I read this forum every day, and keep seeing different variations on the same theme. Adult children are being expected, shamed, guilt tripped, manipulated- whatever you want to call it, to provide for their parent’s, medical and non-medical needs and wants.
And they expect their adult children to make them “happy”. The cost to the children’s marriages, families, homes, and finances is not taken into consideration.
All 4 of my grandparents were born between 1910-1915. None of them cared for their parents. Both of my grandfathers died fairly suddenly. Both of my grandmothers ended up in nursing homes with severe dementia that could not be managed at home.
My maternal grandmother did try to elicit a promise from my parents that they would take her in whenever she said. Then later in life threatened to haunt them if they ever put her in a home. That was in the late 1990’s. I feel like that’s the era when endless old age and for profit nursing homes arose.
There seems to be a romantic cultural mythology that children have taken care of their parents at home since the dawn of time. I was listening to an historian on NPR who said that was largely untrue. Most elderly, who did not die of a heart attack or cancer, died of pneumonia over the course of a single winter (at least here in New England).
I’m sure many of you have thoughts on this.
My in laws also thought they would never get old because of modern medicine. They thought they would stay like a 40 year old until they reached 90 or 100 and then they would just drop dead. I’m not making that up . My FIL died last month still acting shocked that he was failing at nearly 90. My MIL ( divorced ) is still alive still thinks everything can be fixed and is failing at 87 . She is shocked when another one of her just under 90 friends dies of something like a UTI and sepsis or pneumonia . In her brain an antibiotic should work no matter what other comorbidities there are .
My grandparents didn’t act like this . They did not expect anyone to stop their own lives to prop up someone else.
My father wasn’t bad , but my mother was ridiculous , expected me to do everything her way . Wanted me to quit my job , leave my family and move in with her after my father died.
My FIL told us he wanted to maintain his independence and “ lifestyle” . He demanded we take him out to fine dining and a cruise . He expected us to drag around a transport chair , his walker , his Depends etc . to take him on vacation and to visit relatives out of state . My FIL felt he owned my DH’s vacation days from work .
This stubbornness of the spoiled generation to have us conform to what they want only lands them in a facility faster . They treat us like children and are rigid to having things their way which is not sustainable . I know not all elderly are like this , but that’s been my personal experience.
As a side note. A long time ago , Even if family took care of the elderly, most of the time it did not last years or decades . They got sick and died within months . Of course there were exceptions , which is how the need for nursing homes began as medicine was keeping the elderly alive longer .
From being on this forum daily since 2019 I get the impression a lot is just assumptions and bad/no planning. Sometimes it is because those who were diligent and saved could never have dreamt how high the cost of care would become coupled with a long-term labor shortage.
My Mom really really doesn't want to go into a facility but then I remind her she never spent 1 day caring for either of her parents (Grandpa died young of lung cancer, Grandma went to live with her 2 unmarried daughters until 96). So, I've told her the minute she is unsafe in her home or I'm overwhelmed, she will be transitioned (and to the same very excellent place my MIL is in).
I do think Americans have a Hallmark-esque romanticized idea of "aging in place", or overconfidence that their adult children being willing to care for them (never mind able). I tell my 3 adult sons all the time that their immediate families are always the priority, not me and their Dad. We've saved as much as we could and are prepping our minds to put ourselves in a different living situation before a crisis happens to us. We have all our legal ducks in a row. It costs money to be prepared but it will cost more if you don't.
I was just talking to a single senior woman this week. She was complaining that her annual Medicare wellness checkup included someone telling her how to "seniorize" her home for her own safety, specifically getting rid of area rugs. The next day I went to an ortho clinic appointment and met a different, also senior woman I knew from my past who was being pushed in a wheelchair. This woman had a black eye, a broken wrist and some leg/hip break. Why? She tripped on a rug in her home.
"Expectations" do not have to turn into realities unless WE agree to them!
I moved my folks across the country to be near me. I found them a great IL apartment for 3 years. I took them everywhere, from grocery shopping to medical appointments to furniture shopping. I unpacked their boxes and moved them in. I moved them into AL after dad broke his hip. I set up a bed and chair and nightstand in the AL for dad while mom hemmed and hawed in IL for nearly 2 months! I then moved her in with dad, with more stuff, and packed up their IL apartment and donated it all to the Salvation Army bc no estate sales were permitted in their IL bldg. Then I moved them from Brookdale to their new and better AL. Then when dad died, I moved mom to a studio unit. Then to Memory Care. And 500,000 other things in between.
All this to say a parent in managed care STILL requires A LOT OF CARE and attention/management by their child/ren. Advocacy and visiting often, meeting ambulances at ERs and on and ON. There are many many ways to provide care for a parent. "Honor thy father and thy mother" does not mean INSIDE YOUR HOME.
