I grew up in a small, Southern town. I was dying to go out and see the world and so I did: away to school, away to work, away to live. I have bounced back a few times when it made sense,when the best opportunities were at home, and I do visit. Living away makes me appreciate home more, but going back lets me see why I left.
My folks left their hometown and came back, then never left again. They love it there. It remains to be seen what choice my kids will make. I will support whatever choice they make.
Having said all that, moving away is hard. You have to make new friends. You have to stand on your own. As a young, single person it isn’t too bad, loneliness may be the hardest part. After I had kids I did feel the distance more. I missed my mom and wanted to talk to her about my baby and wished I had her to babysit. I am not particularly outgoing so I have to work harder to make friends and find resources.
Yesterday we dropped off S1 at his summer job. We are abroad at the moment. He is in a town about an hour from where we are visiting. He has a great set up, a fantastic apartment, but he is alone in a place where he knows no one. He will meet his coworkers. He will figure out what bus to ride, where to shop, where to eat. He has to function largely in another language, but he is able to do that.Yes, I am worried about him. He did seem so alone. There is so much for him to master. However, I have done the same thing and done it by myself, no parents dropping me off and stocking my fridge for the first week, no Google maps or internet. Going through this experience, not just working at the job, but being on his own (we are going back to the US), will help him learn more about himself and what he wants.
It’s a tough balance. A few years after we married, DH and I moved 1200 miles away from family. We have moved many times since but were always far from “home”. Financially it has been very beneficial and being exposed to different cultures and parts of the country has helped us grow as people. And not being around family day to day has kept family drama to a minimum.
DH and I are pretty self sufficient so we never really missed the family safety net. But, we were never ill and I was a SAHM so we never really need much extra help. One thing that still frustrates us is that almost all our vacations have centered around visiting family. The visits require expensive plane tickets for four or hours and hours in the car. And we do like our family and miss being around them.
We experimented with living within a half-hour of our parents and some siblings early in our marriage - then opportunity and necessity moved us several hours away. That move was one of the best things we ever could have done for our own nuclear family. I highly, highly recommend choosing a place to live based on what will make you happiest. I assume you don’t yet have a partner with his/her own job to consider, which makes the whole issue more complicated. Right now the factors to consider are what your area has to offer you, professional opportunities, how important it is to you to be physically close to parents, etc. Only you can weigh these factors for your own happiness.
Our kids knew in high school that they’d never move back to this area, and they had our full encouragement and blessing to choose where to live. We are somewhat distant geographically, but close emotionally. It’s very gratifying to see our kids happy in the locations they chose.
I love my parents dearly, and since they were in the Foreign Service, I’m used to be separated from them. When my Dad retired from the FS he took a new job in a small southern college town, a good seven hour drive from us. It was a great place to visit, but it did mean they saw less of the grandchildren than they might have. About five years ago they moved to the same town as one of my brothers, so they were only four hours away. It made it so much easier to see them. My mother recently remarked that she was sorry they hadn’t moved sooner - she really likes being around the grandchildren (and her own children) and only realized how much she had missed when she was closer.
All that is to say, that yes there are disadvantages to being far from the grandparents, though the visits were extra special since they had to be full vacations. I don’t make day long drives just for a weekend. But I think you have to look out for yourself. If the job opportunities aren’t where your parents are, you should not feel guilty about moving away. It was easy for us. As a college professor, dh had very limited choices. The one he (we) chose was closest to both our families.
Actually the first five years of our marriage - we moved to Germany. I loved our time there and making our own traditions by not being obliged to visit family for all the holidays. We usually got home every other year and someone was always visiting us.
When I was your age I decided to move home so I’d have a chance at living in the area where I grew up. I met my now husband and he got a new job 4 hours away. So we moved. We bounced around a little as we settled in on an area where we then raised our kids. It was the best thing we could have done for ourselves. We learned to stand as a unit and not be influenced with our decisions on our lives by our families. This is now home for my kids, where everyone here knows them. My son and his friend crashed someone’s 4th of July party - another friend - they’re like…so much for crashing, everyone was thrilled to see us, they brought us plates of food and gave us seats to watch the fireworks…
We missed out on free babysitting, family parties and close relationships with the cousins.
We chose a small more rural area outside a major city. So we felt like we got the best of both worlds. Being the youngest I didn’t want to spend my life being told how to live…sounds kind of immature but it was good for me personally to be on my own.
If you live far away from your family, you miss out on a lot of family celebrations, opportunities for kids to bond with extended family members, and help with child care and elder care.
But you also get to avoid a lot of interpersonal conflict.
