Was it selfish of Sharon to move back to Connecticut?

[scarlett3984]

After a brief discussion on BSC_Snark about Sharon moving back to CT, I decided it was probably better for this community to discuss.  Do you think it was selfish of Sharon to uproot her family and move back to CT so soon after the divorce?

Personally, I had never thought of this before.  On the one hand, I see why Sharon wanted to move back to CT

Comments

[otempora541]

There's not much evidance to suggest why the Schafers divorced in the first place. I could imagine that a distraught Sharon overwhelmed with her husband (and how long was Carol in the picutre?) and the pain of divroce, decided to flee to CT. I think she was awarded custody because she is a mother, and 8 year old Jeff and 12 year old Dawn understood that they had little to no choice but to move to CT (and I assume that perhaps the parents said something along the lines of you can always come back to CA!)

[ennta]

I was just recently thinking about this as I reread Super Special #14. I felt very sorry for Dawn and Jeff; they were given absolutely no say in the matter, just forced to pull up their roots and move fairly quickly. Whereas Stacey got to choose which parent she wanted to stay with, Dawn and Jeff were given no such choice. I can't imagine leaving friends and family I've grown up with and moving across the country on such short notice.

[emtqueen85]

Plus with Stacey, her father is only a two-hour train ride away (at most). She can easily do a spontaneous weekend trip if she wanted to. Dawn and Jeff, not so much. They would have to plan for a bicoastal flight and make it a lengthy trip to get in enough father/child bonding time and to make it count because to go all that way for a week is barely worth it.

[thepastperfect]

Yeah, I agree. Jeff was fairly young and Dawn was close to her mother, so I'm not sure they would have done better if Sharon had left them in California with Jack and moved to Connecticut alone. I could see them just not being ready to be apart from her full-time. But it was very quick. Three days after they tell the kids about the divorce, Sharon tells them she's moving to Connecticut, and a month later they've moved.

[bcrowessteffi]

I always got the impression that Sharon's parents probably offered her a lot of money if she moved back to Stoneybrook. I know they were supposed to be loaded, and they probably also had connections to get her a job right away. For Sharon, who was probably overwhelmed with the divorce and the thought of having to be a single mom, this probably seemed like an easy way of getting back on her feet.

However, I don't think it was fair to move Jeff and Dawn in the middle of the school year.

[nerdtchose]

As someone for whom changing schools in the middle of the year was one of the best things that could have ever happened, I feel pretty okay with the whole idea. It's sad to see children as victims of something that is beyond their control, but a divorce is as valid a reason to uproot kids as changing jobs, I think. You could also ask "was Stacey's dad selfish for putting his family through two moves in one year?" It's pretty much the same situation. True, Sharon's career didn't depend on her moving, but I could see why someone who goes through a painful divorce would feel the need for a change.

[urbunnie]

With changing jobs, though, the entire stability of the family relies on the new job. The family cannot survive without the money. So relocation isn't much of a choice in that situation. Sharon had no job lined up in CT and just moved to get away. I can understand why she was upset, but what she did really tore apart her children's lives at a time when things were already very unstable. I think the kids were going through enough change without unneccessarily moving across the country.

[urbunnie]

I kind of started that discussion over there on my snark. :) Yes. I think it was unfair of Sharon to move to CT and uproot her kids at an already painful and chaotic time in their lives. I understand her personal need to get away from Cali and her own life, but her children needed as much stability as possible while adjusting to such a life-altering change. I am not surprised that Dawn and Jeff moved back. I kind of think if Sharon wanted to move so badly that their father should have been given custody of them.