Whatever I did do for mom was never enough ANYWAY. That should be noted. Had I caved and taken her in my home, all it would've accomplished was driving ME over the edge to a nervous breakdown because these types of people are NEVER happy anywhere.
That is the message of my long comment: happiness is an inside job. NOT something children can provide for disgruntled parents. Happy people are happy anywhere; they emit a glow of contentment that's visible. Unhappy people are unhappy anywhere they go. They emit a cloud of toxic fumes thats tangible, be it at YOUR house or in the nicest AL on earth. Don't get sucked into the trap of HAVING to take them into your home because they expect it.
Back to the title of the OP's post, as someone mentioned, things are likely skewed on our posts here on Agingcare, because the people more likely to post are those who are struggling , on the way to burnout, or already burned out.
So what are the variables on how the children of the elders feel in these modern times? Three key ones:
1) relationship between elders LO's and their children, in the past, and currently. This can be a whole spectrum from strong love and a tight bond, to , at the other extreme, virtually abuse of the child by the elder parent. It sure will affect the success of any helping or caring relationship!
2) Extent of involvement in care by the children. This can range from zero, some help to parents ( but NOT hands on day to day care such as bathing, feeding, lifting), and then at the other extreme, the child doing full hands on care. Again, success of the arrangement and risk of burnout will vary depending on where one is on the scale.
3) Mental state of the elderly LO, including level of dementia, and mental illness status if present. Of course, for extensive caring, mental health of the caregiver will also be an important factor.
And now I'm thinking more about my aging years. The thought of just existing in a bed for years scares the crap outta me. If the medical professionals want to keep the body alive this long, they need to find away to keep the mind alive, and they need to start letting people decide when they are ready to go on there next adventure. And death shouldn't be treated as a failure. I think the issue is the whole way are society deals with death. Hope I didn't ramble to much
We did the best we could to save for our old age. We still live independently in a one-story home, with help from a 2X/month housecleaner and seasonal yard service. Our son looks after my car and does occasional household tasks like changing overhead light bulbs and de-cluttering. We are accepting of--although not enthusiastic about--the need for "placement" when we can no longer manage on our own. That time may be approaching. We have NEVER expected our adult child(ren) to provide day-to-day care for us. Never!
Everything gets harder to manage for most people who reach their 80s-90s. Although we could probably finance a comparatively short period of time in a facility, we sincerely hope to have made our Final Exits before our funds are totally depleted. Unfortunately, the cost of care will outstrip the resources of all but the very well-off. Circle back to "living too long". . .
Also, the US has so many cultures where this is a common practice to take care of parents. We have a Chinese family who live traditionally. The parents owned the business, when children got old enough they worked in the business, got married and had children. So then the grandmother cares for the grandchildren while children run the business. I would think that it will be childrens turn to take care of parents when the
time comes. There are 3 generations living in the same house. This is how it has always been for them.
This honor your mother and father is the problem. I had a minister say once its the people who cared for you you honor. If a bio parent never cared for you, its not dishonoring them to refuse to care for them.
The Bible was condensed. Books left out and probably verses too. Since it was a man's world when it was written and men who condensed it, do you not think anything pretaining to women and children was left out? Both were property back then. It could of said " Honor ur father and mother and then parents honor your children. You can honor without doing the care. You don't need to be at ur parents beck and call to honor them. As an adult you leave your parents to have your own life. At that point your parents now enter a new part of theirs. Its up to them to find new interests. Get closer. Plan for old age.
I think it was Lea who said she had a hard time with Mom growing up. She knew she would never physically care for her or have her live with her. What she did do was place her in a nice AL. Made sure she was cared for. Visited and took her presents and goodies. She was her daughter, not her caregiver.
So when a parent starts saying, you will be caring for me in my old age, the adult child needs to say "I will try to be there for you but I will not be doing the caring.
The elderly people of today expect so much from their adult children because they are jealous. Elderly people resent younger people. They often resent each other because even old people don't like old people or want to be around them.
This generation of seniors is all about the entitlement. That they are owed something from everywhere and everyone. The government is supposed to do more for them and give them more. Their families are supposed to happily sacrifice their own families, jobs, homes, marriages, friends, and lives to miserable servitude. All that should matter is their well being and happiness. Also, people are living way too long now.
It's not even about the nursing home industry. Nursing homes were always profit making. More and more elders end up in nursing homes because it's rare to find stay-at-home females who can be cast into the chains of caregiver slavery.
Nearly all women work outside the home today so it's not like it was in times past where a family could live on one income. As for the romanticizing and "cultural mythology" of children taking care of their parents, well that's just one big crock of you-know what. No one wanted to do it then and were pulled into it the same way they are now.