When my kids were growing up, my mother lived in another part of the country. This eliminated what could otherwise have been a very ugly problem. If she lived nearby, my mother would have wanted to help out by babysitting for my kids. And I would never, ever have allowed her to do that because she was an alcoholic who couldn’t be trusted to go without drinking even for a single evening. With her living a thousand miles away, the issue never arose.
My father (divorced from my mother) lived closer, but we still only saw him a half-dozen times a year. This minimized the impact of his often-stated opinion that we were ruining our son’s life by not insisting that he play organized sports. My husband and I were able to control the conversation enough during our infrequent visits so that our son never felt that there was something wrong with him because he didn’t like organized sports.
My father was also prone to saying that girls should be ladylike. But because he didn’t see his granddaughter’s activities on a daily or weekly basis, he never realized that her interests were not particularly feminine. Another conflict averted.
My kids are in their twenties now, and both of them live in other parts of the country (not even in the same time zone as we do). I miss them constantly, but I can also see why it may be better this way. My husband disapproves of some of the life and career choices that each of them has made. If they were nearby, there might be a lot of father-daughter and father-son conflict. But because they’re at a distance and contact is limited, the arguments are infrequent. This is a plus.
We live 800 miles from “home”. One of our sisters lives there along with one of our mothers. But the rest of our siblings and children are in: Washington DC, Chicago, NYC, Phoenix, LA and Austin. Better? Worse? Beats me.
There was a short-lived show this past year set in Dorchester, Boston called The McCarthy’s. The opening was an aerial showing where they each lived and how the “rebel” moved away … all the way around the corner. We know many families like that. Better? Worse? Beats me. I’ve seen a lot of dysfunction that recurs at least once a week as the family gathers.
And there was Barry Levenson’s movie Avalon about his family, how they’d all gather in the generation that immigrated and how they pull apart. It’s a bittersweet take.
I think much depends on where you live. We’re from Detroit and hated so much about it: the endless roads, the endless suburbs, the decay and crime in the city, the way the culture depended so much on how well you dressed. (And much has improved in the city.) We live in Boston. Not in the suburbs, where people say “I’m from Boston” but they go in a few times a year. I walk into Back Bay from my house. One of my kids is thinking about moving back but that’s because their careers (as a couple) both flourish here.
Our S currently lives 5000 miles from us and D 2500 miles. It’s a nonstop plane ride to visit either, which works fine for them and us. We are all pretty happy and healthy so far, and no grandkids.
We hope they will move back to HI before grandkids arrive on the scene, but whatever works best for them is fine for us and we encouraged them to spread their wings and fly.
They are building more independence and resilience by living further from us, which we feel is a very good thing. So far both have voiced some interest in moving back to HI. We have been seeing them 3-5x per year, between trips where we all meet somewhere, trips to their cities, and their trips to HI.
Interesting question and thoughtful of you to ask this at your age. We moved and had 4 children 2000 miles from family. I prefer the area we raised our children but totally missed having family support and fun, not just for me personally, but more for my kids all these years. No aunt, uncle, or grandparent cheering for them at a game or at a school performance. No cousins to play with or family events to attend. Friends are different, they have their own kids/family. They didn’t really know their grandparents, a couple visits a year and birthday cards in the mail is not that bonding, so I found that sad. Now that those grandparents are old or passed, that ship has sailed. I missed family drama, but I spent years gathering at holiday events with other friends with their families with envy. There are trade offs, costs, and benefits either way, you have to do what makes you happiest. Parents love having their kids and grandkids nearby, but most important is that our kids are happy. You have to decide your priorities and what you want out of life.
Great hearing everyone’s perspectives. Many things to consider!
To add some specifics, I have experienced living in areas outside of my home town and these experiences are helping me form an idea of where I do and don’t want to end up later on. My parents and I differ in how we choose spend our free time, but we do have a close relationship.
This isn’t a decision I am making right now-right now, so there’s still time. I will come back to post my decision in a couple of a years
My family loves to have Thanksgiving and Xmas to ourselves, no travel hassle, no gift giving stress either. However, we call our parents regularly. I suspect if my kids move away, there is FaceTime, modern technology is bridging the long distance gap.
Yes, but modern technology can’t do anything about time zones.
I’m on the East Coast, and I work at a job with fairly early hours. My son’s on the West Coast, working at a job with fairly late hours. It is impossible for us to communicate during the week because there is no hour of the day when at least one of us isn’t working or sleeping.
