Care & Feeding: Sick of Moving

[minoanmiss]

Dear Care and Feeding,

Growing up, I moved four times before age 15. My family wasn’t in the military or anything, and we didn’t struggle financially—my parents just couldn’t decide which jobs they wanted or how close they wanted to be to extended family. It destroyed my ability to make and keep friends, and had long-lasting impacts on my self-esteem. I swore I’d never do that to my kids.

My wife is a doctor who is about to finish residency. We have 2-year-old twins. My wife can earn slightly more money, and have slightly better job prospects, if she does a two-year fellowship (kind of like an extended residency) for which we will have no say in location. I want to jettison fellowship and move immediately to the city where we’ll stay long-term. I want my kids to make friends at preschool who they can grow up with. My wife is insisting that our kids are too young to remember this move anyway, and as long as we settle down by the time the kids are 4 or 5, that will provide enough stability. I’m extremely aware my past history with frequent moves is probably coloring my judgment on this. What say you? Should I bite the bullet and deal with the brief move in exchange for a slightly higher chance of long-term stability thereafter? Please help.

—Done With Moving in Minneapolis

Dear Done With Moving,

I’m with your wife on this. I can’t remember anything that happened to me when I was 2 years old—can you? Not to mention, how many times have women taken one for the team to further the careers of their husbands? The answer is often.

I don’t discount your history, but kids are resilient and can handle almost anything if they have supportive parents to help them. Also, your kids have the extra benefit of having each other to lean on as twins (I’m a twin, so I’m speaking from experience here).

You’ll be fine, your kids will be fine, and your wife will thrive in her chosen career on her terms. Everyone wins.

—Doyin

Comments

[adrian_turtle]

There are two issues here, and Care & Feeding only addresses one of them. The OP says they are worried about their kids, and C&F says the kids will be fine. Sure. It looks like the OP is ALSO worried about their own ability to cope, because their old anxieties are getting triggered. This is the kind of thing that can be worth working past, without being easy to work past. It certainly isn't the kind of thing that disappears if you just ignore it.

[topaz_eyes]

Yep. LW may want to discuss this with someone to work on coping strategies, because kids do pick up on a parent's distress.

[topaz_eyes]

To be fair, at four or five the kids will remember parts of the second move, and they may experience some distress at leaving friends and familiar places. But LW's wife is correct, and LW can hopefully set aside their misgivings to help the kids through it as needed.

Edit to add LW may want to discuss these feelings with someone, certainly before the second move.

[mommy]

LW should consider that their children's preschool will probably not have a say over which kindergarten the children go to, so the kids are going to have to make new friends anyway. Minneapolis has a lot of elementary schools, so there's a fair chance that exactly none of the preschool friends will end up in the relevant kindergarten or first grade classrooms.

I can understand that LW feels strongly about not changing homes often (or at all?), but there's a point where it negatively impacts their family's income and quality of life.

[shirou]

Agree LW needs an outsider's perspective to separate the likely effects of his wife's fellowship on their kids (minimal) from the difficulties he experienced as a result of his parents' frequent moves. Maybe he needs a therapist; maybe the columnist's response will be enough.

Why is this entry tagged "entitlement issues?"

[minoanmiss]

Because LW is considering shoving a wrench into their wife's hard-worked-for career progression due to their personal issues about moving, and I suspect that downplaying the importance and magnitude of a woman's career, or at least a spouse's*, may be one of the factors in doing so.

* so many people of assorted genders seem to minimize their spouses' interests and accomplishments, and it continually mystifies me.

** I posted this letter in part to get other perspectives on it because I found myself pretty unsympathetic to the LW, and I'm usually pretty sympathetic to "X traumatized me as a child" explanations.

[shirou]

I agree with you that (especially male) people tend to minimize their (especially female) spouses' interests and accomplishments, and there are hints of that here where LW questions how much the fellowship will help his wife's career—he uses the words "slightly" twice. But taken as a whole, I don't see LW as entitled because:
(a) LW appears to be genuinely concerned for his kids, not his own selfish interests;
(b) LW recognizes his need for an outside perspective and, I believe, is earnestly seeking one by writing to an advice columnist.

[lilysea]

I have a pretty sensitive antennae for entitlement issues, especially men towards their female partners, and I did not get that vibe.

I got "I am genuinely worried about my children" and also "my childhood trauma has been activated" vibes.

I got the sense that LW would be rejecting a move which benefited his own career goals just as strongly, possibly even more strongly.

[minoanmiss]

That's why I posted this, after all, to get other perspectives. I trust your judgement on these matters.

