Ask Em: Moving Away From Family

Love, love, love this post! And very interesting thoughts about the cultural college-choice location differences. Of course I went to Elon (only 45 mins away) but felt like everyone at Elon was from the Northeast or Ohio!
I grew up here in NC with only my parents and sister. No other relatives in the state, so just the 4 of us! As a child, I didn’t really notice this at all. We are a very tight-knit four. I’ve never thought about whether or not that was tough for my parents, but they love it here and I guess they created our family culture on their own – public school, church every Wednesday and Sunday, and of course we are all die-hard Duke fans! ;)
My husband was the opposite and grew up near extended family… in Annapolis having Sunday dinners with his grandparents each week. He chose to move to NC for college and pretty much swore he would never leave, so now here we are near ALL of my family (my parents and sister’s whole crew) and he is the only one from his family here in NC.

Thank you and Leslie for sharing your thoughts! This is something I have thought a lot about as well. My dad was in the military growing up so we never lived closer than 3 hours to family (usually more like 2000 miles) and my extended family was never very present in our lives (we traveled every couple years or so to see grandparents/cousins, but with very few exceptions, most never traveled to see us). My parents got married and immediately moved to Germany so when I graduated high school, I thought nothing of going to college in Indiana from Arizona. Isn’t that what everyone did? Fast forward to meeting my husband who had lived in one place his whole life, surrounded by extended family and friends who were in 2nd or 3rd generation of friendships. I admit upon meeting him that I saw his world as small (I was a world traveler!) but getting to know him, I also saw the benefits of having family nearby and long running friendships. I knew that marrying him would mean that this would be my life too and I came around to that. It’s not all sunshine and roses (some of those broken friendships a generation or two ago still manage to trickle down tension to our generation) but my kids are 4th generation at their school, my son’s best friend is a 2nd cousin, my MIL comes over in the afternoon to meet the school bus and our holiday get-togethers are now absolutely bursting at the seams. My parents and sisters still live in Arizona but we are fortunate that we all have the time and financial situation to travel regularly back and forth. My parents were just here for two weeks and got to experience daily life with us (and my husband and I went on our first weekend getaway in 9 years!) I don’t know what the answer is (my sister is 1 hour away from my parents and neither side are comfortable spending too much time together) and while my inlaws are close, they also cause a lot of stress and frustration and were not willing to help with childcare until our youngest was 5. I don’t think a lot about our situation (we’re not going anywhere!) but I do think about our kids. Will they stay in the area? Will they include us in their adult lives? Will we get to be active grandparents? So many of my peers want little or nothing to do with their parents and I don’t want that for us! I hope our investment and enjoyment of our time as both a family unit and an extended family (which requires lots of traveling!) is setting us up for a close life-long relationship.

I loved this post and would love seeing a recurring “advice column” series here on a variety of topics!

I grew up in the Twin Cities (Minnesota) and my parents, brother, and all of my aunts, uncles and most of my cousins still live in the Twin Cities. I went to college a couple hours away and met my now-husband, whose parents and most of his family live in the Twin Cities, too. When we started our family we lived about 30 minutes away from each of our parents. We moved last year and are now even closer to my parents (about a 12 minute drive) and within biking distance to brother and his family. My parents also own a lake home in northern Minnesota, so especially in the summer, we spend even more extended time with them when we visit the cabin.

I love it, especially the babysitting help, the little everyday moments like stopping by to borrow something or help with a quick yard or house project, and casual weeknight dinners or events. One interesting big side-effect of living close by both our families (and especially the amount of time we spend with mine) that I only came to appreciate recently is that it really takes the pressure off of the big holidays to be special/perfect family bonding time. Of course we still want to enjoy our families on days like Thanksgiving and Christmas, but these times feel a little lower stakes (and for us, more relaxed) when we know my kids will see their grandparents and cousins again soon.

Of course, there are some downsides, too, especially when it comes to finding appropriate boundaries around how much time we all spend together (especially me being conscious of how much my husband wants my parents casually stopping by and popping into our life). I’m positive that having family who we love and trust living nearby makes raising kids easier, and that’s something I’m very grateful for, but recognize I haven’t had to deal with and grow from some challenges that would exist if we didn’t. But overall I’m grateful to live where we do near the family we have.

My husband and I met in college, both over 1000 miles from each of our families, and he was in the ROTC program so I knew when we got engaged that being near to family wouldn’t be in the cards for us, at least not for extended periods of time. We also had a baby (and then a second!) surprisingly fast after getting married (we’ve been married 4 years, have 2 kids, have lived in 3 states, and are on our 6th home ????) and so we had to grow up/get used to being married/settle into life as a family relatively quickly and very far from family. I think it’s been sweet for us to have that independence and to really think about how we want our family culture to be, but I also regularly pine for living near family. I don’t know if it would be wise for us to live near by… I find it easy to slip into mothering how my mom mothered when near her for extended stretches which I don’t love, and my husbands family can be difficult. But part of that difficulty is the fact that we live far away and their other two sons, one of which is married and also has a child in between my two kid’s ages, live within 30 minutes of them. We are regularly left out of the loop, obviously don’t participate in the 4 generation Sunday family dinner, and they regularly watch my niece for overnights, random date nights, or any other afternoon when my BIL and SIL are just feeling like they want a break. But I know it’s hard for my SIL to be close to my in laws too who can be overbearing. There are so many trade offs! We’re in the stage of contemplating having my husband get out of the Army and thinking about where we might land if so (ironically NC is up there, although there aren’t too many aerospace engineering positions there unfortunately). I would love for my kids to know their grandparents deeply, like my husband and I did, but I don’t know if *I* want that for myself. It’s hard making choices for your well being but also for your children’s and balancing it all.

Apparently I have a lot more thoughts on this than I expected to! All in all I loved reading this conversation and the questions you posed to consider in reverse for moving toward family in the next few years :) as always, new posts on your blog are a joy!

Love this post format (I could think of a lot of things to ‘Ask Em!’) and also the topic is one dear to my heart. My husband and I just made the difficult decision to move away from family that we love. For us, it was mainly location driven. We had the opportunity to move to our dream city, and it truly has surpassed all expectations. It does help that this city comes with incredible public school systems, low cost of living and moderate climate :) for us, the move was worth it 100%. Of course, the negative is I miss our family, but I love knowing we get to share new, exciting experiences when we visit them or they visit us and (as a planner) it’s fun and builds anticipation to map out the entire year in advance for when we’ll get to see each other. Is it more work? Yes. More inconvenient? Yes. Do we have to be more intentional? Yes. But those have been challenges we happily take on in exchange for the other factors that prompted our move.