This has been on my mind lately and is one of the reasons I'm considering not having children, despite wanting them.
I'm an only child to a single parent, my mother - who has struggled with me moving to the UK, but generally been supportive. She's not in a very happy place in her own life at the moment, and I feel insanely guilty about "abandoning" her when I'm her only child.
She's made comments recently and in the past that she doesn't know how she would cope if I had kids abroad, that it would "destroy" her not being close to her only grandchildren, and I believe it. Our family is incredibly tiny but so close, and I've never imagined my mom NOT having a huge role in my future childrens' lives. Not just Skype or yearly visits, but I mean regular Sunday family dinners, sleepovers, the normal grandma stuff.
I have no idea how to handle this, the thought of her being the distant grandma that the kids see once per year kills me to think about. It really puts me off having children at all, because I worry I'd just be consumed by guilt.
How do you guys manage it? It's so hard.