DECADE PHENOMENON: INTERNATIONAL FAMILIES

A family unit contains three to five people. Parents and their children. In such a small family, their members are dependent on each other and they have to communicate intensively together to survive. Mutual relationships are very intimate, enriching, but also fragile and they have to be cared softly.

International families (families that moved abroad or families where the partners come from different countries) are even under higher pressure. How to understand each other, when are from different cultural heritage, different traditions, family patterns, when we have grown in different surroundings. How to understand different mentality of the country, when you have your own list of values. How to manage life in foreign environment, when you are not familiar with the spoken language. How to understand the system of the different country, starting with the social benefits, ending by your own start-up. Where to find material and emotional support, when your own family is faraway.

The most frequent reason for moving abroad are advantages the life in other country gives. Lucrative job, option to learn foreign culture, language, traditions and life of people. Partners from different countries have many things to share, as they enrich each other with their cultural heritage.

However, if grave troubles arise (and not all families face them), you can taste the hell. The most often scenario is that one of the partners wants to relocate back to his or her own country. To be with his or her family, with the support the partner has there, in the environment he or she knows. If that happens (and we will be talking about how this can happen legally and in breach of law), the parents suddenly live hundreds or thousands of miles far from each other and they solve how to manage the family situation further.

You cannot divide the child in two parts. One of the parents necessary loses the quality relationship with the child, even if he or she sees the child every day on WhatsUp. Also, the parent realizes suddenly that the frequency of contact with the child depends on whether he or she has money for flight tickets and how many can be bought during the year. The (ex)partners are suddenly dependent on whether they are able to communicate and get along with each other. If the communication terminates, the family lives ends up with child support payments.

The parental dissolution and moving abroad have grave impact on children from these countries. The Office for International Legal Protection of Children, that represents often these children in custody proceedings as their attorney, has developed special websites for these “cross-border children”: kids.umpod.cz If you are interested in this topic, visit the websites or whatch YouTube channel, i. e. the video called Universe in Danger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jayvwAAcR1g.

We will be talking next Monday about residence of the child, the place where the child lives and what this means for the child.