Uproot yourself
We all know stories of immigrants who came to the UK for a new life, a better life. Some of you reading this may be from an immigrant family. It takes a lot of courage to uproot yourself and your family and start again in a foreign land. Depending on the circumstances it could be scary, exciting or both. But what about those kids that were left behind? What was it like for them?
I’m talking about children whose parents went abroad for the search of a better life and left them at home with relatives until they came back to get them, or sent for them, several years later.
All parents (unless they have issues) want the best for their children and parents who left their kids back home did so for a good reason. Money and opportunities might have been scarce, lives may have been at risk, or sometimes parents may have been unable to cope financially, physically or mentally with bringing up several small children and moving abroad.
I’m writing like this kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore, but it does. Every day parents around the world make the decision to separate themselves from their kids. And it’s not just people who are fleeing poverty or war.
"He’s in Ghana with my Mum"
Around the same time that I had my eldest daughter, who is almost seven, one of my neighbours had a baby boy. Both her and her husband were originally from Ghana and now lived and worked in London. Every time we bumped into each other we’d chat about our babies. Then one day I saw without her baby and asked how he was. “Oh he’s fine. He’s in Ghana with my Mum”. I was surprised that she was ok with her six month baby going abroad without her, but then she told me that her son would be staying there until he started school because they were “not ready for childcare costs”.
She must have noticed the expression of shock on my face because she quickly added “It’s ok, Mummy is taking really good care of him”. I’m sure she was, but it’s not the same as your own mum taking care of you is it? And won’t you be missing out on bonding with him? These were of course questions I never asked her.
Sense of duty
When I think about the adults that I know who were left behind in the precious years of their childhood. Some of them were raised lovingly by their grandparents, some were neglected and learned now to fend for themselves, and others were mistreated in the homes of extended family. Most of my knowledge of these scenarios comes from my Indian and African relatives and friends, but I recently met a Cantonese woman who was left in Hong Kong while her parents moved to England to find jobs and a home. She was brought up by her grandmother who showered her with affection and when her Mum came back to collect her and her siblings and took them to start a new life, she found it hard to bond with her. She told me “I don’t know why they bothered even having kids”, and that even now she doesn’t feel any love towards her mum, only a sense of duty.
My own Dad told me of a similar experience. When he was only five years old his Mum was finding it hard to deal with four young children and was suspected to be suffering from depression so my dad and one of his sisters was sent to live with his Grandmother in the village in Punjab for two years. The rest of his family remained in Delhi. He developed a close bond with his sister and his grandmother but never had the same emotional closeness with his Mum. Despite this he kept in touch with her and provided for her until she passed away last year.
Rebelled
A friend of mine was left with her grandmother in Ghana while her parents came to London. One day when she was eleven years old, her mum came to take her to England. She told me that she always rebelled when her mum told her what to do because she was resentful that she had left her for so many years.
There may be cases where parents and children have been apart for years and end up being really close, but I don’t know of any. From my own experience of being a mother, I think that the relationship between parent and child would be severely affected if they are apart for the early years of childhood. In this context time apart means months or years not a weekend at Nani’s house.
***No romance weekends! ***
My husband is the other extreme. He’s not cool with our kids staying anywhere for a night without us, so a romantic get away for two is out of the question. Either we all go or no one does. While sometimes I think this is OTT I do think that if you want to really know your kids and have a close relationship with them then as a parent you need to be the one who is there for them at night when they cry, who listens to what they did at school that day, who dresses them and wipes their bum (and teaches them how do it themselves!).
I believe that kids should be kept close to their parents and that’s kind of the point of having kids…to raise them! But we don’t all lead identical lives and there are some instances where it’s in the kids best interests to be kept away from their parents.
Some parents are willing to sacrifice time spent with their children in order to provide them with a higher standard of living. To me, material things are less important and I want to be with my kids as much as I can. However, life is unpredictable and there may come a time when my husband and I have to send our kids away from us to be safe, or have to leave them with other family members for their own good. I pray that day never comes but if it does, we will know that our relationship with them will never be the same. But we will do it because we love them more than they will ever know or understand.