didn’t go to university as I went straight into a job from college. We do and will continue to experience different parts of the country and the world, it doesn’t mean we have to move there. We have no reason or desire to move right now, we have our lives set up here. Is that such a bad thing?
I want my DC to do whatever they want to in life, if that is moving to the other side of the world then great, if that’s staying here then also great. It is whatever they choose.

@Whatthefork1 what is his definition of selfish in this context? Will he see it as selfish if your DC want to move away?