H and I have spent most of our adult years living far from both of our families, and moving many times for education/work so we never really put down roots or made lasting friendships. I do not regret living in any of the places that I lived–I had different/interesting experiences, saw things, met people, etc. in all those places. But I would have preferred to have been closer to my family so my kids could’ve built relationships, and we could’ve helped each other. There was no passing down skills/stories from grandparents, making close friendships with cousins, celebrating holidays with extended family etc.–that makes me a little bit sad. I sometimes envied my sibs and their network, and wondered what our lives would’ve been like if we’d stayed put. And now my parents are old and sick and I’m not there help. It’s hard. OTOH, going on 5 generations of no one dying in the same country/state/city where they were born on both sides of my family, so it is not like there were any deep roots in one place to start with.
There are no do-overs.
My older kids are 1000s of miles away, 3 time zones one way and 7 the other. I communicate with them a couple times a week, so it doesn’t seem like they are out of reach. They are young and single and having their own adventures. If they marry, and there are grandchildren, I would want to see them more often!
Once you have kids, the whole picture changes–you have to think about education, opportunities for them–not just your own job and where you want to be. I didn’t think of it back then, but now I see that by moving so much when our kids were young, we didn’t give them stability, which was a disadvantage to them in some ways. Again, no do-overs.
You don’t know what the future will bring. Enjoy different places now. You may someday have a spouse who insists on living near his/her family (or far away from yours!) When you need to consider kids/elderly parents, then it really becomes an issue.
I raised my children 1000 miles from my parents and did not like it. My parents have close relationships with all of the other cousins and we often feel like outsiders when we visit because we don’t really fit into their usual customs for get togethers. Just awkward
The girls had an elderly neighbor who served as a foster grandmother and we made sure we had holiday traditions (most holidays we fed geese at the local preserve).
My dad is just starting with dementia and I would love to see him more often but it is 6 hours away. I manage every 3 months or so due to work constraints.
My kids live 5 hours from me and across the continent from me. The closer one I see fairly regularly and she texts nearly every day about some little thing or another. The far away one I see every other year for 5 weeks during her summer break from teaching. We do as much as we can during that time and talk once a week or so.
I live about 200 miles from my mom and siblings. It is just right. We see each other often and my kids were able to spend long weekends with their grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. The travel was done mostly by us, but the nieces and nephews loved lots of time here, too. It wasn’t ideal when we needed last minute help when our kids were young, but H and I managed. Now that my mom is older and needs more help, I am glad I can be there in 3+ hours to take her to appointments and spend time helping her. I will add that several of my nieces/nephews now live near me. It is wonderful to spend time with them as young adults.
D went to college 1200+ miles away but returned to attend medical school. She and SIL will live here in the immediate future and both have great opportunities for work that they love. D tells me that she can’t imagine living far from us. We see each other weekly. S went to college 1000 miles away and loved his college town so much that he stayed after graduation. I miss him, but he is happy and that makes me happy. He has a great circle of friends. He is working and enjoying life as a young college grad should do. We see him about four times a year.
worth2try - Trust your heart. You may want to have an adventure and live away from your parents and siblings. If it is a good experience, that is great. If it isn’t, you could always move back. I have ‘adopted’ a few of D’s friends living away from their families and help them when they need emergency child care. I enjoy time with their kids and know that they truly appreciate it.
Earlier in this thread, I talked about some advantages of family members living far away from each other. But when elderly people begin to lose their health, a dispersed family is a problem.
When my dad was in his 70s, his older sister began to have health problems. He looked after her with no help because the family had scattered and there was no one else nearby. As her needs grew, it became increasingly difficult for him to manage, especially because he himself was elderly and didn’t have the energy of a younger person.
He looked after her until she died. And then he himself died suddenly five months later, so he didn’t get to enjoy the nice chunk of free time I would have liked him to have after his responsibility to her had ended.
I will always feel bad that I didn’t live close enough to share some of the burden of my aunt’s care with my father. But my husband, kids, and I had moved away well before this happened.
My mother always jokes that I went away to college and never came home. There is some truth to it because I got married a week after finishing my senior year in college and we settled in a new city 400 miles away from both families. We are still there, raised our family there, and, to be honest, I would not recommend it to anyone, unless they come from a family so dysfunctional that they do not want to see them again!
Raising children far from grandparents is tough, far from aunts and uncles and cousins, no matter how many times you visit, it isn’t the same. My parents are still close to my girls but they don’t have the same relationship that they would have if we’d lived closer. I know this now as a grandparent whose grandchildren live 10 minutes away. It is priceless. I have 3 Ds in the same city as us, one who is four hours away and one who is in London. We don’t interfere, or impose, or insist, in any of our Ds’ lives. We’ve made a point never to do that, but we see the ones who are close by every week, sometimes more than once. If a grandchild needs to be picked up from school, I can do it. We can get together for family dinners, we can go to school concerts and events. I have a few friends whose grandchildren are hundreds/thousands of miles away and who see them only a few times a year. It’s tough. The other issue, and one that I certainly experienced is that, when you are visiting, you’re all living together which isn’t ideal either.
