My daughter has moved to Australia and she’s not coming back

[pensionsums]

She’s only 26. Moved there with her husband a year ago, only for two years was the plan. Everything now changed and they’re never coming back. Aibu to be a bit upset? Would you be upset if this was you?

Think of all the wonderful holidays you will have where you will spend more quality time with them than you would if they were living here.
And who knows what the future holds, they could be back within a few years.

It’s not a strange attitude, it’s exactly what happened to me! Life is unpredictable, I would say it’s a stranger attitude to assume something a 26 year old decides is fixed and set in stone.

They're adults. Living adult lives.
How can that be a rejection?

Brit here and I've lived in Canada for 15 years.

Yes I do think my parents were devastated when I moved. I feel guilty a lot of the time.

But I do think we (especially my two kids) have a better life here than in the UK.

My parents don't make an excessive effort to be honest - it's me flying back (with two small kids in tow, and taking two flights, no-one offers to pick us up from Heathrow, parents live up North), and me making the effort to keep in touch. That obviously includes me taking around 10 of my 20 vacation days for that trip. Both parents are retired and have a lot of disposable income.

So yes I do feel guilty.... But it does require effort on both parts.

And as an aside, I'd encourage her to stay in Australia rather than the UK. Anyone with half a brain cell would do so. So many more opportunities

Really ? You had children and never considered there was a chance they could move overseas when they grew up ? Some parents live in cloud cuckoo land.

"She's only 26"... You could not sound more patronising. Someone that age is pretty capable of making their own choice and decide what is best for them.

You make it sound like Manchester is the wild frontier where survival is a daily challenge.
It’s an OK city, not a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Why so patronising?

We have a 17yr old and we have been talking about his university options, we've been encouraging him to look further afield than the UK, especially since he has 2 languages under his belt and we have family all over the globe.

People have different points of view, I want my children to live their own lives for them, not to feel they have to stay at home or nearby, my love for them means supporting them completely to fly off and have an adventure if they wish to.

I will always have our youngest at home, he is so disabled that he will never be independent so perhaps that colours my stance for our elder two, but no need to be rude.

Help your kids to live their dreams. They need to be able to be free to follow their dreams without the burden of guilt that they are leaving family behind. I believe that they will love you even more for allowing them to fly free.

Of course you can feel upset. We go from seeing them every day to maybe semi monthly if we’re lucky and then every 2 years if they move so far. It’s completely normal to be upset.

we live away from our parents and one of my DC was just saying he wished we had family around us. I do too. H doesn’t give a shit. But it’s totally normal to want to be part of our DC lives.

I haven’t seen my parent in almost 8years. It’s hard, you’ll find it hard and they will too. Nothing we can do about it though. Supportive and welcoming when they visit is all we can do

@HerRoyalNotness Almost 8 years, that’s hard. 💐

I'd be gutted and assume she doesn't love me to move so far away.

How sad for you.
People have been moving to Australia forever for more than two hundred years. My great grandparents never saw their parents again nor visited their graves. They wrote 'home' about their children and received news via letters.
The family bonds were severed for the generations to follow.. but they flourished on both sides of the planet and made their own way.
Luckily there are planes, telephones, post offices and Zoom messages.
Plan to visit, if your budgets allow. There is nothing as good as the hug and voice of your loved one near you.

There are some very selfish parents on this thread. I thought having children was supposed to make people less selfish, not more so.

Unless you live outside the UK this is ridiculous.

Of course you can be upset but voicing that would be emotionally manipulative. Reading about the reactions of some parents to their kids not even emigrating but moving elsewhere in the same country makes me very grateful that the only expectations my parents ever placed on me were to live life exactly how I want.

This is ridiculous. Adult children don’t owe their parents close proximity. Surely you raise your kids to be strong and independent enough to go out and follow their dreams? No one should be having kids with the expectation that they “repay” them by staying on a leash.

The advice to follow them abroad makes me cringe. If I moved abroad and my parents upped sticks and followed me (they wouldn’t, they’d see that as incredibly intrusive) I’d be really fucking pissed off, just let me live my life!

Maybe my attitude has been shaped by the fact that the majority of my friends were well and truly married by 26 and are still with their husbands in their 60s/70s. Just beause it happened to you doesn't mean it will happen to someone else - and 26 year olds are more than capable of knowing what they want from life.

That’s a weird thing to assume that she doesn’t love you .

What a ridiculous thing to say! I would hate to be one of your children, it seems you think they should be kept on a leash and not have lives of their own.

Are you having difficulty reading more than one sentence at a time?
There is no "voicing" going on. Other than the love and support I always show.
But I will miss having them close, I will miss seeing my grandchildren growing up. Just as I know my mum missed having my children in her day to day life. Hth.

I grew up in a family that's been peripatetic for generations. Of my eight great-grandparents, at least two grew up as expats: Scottish people in Germany, French people in Italy. Four of them moved continents (before meeting each other!); of the rest, only one of them stayed within a few hundred miles of where they grew up. I can tell you stories about all of them.

I live three thousand miles away from my parents. My husband moved in his thirties from the UK to Australia, and then in his fifties to the US. His adult kids are in Aus.

We all manage to maintain close, lively relationships. We talk all the time and prioritize visits. We don't go for conventional holidays: travel is either work trips, family visits, or ideally both. Two weeks ago, a cluster of us were all together in Montreal. Next Christmas will probably be in Australia and the following year in the UK. Right now, my dad is here in California, sitting in front of the fire across from me as I type this.

It's not for everyone but for us it's been good. We feel at ease in the world, make friends easily, and we're solidly involved in each other's lives.

That said, I understand your distress, OP. I mention this simply as an example of how families can remain close over distances. I hope you can find some peace with your daughter's move.

I moved across the country for a year (guaranteed) and my stiff-upper-lip mum burst into tears the night before I left.
The day I got home (I drove with my cat in my lap 3000 miles), her loving, welcoming words were, “you’re filthy!”
Mums.

I left the U.K. 6 years ago, and my mum guilt trips me a lot about it, especially since I had a daughter. She got extremely upset that her first language won’t be English. All of the stuff about depriving baby of her birthright, culture, and grandparents, etc (my partner isn’t British).

That said, I’m only a 1.5 hour flight away that costs around £50 return, and she’s only bothered visiting twice, was grumpy because it was ‘cold’ (she chose to visit in winter) and yet still manages to find time to visit Spain for 3 weeks twice a year.

She has my sister living 5 minutes away back in the U.K., and still complains she doesn’t see enough of her. I think she needs some better hobbies honestly.

I forgot to add that you are not being unreasonable at all to be upset. Of course you are! I would be too if it was my child (and I’m the one who moved to Australia at 28). You need time to be sad and to grieve the change in relationship. It’s not lesser, it’s just different. You’ll make the time together even more special. Please don’t wait around for her to return like some posters suggested will happen or your life will be on hold. I’d hate my mum to mope about hoping I’d come back and not really living. I want her to have a great life and have things to tell me about when we talk.

As someone who is brown British living in Australia, I don’t think on balance Australians are particularly more racist than British people. They are probably more open about what they think (more so about indigenous Australians) but British people say and think similarly, when they think they are among friends. Reform is doing very well in the UK and then there was Brexit as well. Most of the Australians I know thought Brexit was nuts from an economic perspective.

Australia has nearly twice the percentage of overseas born population that the UK has (at 30%) and its diverse not just British immigrants. I find they don’t moan quite so much about immigration as what you see here on MN!