observation on family dynamics

[pinkytoe]

DH and I were discussing how all the children (in each of our families) who left the place they grew up in and made their own lives far away as young adults (at least for a few years) seemed to fare better than those who stayed close to home as adults. Even those who are college educated but did not leave the city their parents live were less "healthy" financially and emotionally. Does this hold true in your families? I just think it's kind of interesting.

[TxZen]

I can only speak for myself but I was the only child of 3 (I am the youngest) to leave the place I grew up. I find I am much more confident and sure of myself. My brother and sister freak out driving anywhere over 2 hours.

I have always felt fully free, without people I know breathing down my back. I moved back home for 1 year after the military and the stress was too much for me. They didn't like the changes in me nor the fact they could no longer control me.

Financially and emotionally? I say I am doing ok, maybe a bit better than them. My brother makes a lot of money but they spend it like water. My sister uses every excuse to why she is "poor.

So there might be something to this.

[creaker]

I wonder if it's more like you stated it - or that the ones that can do better are the ones that will move further away - and the ones that would not do as well tend to stay closer to home?

I didn't have a "place where I grew up". Between being a service brat and just moving around, I was never anywhere more than 3 years when I was growing up. I've always wondered what it felt like having a "home town".

[iris lilies]

I could hardly wait to get out of my home town, ugh. I moved around chasing a career so that was key to my moving around. If I had been born in St. Louis I probably never would have left it.

DH and his two sisters moved away from their home area to be with spouses who chased careers. Does that cont, moving with spouses?

My brother stayed in the same dull and rather awful suburb of Des Mones where we grew up, but he is fine financially. Des Moines has enough economic opportunity to keep the locals employed.

[ToomuchStuff]

I wonder if it's more like you stated it - or that the ones that can do better are the ones that will move further away - and the ones that would not do as well tend to stay closer to home?


Wondering the same. I have seen some where this is the case, but in other situations (one certainly springs to mind), out of three kids, one stayed and one went and they both less healthy. The one that stayed while the wife finished school, then they went away when she graduated, are now in a position to move back, and doing so because of a new kid and the families are here. (and her job now lets her pick where to live)
So I expect there are exceptions.

[lhamo]

Nope. Three kids in our family and we are all doing equally well, financially and emotionally, including my sister who has never lived anywhere else. She still lives next door to my mom and is the point person for medical issues, etc -- something my brother and I are very grateful for (we pitch in as well, but it is my sister who is there when the urgent stuff comes up).

[Miss Cellane]

I wonder if it's more like you stated it - or that the ones that can do better are the ones that will move further away - and the ones that would not do as well tend to stay closer to home?

I didn't have a "place where I grew up". Between being a service brat and just moving around, I was never anywhere more than 3 years when I was growing up. I've always wondered what it felt like having a "home town".

Fellow service brat here. Yeah, the home town thing--it's a mystery. Toughest part of going off to college was getting asked constantly, "Where are you from?" Do you mean where the family is living now, or where we were living two years ago, or where I was born?

Back on topic, while I know a few people who fit the description in the OP, I know a lot of people who have stayed where they were and flourished. In the town where my parents retired to, there's a family they became good friends with. There were 12 kids. The fates of the ones I know include becoming the city's Fire Department Chief, the city's Chief of Police, Superintendent of Schools, 2 teachers in local school systems, one doctor and one nurse. Most of them attended the state university, just one town over. Some have moved away, and I don't know if they did any better or worse than their siblings. The two that I know well are just really nice people, and well-respected by others.

In my own family, the youngest two siblings actually had a "home town," because Dad retired while they were still very young. One moved away after college and came back after 15 years, the other moved about an hour away. Both are doing as well as the rest of us--own their own homes, steady jobs that seem to provide them with enough money to save for retirement and still indulge in hobbies/travel/huge flat screen TVs.

[Gardenarian]

Of my four siblings, two never moved away. They don't have horrible lives, but they didn't end up with the kind of lives they hoped for. Both wanted children but kept putting it off and are now too old.

Of the three of us who moved away, two of us have done well - my sister and myself. My brother moved but took a lot of baggage with him.

My family was deeply dysfunctional, so perhaps not the best example.

I think a lot of it is timing. I have seen a lot of young people go far off to college, only to implode the first or second semester. Kids who had a more gradual leaving - attending a local college, working near home, or taking some gap time - seem to fare better.

[SteveinMN]

All three of us kids were nudged out of the nest positively by our parents. Of the three, until my brother's illness, only I ever spent any time at home as an adult. When I moved to Minnesota, everyone else in the family decided to follow suit (for their own reasons). My mom now lives across the street from us. Excluding my brother's neurological issues, of the three kids I am by far (I believe; friends confirm this) the best off financially, emotionally, and physically. Luck? Will? First-born? Outlier? Hard to say.

[Gardenarian]

Also, the ones who do move off are a self-selected group. Maybe they are more secure, motivated, or ambitious than those who stay at home.

[iris lilies]

Also, the ones who do move off are a self-selected group. Maybe they are more secure, motivated, or ambitious than those who stay at home.
Ot perhaps they are unhappy, accepting in a zen way of taking what come, and are place and family oriented.

we could theorize all we like with this anecdotal informarion.

I live in a neighborhood where people are both from "another place" and are from the local region.

We so bond strongly here, and some of that is, I think,the significant percentage of people who are from elsewhere and who choose to be here and who make their own community. I count amoung people I really like people from Iowa who found their way to this neighborhood, are a few years older than me, and who raised children here before it gentrified and became posh. But one of our closest friends grew up in suburban/rural ST Louis. She did not go far.