A friend and I knocked this one around a couple weeks ago and honestly i was surprised by his answer. Now i’m curious as to what the general LR folks would say.
In order to participate you have to be married with kids under the age of 18. I want to know what is more important to you, either A) keeping your family together no matter what, B) keeping your as stable as possible - ie same house, school district, sports friends that sort of thing.
Answering ‘A’ would mean the family as a whole moves with the bread winner, changes schools, cities, homes, no matter what it takes, the family stays together
Answering ‘B’ would mean the bread winner sets out on his/her own and sends the money back to home, where the kids and remaining parent lead as normal of life as possible until the bread winner returns home.
Scenario - You and your SO have lost your jobs. Your area doesn’t allow for selling the home any time soon, you’ll need to either stay in it, or walk away from it. You’ve exhausted your search efforts around your area. There are no jobs that will hold up your payments.
A) You have found work on the other side of the country, for far less than you made before, but you’ll be able to get an apartment and hopefully start over, but the family is all together.
B) You’ve also found work in Antarctica or Iraq, but you must be gone for 6 months home for 6 months. The family will be able to stay in your home and other than missing one parent, be relatively unchanged.
either A) keeping your family together no matter what, B) keeping your as stable as possible - ie same house, school district, sports friends that sort of thing.
How can you have one without the other? Basically the ability to “Keep the family together” depends on the stability of the home, does it not? One could come up with scenarios where in order to keep the rest of the family together one family member must leave the family.
One can’t simply say “We are keeping the family together no matter what”. Nor can one say “We are keeping the family stable no matter what”.
In short, all depends on the situation, does it not?
Take it how it is. Would you leave your family for 6 months to some off the wall place in order to keep your home and the kids as unaffected ‘as possible’. Or would you pack up the troops, lose the house and try to start over some place else?
I’ll Bite, for me it’s an easy A. May help that my son is young but at 30 I’ve already changed careers to be home more so the idea of going way even if I was home every weekend is a no go for me, let alone a 6 months on deal.
It’s interesting because i know families that have done both, not to such an extreme though. One father works out of town for 2-3 weeks then comes home for the week end, the kids on the surface seem ok. Other families have walked away from the house to start over some place else.
We’ve had this discussion. “B” is our choice. Keeping the kids in a “normal” routine is the right thing to do. When I travel, and I travel a lot, I use a webcam to see/talk to my kids. It works great. Admittedly 6 months is a long time to be away but in the end you do what’s best for your family.
technically I’m not allowed to reply to this thread because I don’t have kids, but few people seem to be playing so I’m going to add my 0.02 anyway.
when i was 11 my father lost his job. he’s a vet and had been working for a commerical embryo transfer company for 10 years. he was unable to find a suitable job in the area (ottawa). i’m one of five kids so being unemployed for a long time wasn’t the best option and my mother didn’t make enough to support the family. my father took a job teaching embryo transfer at a vet school in the ukraine for a few months, then he took over another vet’s practice in new brunswick for 6 months, and finally he moved out to alberta and taught embryo transfer for another 3 months.
looking back, i think he was acting with a “family first” attitude. i never felt that he was putting work ahead of our family. he needed to do these things in order to keep our family functioning (at the time both my brothers were in university causing additional $ strain). He could have taken a lesser job, or moved us all to the ukraine but that would have caused a much larger strain on our family than him being away.
B. As ex military I know that 6 months away from home is no the forever people think it is. I am also experiencing the stress and damage just moving and hoping for the best can cause on a relationship. It is a thousand times worse then being gone for 6 months.
I don’t fit your married with kids under 18 requirement but I have several family friends that do they choose the B route. It has been good for some and for others not so good.
would you really want to take your wife and kids and move them into some shit hole apartment across the country where everyday your kids would look at you and say they hated you for making them leave their friends and also consider you would also see your wife every day and she would be reminding you daily that you are a loser bum who cant support his family.
screw it move away and start over. find a new family as well, you blew it with this one!
I would be sorely tempted to opt for choice A. Once in a new location, I could look for something better. This would be pretty selfish though. So I would probably be a choice B guy too. My kids are too close to finishing school and all of that.
I one family that is going through option B, and have lived that way since September 2007. It is exceedingly tough for them. The dad is one of those guys who was always there for his kids at the sports events and always was one of those guys who volunteered and was very involved. His son is on the wim team with my son, and he is a senior and the captain of the team this year. So far, he has only made it to one meet (an invitational on a Saturday).
A) You have found work on the other side of the country, for far less than you made before, but you’ll be able to get an apartment and hopefully start over, but the family is all together.
B) You’ve also found work in Antarctica or Iraq, but you must be gone for 6 months home for 6 months. The family will be able to stay in your home and other than missing one parent, be relatively unchanged.
c) Take them all to Antarctica for 6 mo, then winter in some nice 3rd world resort for 6 mo… or even just go home.
Seriously, it depends a lot on how much you would enjoy a little vacation away from your family (I know plenty of guys who would). Also how upset they would be in your absence as oppossed to moving and losing all their friends and other connections.
I’ve left my wife twice for 6 months at a shot when i was in the Navy going on deployments, so i know how it feels. If i remember correctly you spend the first day or so feeling like you’ve been kicked in the gut, and the rest of the time working and generally keeping your mind off it.
Now that i have kids, i know that would be much tougher, especially since mine are so young and their concept of time is not all there.
Again I don’t think you can answer that question with only the supplied information.
In dire circumstance sometimes a “Provider” is forced to take work in places they don’t want their family. What about a contract in Iraq rebuilding or in the military? What about simply taking work in a place that doesn’t provide as good a “home” as where the family is?
The “Ultimate” goal will always be to provide a home AND keep the family together. I think MANY sacrifices can and should be made to that end before either breaking the home up or not providing food shelter clothing etc.
But when faced with the decision of “Does my family have food to eat” and the answer is no, then you have to do what you have to do in order to get food. IF, and that’s a big if because it rarely is the case, the only answer is sending off one of the providers to “Provide” and the place they need to go is unsuitable for a family then the the provider must go alone.
Maybe its just where I live and who I hang out with but I know lots of people who are effectivley doing B) (leave the family behind) as part of “normal” life. In many industries, its a fairly typical set up. Lots of people travel 3-4 days a week or more and many people in the consulting field live somewhere else Monday - Friday). Even among folks who “stay home” there are lots of people who work 14+ hours per day during the week and don’t see the family much except on weekends. (add 3 hours of training to an 8-9 hour work day and you can include many triathletes in this group.).
Back to the orginal question, if I could get home most weekends, I’d vote first for moving alone rather then pull up the family roots. I’d do that as my sacrifice for the family. My kids are at an age where moving would be tough for them. They in high school so they are old enough to have real connections at home and too old to really start over somewhere else before they would be leaving for college. If they were little, I would be more inclined to move them to keep the family unit together.
