If your DC’s GPs didn’t help with childcare…were you inclined to help with elderly care…?

I was going to say something else, but fuck it, don’t bother and don’t feel guilty. Any parents find parenting a chore, we just crack on with a rictus grin and try our best. Your parents did the best they could to avoid you.

It's not about childcare, it's about family. It is harder to feel close to, and responsible for, family who live a logn way distant and don't try to get involved. They could have been involved in your family life without having to offer childcare but it sounds as if they were not and have chosen to live abroad (I may feel different if you moved away from your home country and left them there).

Either way you don't owe your parents care in their elder years and your kids don't owe you care either.

I hear you Blibby
I am listening to 'The deepest well' by Dr Nadine Burke Harris on audible atm.
There are lots of TikTok creators who talk about this topic also such as Dr T Psychologist (look up generational trauma)
I like the look of 'It didn't start with you' by Mark Wolynn too.
I have found seeing a therapist the most helpful as they are objective.
I only have one sister who is the golden child so it's important to get an outside view.
Have a look at the idea of 'dishonest harmony' too. That was very revealing to me.

I think parents are solely responsible for looking after their kids, it's what we have to do. When it comes to elderly care and grandchildren etc, personally I see the two as adult family members helping out other adult family members. Childcare is not owed, but it helps out the parents (ignoring the relationship with the grandchildren). Elderly care is the same, helping out the adults. Neither is owed, but I struggle to see how it's fair for the older generation to expect other adults support when they were unwilling to provide the same occasionally. Let's not forget that the odd bit of babysitting is very different to elderly care which can be pretty relentless and a moving landscape.

In principle, I agree you have a choice not to help. In practice, the element of 'choice' can be non-existent given the broken systems we have. Choices often are limited to watch them fail catastrophically with huge repercussions not just for them but for all those around them or step in and help. Path of least resistance is often the best approach.

It would entirely depend if they had been good parents.

Whether they were good parents would have more bearing on this for me. That's the most important bit. The time when you were a kid and dependent on them.

I agree with this.

Do you have any specific book recommendations? It might help me. I feel really angry at how bad parents my mum and dad were. Now they are 80 and frail, I cannot forgive them. They were ‘not abusive’ enough to disown as parents, and I would be ostracised by our enormous extended family if I was not a dutiful daughter now.

Well we will have to see if the millennial parents do any better, won't we? There are many books on how feckless they are too. Should we tar a generation though? I am not a boomer btw. I am a Gen X.

People can of course have boundaries. As I plan to.

I had a major operation and a cancer scare about 16 years ago and was in hospital for about 6 days.
My parents (healthy, retired and in their sixties almost the same age as me now) didn't come to see me until I rang them from hospital to see if they were coming.
They live about 3 miles from the hospital and both drive.
Yet now my mother is not so well she complains that people didn't come to see her in hospital.
I went twice a day despite teaching full time.
I am so sick of this narrative now.
This is just one of hundreds of examples I could give of a complete lack of care,
When your children are grown up they are still your children.
There are many books on how poor the silent generation and older boomers were as parents.
People need to get some boundaries and not be guilted into providing care at the expense of their own family and sanity.

Totally get this blibby

Ah, here we go with the ageism. OP's parents are selfish. Not all boomer parents are..Mine weren't.

I feel millenials have had it tough with boomer parents who are frankly, quite a selfish generation who have taken a huge step back with their grandkids.

I suspect, there be more adults not willing to take on the full time carer role and will seek outside support. I feel this is positive! no one should be burnt out as a carer to their parent.

I agree. As I said in my post, I will do some of what I need to but I will definitely not go above and beyond.

In a way, I feel angry now more than ever about my awful childhood and how sad I was and how they did not care. It sounds almost psychopathic but inside I kind of feel I have some power at last in our relationship now that they are in their 80s and frail. I hate how scared I was for the first 30 years of my life around them.

I will do this stuff for my parents and it will be purely out of guilt. I am not bothered that they weren’t around for much childcare. It is more about their general relationship with me and their judgmental, critical and cold personalities.

I will hold a grudge about my awful childhood until the rest of their and my days. I will do what I have to do when they are older, but it will be the bare minimum and out of a sense of obligation.

I think it’s tough to care for older parents when you actually don’t like them much and they have not shown you care, interest or affection. I am sure that is what the OP is about. Not just babysitting.

I think that keeping an eye on your parents from afar is acceptable eg. checking in weekly or daily on a call, as long as the parent knows you would try and go in person in emergencies. There is technology now, cctv and tablets.

You can put local carers in place, even a cleaner abroad can go in daily and keep an eye on things and report back.

People who expect dc to be part time or full carers these days are delusional. Dc have their own lives.

I will drop everything in an emergency, like a fall and sort out the situation I will also visit and call socially when I can, but that’s it.

Well you are pleased they gave you life, aren't you?

Being a parent and a child is not generally a transactional relationship. It's about love and care (if that's appropriate) although sometimes it's about neglect and abuse. Choose your relationship. If you don't care about them, then don't support them but if it's purely that you didn't get childcare when you wanted it (and bear in mind that they already provided care by raising you when you were a child) then perhaps that's a bit unfair.

No im not joking. I didnt mention my childhood but my parents moved to the other end of the country when i was 15 and doing my GCSE's. I used to go to a friends house and scrounge food. I didnt mention that because the thread is about GP involvement in GC lives. As i said, you get back what you put in. If you want to be taken care of when your old and struggling then put the effort in to be a parent or grandparent. It doesnt just come automatically.

Thanks for your input

...and I would say you don't want to go out and see them as you feel no emotional attachment to them... which is of their own making.

Do not feel guilty.

You mentioned foster care, followed almost immediately by boarding school. Whilst your parents were not physically abusing you, they were neglecting your emotional needs, which many would argue is pyschological abuse.

I simply can't imagine sending my own children away to boarding school, esp from such a young age. If I was rich and wanted help, I would hire a housekeeper/cook etc.

I helped my dm, of course. She had a tough life putting up with my dad, she was neglectful of me and my siblings, but I wanted her to have some good years to herself.

I didn't expect her to help with DS, even though I'm a single mum. We didn't have that sort of transactional relationship.

the OP was in foster care from ages 2-4 and in boarding sch from age 6-14 and she left home at 17. This is in her follow up post.

Given this, I don't think her parents gave her much, if any, care.