We’re fortunate that we live in a large city with many opportunities for jobs, and I realize that not everyone is that fortunate. The issue with elderly parents is a big one, as it is very difficult to be caring for them/checking in on them, etc. from a distance. We’ve been through it with my inlaws and fortunately, my parents are still healthy enough that it isn’t a huge issue but we will be faced with it eventually.
Husband and I should have been more adventurous as young adults, maybe testing the waters further from home or just not worked for a while and explored the country instead.
However, raising our daughters near grandparents, aunts, and uncles is something I don’t regret. My sister and I were able to share the expense of employing a nanny. Our children grew up more like siblings than cousins. And, until they started school, the girls spend every Wednesday afternoons with my mother-in-law. Just as with friends, family bonds are strengthened by seeing one another.
As we get closer to retirement, my husband talks of moving out of state. While I would love to have a winter place in a Southern clime, I don’t want to permanently leave the city we call home. My sisters are my closest friends. I love being able to hop in the car and drive only 10 minutes (or an hour) to see them.
Looks like my oldest D will settle near her husbands family, a three hour drive from our home. I hint that she should make sure they have an extra bedroom for grandparent visits when the time comes. But realize whatever relationship I have with those someday grandchildren won’t be the same kind of closeness as they have with her nearby in-laws.
My grandparents and cousins all lived (and still live) in NJ. My parents ended up outside Washington D.C. I went to college in PA and moved to New England for my first real job. (I used to joke that I was on a trajectory to Canada, but I appear to have stalled here.) While I was married, it was nice having some in-laws close by. We enjoyed their company and would get together at least once a month. After a divorce, I no longer had family nearby, but I visited both sets of divorced/remarried parents regularly with my young daughter until she got involved in summer theatre events. I did NOT want to live in the DC area – too hot, too humid. I thought I hated the cold, but I actually enjoy the winter. If I could have “designed” my life, I would have had all my parents live about an hour away from me: close enough to visit easily, but far enough away that nobody would just casually drop in. I do regret that my daughter didn’t have a closer relationship with her grandparents. And when my parents had health issues, it was definitely difficult to be so far away. But staying near DC wouldn’t have helped because one set of parents moved to FL and the other to the eastern shore of MD, so there was no way to stay geographically close to both of them.
I am sometimes envious of my cousins’ lives. They grew up around the corner from my grandmother (which made visiting lots of fun for me). And my 4 cousins, their kids, and my uncle enjoyed spending time at a local pool where one of the kids was a lifeguard. I’m sure there was lots of drama I never heard about (and was happy not to) but I sometimes envy them their closeness.
On the other hand, I spend Thanksgiving with a nearby family (former colleague) who originally hailed from the mid-West and are similarly geographically orphaned. Now that I’m thinking about retiring, I don’t want to re-join NJ family (too expensive), my sister in VA (too hot, too humid), or my daughter in CT (she’s just getting started on her independence and may not stay there.) I love this area and all the musical activities I’m involved in and I may just stay put!
One piece of advice would be to talk to your family about expectations around visiting and mention your plans and thoughts ahead of time. I never did the former, but I probably should have. I don’t think my mom had any particular expectations – she was just happy to see me whenever I came; not sure about my Dad. One of the great things about both sets of parents: I never got the “So when we will see you again” as I was leaving (until step-mom #2). I think they both had been on the receiving end of the parental guilt trip so many times that they vowed never to do that to their own kids.
I know my Dad and step-mom #1 were disappointed that I ended up moving so far away, but they were relieved that I didn’t move to CA (where I had spent a summer interning.) And we kept up the weekly phone call tradition that started while I was in college.
Nope. I’ve never understood the desire to “explore” other places and widen ones horizons. To me, geography isn’t what’s important, it’s family and friends. Keeping up by social media, telephone or text is not the same as family dinners.
My parents moved far away from family when we were little and then moved every few years. I hated it. I envied friends who knew their cousins. I wanted to have friends that I knew for more than a year or two. By the time my family settled in one place, I was in high school.
After I got married we traveled for nine years then settled back where my family lives. I’m never budging from here. I have parents, siblings, nieces and nephews and friends I wouldn’t want to keep up with using internet.
Of my children, two live right near here. I see the grandchildren a few times a week. They know me. I can attend their events and know their likes and dislikes. I have another grandchild that lives far away. I see him a few times a year and it’s just not the same. It’s also not the same keeping up with his parents. I see their lives through texts, snapchat and FB. But I don’t KNOW them.