Less elders ended up in nursing homes in the past because there was always an Edith Bunker at home who you could dump a needy elder off on. That's not so today. So the next stop is a nursing home and today's senior population knows it. This is why they try to coerce their families into vowing to never put them in a "home". This is why they greedily hoard of their assets too. Like an insurance policy so their families won't place them. Yet they do anyway.
@Fawnby
Are you a cultural expert on Native American nations and their tribal customs? If you are not then you really can't make such a statement like the comments you've made here because they are very offensive to Native Americans.
@Alva
We do not live in the times of primitive man where the weak and sick were deprived of food to conserve the resources. We don't use tools made out of flint anymore either. Or have gladiator sport. Or keep slaves. We've evolved past that.
There should be nothing wrong and no guilt for putting an elderly person into care when it's necessary. The only issues I have with care facilities is the quality of care and the cost.
If someone stopped eating, for whatever reason (which could simply be dementia) , there were no options for nasal tube feeding, IV nutrition etc etc!
The elderly LO Stopped eating in the not so distant past (and even currently in some third world countries), then the family prepares for death within the next 1-2 weeks....
You are absolutely right, but it wasn't only the elders left to the side of the road.
Many societies left babies in times of hardship as well, and in famine areas NOW today the girl children are often left deprived of food so that the sons will live (given they must be there to care for the elders and help with life ongoing).
None of this is unusual. Wolves stop breeding in times of hardship. Not only are our sperm counts going down now, but children are not marrying nor having children as early as once they did in our country.
We follow a natural rhythm much more than we would like to think we do.
As Alva alludes to, a LOT has changed in the past 30-50 years. First of all, life expectancy is dramatically higher now. In the past, people would just die younger, and often more quickly , of medical issues. People less often had to deal with issues of dementia/ ALZ etc, which are becoming more common because people are living longer and medically healthier into old age. So a lot of the elder care issues are a new phenomenon. Also, things have changed a lot about what's available: medicare, the availability of alternatives to the "nursing home", such as IL, AL, MC etc.
In the past were there families, cultures, etc who would take care of the elders ? For sure. But things and times were different. Often, larger families lived together. THere were more people to help out. ALso, the elders contributed to the household as much as they were able until they could no longer. So things were more of a family effort all around, with multi generations and even extended family living together, if not under a single roof, then near each other. But much has changed in recent years. Even some "third world" countries are changing now.
As for making promises, and then whether you stick to promises or not, that's another topic, although related. Personally I'm glad I made no promises, and told my Mom before she died, and my dad currently, that there are no guarantees of staying at home, and that a facility will become necessary when it becomes needed. My dad had agreed to this himself in decades past (and even suggested it himself), now denies agreeing to it and has tried to fight against it ! But no promises of staying at home were made by me....I'm glad I didnt promise anything. However, if someone did make a bad promise, that doesnt mean that people can mistakenly make bad promises in the past that they are then forced to comply with?
I'm familiar with no time in history in which adult children were expected to feed, house, entertain, drive, make appointments, manage a dozen medications, participate in rehab with, do after-stroke care, cancer care, give shots, change diapers of, take out to eat, put up with temper tantrums, manage their dementia, wash and change linens, wash and change clothes, shower, monitor for wandering, listen to complaints, and take on more and more and more responsibilities for their parents well into their 90s and even 100s.
God help us.
And, yes, as far as the history…FDR’s New Deal is always referred to as a solution for those suffering through the depression. But I’m told it was the ELDERLY suffering that FDR could not abide. Senior citizens who had worked their whole lives standing in bread lines and sleeping outside..
Thank you, as always, for your wisdom.
They did not expect me to, nor did they guilt me.
I chose to.
Nursing homes are a nightmare....rather like children's daycares are so very harmful to kids but are normalized.
I am 81, my partner is 83. WE don't expect such care, and in fact have for our entire lives tried to arrange things so it would never be needed, have made clear to our children that they aren't to do it. Our children and step children and in laws are all approaching their own elder years--are all nearing retirement or newly retired and doing those things that you do in some of the most free years of your lives, those years when your children are raised and your parent and taking care of their own needs. It would absolutely SHATTER me to think that these years, some of the best of their lives, would be spent worry about and caregiving us.
As to caregiving in the past? It was done at a time when grandparents passed in their 60s. And it was done because there was no social safety net of ANY KIND. You are aware of just how new Medicare is? There was a time, in the depression, when, if you needed medical care and didn't have money you didn't get medical care. Such as it was. Families stepped in because they had to.
My dear Aunt Edna was responsible for the care first of my father's parents, then of her husbands. She herself died an old woman before her time, having devoted her entire life to the care of the elders. It was common in the 1940s I was born into. Expected. Simply DONE by one or another of the children.
In third world countries of our own times now, this is the commonplace, as well. Children giving care to parents. We see many on forum with spouses from another country who fulfill expectations to the detriment of their family.