Reply to Do parents/in laws have any right to expect an effort at family togetherness?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm shocked at the number of young couples who seem to feel that any expected visits to or from family are unreasonable or who think its too much to expect them to help out/sacrifice for parents who've raised them. Is it just this forum or is there a total sense that parent's are there to serve children but never vice versa? I'm not talking about major financial burdens or letting parents move in with you, but occasional visits that last longer than the time it takes to eat and run, collect Xmas gifts or drop the kids off for free care?

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I think that all family members have a right to desire whatever level of contact they desire with their extended family. I think that most people who avoid family holidays (or just dread them) do so either because the logistics of those holidays are incredibly burdensome or because the family members in question have a history of dysfunction. In my family, it's both, depending on the family member. My family lives on the west coast, and while I would love if we could spend more time with them, getting my family of 4 out to my mom's house for Christmas is about $3000 in plane tickets alone. We don't all fit in my mom's house, so we need to either AirBNB or stay in a hotel, which is easily another $500-1000 for the time we are out there, plus renting a car because the number of people exceeds the number of available car seats without a rental, so add another $300 or so for rental car. We also end up paying for most of the meals we eat as my mom has limited income, so going to see my parents for the holidays, before we buy any gifts of any kind for anyone, approaches a $5000 price tag and requires a day of travel on each end of the trip. It's not something we can do every year, no matter how much we want to. On my husband's side, any holiday will have at least one instance of his mom getting super upset because DH didn't look excited about something she cooked or because he accepted a call from his dad and brought the kids in to say hi on FaceTime (parents are divorced).

Visits to and from each of our families have their own difficulties attached to them. It's not about entitlement but individual family dynamics, none of which are things that strangers on an anonymous forum are familiar with.[/quote]

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