Eimear Hutchinson: When family lives so far away... is it a good thing, or bad?

WE live relatively far away from both our families, which regularly throws up a different set of circumstances compared with our friends who live near their families here in Cork.

I say relative because it is relative. To our friends here in Cork, the idea of travelling to Sligo regularly for the weekend is nothing short of madness, yet to people living in Australia who are many thousands of miles and hours away from home, to them the trip from Cork to Sligo probably seems insignificant.

My husband is from the UK originally and we both met when we were PhD students in Teagasc Moorepark. We ended up on a research farm outside Fermoy somewhat by chance - I was escaping the clutches of an economy in the throes of going bust by hiding away in the safe confines of research. My husband had actually moved to New Zealand to begin his PhD, but when his supervisor got a job in Ireland, he found himself having to move back across the globe to a place actually slightly less remote than he had found himself (if you can believe that!).

Some people might make a conscious decision to end up in a place, or are destined by something bigger to remain, or to go to, where they end up. Ours wasn’t a big picture decision, it was a gradual thing, we ended up enjoying the various opportunities we got in work and in friendships in Cork (because you cannot beat Cork people for their kindness) and eventually we had been here for so long, we couldn’t imagine moving anywhere else.

We did consider moves when the girls were younger but the prospects for two people with a deep interest in dairying weren’t great in Sligo, where cattle and sheep dominate the landscape. And, sorry England, but neither of us wanted to move there – traffic and the sheer volume of people everywhere being the two main reasons.

So, we have ended up in a place we now fondly call home, but we are far removed from family and all the benefits that come with living close to your home-grown support system.

That said, I am sure there might be many who would argue that perhaps having a little distance between immediate family is not a bad thing! I wouldn’t argue that, but we have made peace with the distance and look fondly on the benefits.

A lot of our friends have family living close by so it’s sometimes easy to be envious of the ad hoc way they can rely on family to help them to do the school pick-up if they are running late or to mind a child when they are sick and parents have to work. Without family, the only option sometimes is to rely on friends to help you out, and at the best of times I am loath to take advantage of people’s kindness.

A huge part of me staying off work for eight years when the girls were smaller was probably down to the fact that we both worked full time when they were younger, and having no unconditional support proved massively challenging, especially when we were new to the area too and didn’t have many friendships formed. That is something I would never change so I don’t view that as a negative to being removed from ‘home home’.

The world has changed and technology has made the distance seem smaller between us. Whether you are live close by or far away, you still need to work at relationships.

At certain times of the year, you can definitely feel the distance more – birthdays and celebrations are missed but we try to ensure we celebrate the missed milestones whenever we are present together, regardless of how much time has passed. I have no doubt, as both our sets of parents get older, distance will present a fresh set of challenges that I prefer not to contemplate too deeply yet.

Some people might relish the freedom to parent as they want without the input of their own family with whom they may end up sharing the responsibility of childcare. It can be challenging when different generations have different ideas of how a baby should be put to bed or fed, or how children should be disciplined. 

When you live far away from your family, that becomes less of an issue as the day-to-day parenting is done without much input from anyone else. Although that could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending.

I feel like sometimes we live with our feet in a few different worlds, we have our Cork world that envelops us during the school year. Then, when we get a break from school, we are fortunate to be able to easily escape without much planning and, despite the vast number of times we have gone to Sligo and England, the change of scenery always feels akin to going on holiday. There is nothing quite like a dose of the wind coming in off the Atlantic on a winter’s day in the North West to make you grateful for a home away from home.