[lemonsharks]

FWIW, I’m picking up massive entitlement issues from the LW and I’m also pretty attuned to them.

it reads very much like a person who doesn’t want to do the work of working on their* issues and is instead cloaking that discomfort in completely unreasonable levels of “concern for the kids”

*his; I’ll eat my hat if this isn’t a het relationship. queer people tend to specify they’re queer in these letters and allocishet people tend not to.

[kellyblah]

I think something might be getting left out with the extended fellowship: new doctors who go to "undesirable" locations may get a lot of forgiveness of their medical school loans. This may skew things a lot more, the family will be able to save up earlier, for the kids' college funds, or other areas.

I am speaking from US-base experience of friends -they went to a not so lovely area of a rural state in order to get some amount of loan forgiveness for med school. They also had two young children, it was a very similar situation, but my friend was pretty OK with going to the "not fun" place, and they actually ended up staying beyond what he had to for the loan help terms.

[xenacryst]

Dear LW, by the time I hit middle school, I had four different grade schools and three preschools under my belt and three different places to call home, and at least one of those had happened mid-year. By the time I left for college, I'd added two more schools and another home (and when I came home from college, that was to yet another state and home). I had friends, and I kept friends, and I made new friends. Like you, I was not a military brat, but my parents were stable, loving, and wanting a career (well, one was retiring and then dying, but that's another story). Moving certainly was memorable, and leaving friends was sometimes hard, but moving did not destroy my ability to make friends. And moving did not destroy your ability to make friends - I would look to your parents and extended family for clues there. The tell is your phrasing: "my parents just couldn't decide ..." That speaks volumes to me about how well they supported you emotionally through these moves - they couldn't even support themselves!

So, what to do going forward. C&F is right, but not because your kids won't remember the move (they probably won't, that's true), but because if you provide love, support, and opportunities to stay in touch, your kids will turn out well. Approach a move with curiosity and excitement - we get to explore a new part of the country (or world)! You will make new friends, and learn about different people that live in different places. Before you even get to your new home, start looking up schools, summer camps, and things for the kids (er, yes, I do realize a pandemic is still going on, but there will still be opportunities), and, when they're old enough, involve them with that and get them interested and excited about their new home. If you approach moves with fear, resentment, and a resignation to the drudgery of sorting and packing (which, oh, god, I can identify with, because boxes, boxes, boxes), then your kids will learn that moves are scary, that new people and places are scary, and then yes, they too will have trouble settling in.

As someone else mentioned, that's only part of the answer, though - you also need to look out for yourself. Moves are big, but they don't have to be paralyzingly scary. Get support from your partner, start looking at the kinds of things you can do in the new location. Bring your hobbies with you (but also be prepared to find new ones, because there will be different constraints and opportunities). You have young kids, about to start preschool, and one thing that is common among preschool families is that sense of starting new things - whether they're new to the area, new to being parents of mobile beings, or whatever. There are bound to be coffee circles, mixers, weekend play dates (and yes, COVID flavors these things, but doesn't remove them entirely). Let them show you new things, and don't be afraid to say, "I'm new here, and it's hard, and can you help me?" The parents who hang around the coffee circle? Absolutely LOVE to show off how much they know or share their new favorite hangout. And I also guarantee that some of them will be more socially awkward than you, and you'll still see each others' humanity and offer to pick up their kids after school when they've got a big meeting they can't miss.

And if that all doesn't help, then yes, there's professional help. I'm not going to say the T word, but I'll just mention that there are people out there who love to hear you talk about yourself and will then happily guide you into new things about your new home that speak to you.

I wish you all the luck in your moves. There's a lot of world out there.

[tielan]

LW really needs to hear this advice.

[redbird]

Both the letter writer and Doyin are assuming that the fellowship will be a two-year stay, rather than somewhere they might decide to stay. If they have that strong a connection to their chosen long-term home, that will help them and the children feel rooted.

Even if the LW and their wife are completely sure of where they want to live, and it's neither Minneapolis nor anywhere that the wife would be offered a fellowship, moving to X City when the children are four, and staying put for the next twenty years, is quite a bit of stability. The letter writer even says that the advantage of taking the fellowship is a slightly higher chance of long-term stability: the fellowship wouldn't be the start of a nomadic existence.

[lemonsharks]

This is the sound of me hissing at the LW like a spooked cat, both in terms of THE KIDS ARE TWO and in terms of willingness to hold his wife’s career back because he’s uncomfy with the prospect that the two year olds might not have bffs they’ve known since diapers.

The wife who had *twins* while going to *medical school*.

I’ll eat my hat if this isn’t a het relationship. queer people tend to specify they’re queer in these letters and allocishet people tend not to.