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Empty Nest Back Home - An Urge for Reunion Overseas.
What the parents in such cases discussed with me involves a hard but significant family decision.
Some parents opted for Permanent Residency or PR (without giving up their citizenship of their country of origin) if they are convinced to move to where their adult off spring have migrated to.
If a parent has most of the children in the same foreign nation, this can increase the chances and odds of getting the PR. Other parents pay an investment sum, or the adult children place financial back up for the parents, to governments of countries which offer such options.
Those who relented with taking up a PR tell me of their underlying reasons.
- Evaluation of the empty nest syndrome - why have 2 empty nests, one in each country?
- Religious group and social networking viable in new land with adult age children and their own young families.
- Flexibility and financial capability of parents to travel back to their source country for sentimental, cultural, social and climate variation reasons.
- Bonding with the grandchildren when at a young age can attract migration of the grandparents, but these kids do grow up.
- Readiness at an elderly age to adapt to the climate and temperatures of the new land.
- Acceptance that the society and nation settled in can also change in parameters of reliability, safety and other attractive factors when they migrated.
Parents who decided to not migrate with their adult children have other reasons.
- Individuals who are more set in their ways can find more challenges, especially with lack of pass time hobbies, loss of social networks and reluctance to adapt to norms of a different culture.
- Everyone must cook ourselves as eating out can be not so accessible or are more expensive to buy.
- Parents still have a strong network of siblings, other relatives and friends back in the country of origin.
- Baby boomers can find it hard to adjust to the demands on the body and health with different climates and temperatutes.
- Adult children and their own families can be found residing across different nations and continents.
- Parents realise they must truly want it for themselves as well to migrate - and not just for the adult children and their families.
- Inheritance matters, regulations and rules within the country of origin can underpin strong reasons not to migrate.
- Acceptance in the mindsets of the parents of the socio-political changes, conditions and restrictions in the country of origin.
What is the vision of elderly parents as to how they want to spend their golden years?
What is in the hearts of adult children overseas as they begin different lives, off spring and careers away?
Advances in technology, mobility and communication across vast distances do reduce the gap between elderly parents and adult children no longer living together in the same societies. Does distance make the heart fonder or forget?
The grandkids brought up in a country far away may also migrate themselves to other lands to seek fulfilment in their very own careers and adventures.
The old house may still be left standing,
with memories and echoes of when we were all together.
Hopes and dreams were built in the corridors and landings,
Achieved and realised far away in distant meadows of the here after.
#yongkevthoughts
