Literally no one understands my reluctance to do personal care

@IamtheDevilsAvocado Exactly, why do they think they've been employed by the OP?!

In the case of some things, the carerers are not allowed to do it. Toenail clipping is one. They consider it a liability issue in case the person gets a foot infection. Shaving a man, also, I believe. However, some salons will agree to come do shampoos and hair care on site. Maybe check around for
a business that will do the same.

To me, it's tantamount to having a builder /decorator come around and saying... What you actually want me to build /paint those walls... Aren't you doing it??

It's one of those examples of utter sexism. Men wouldn't be asked this...

With respect {mention:idreamof}manderle@idreamomanderle
You can override... By refusing to do it... It's not pleasant... But it's what I had to do, otherwise my dad would have driven me into ground further... I ended up living with him... But insisted he pay for carers to help him with intimate care

I’ve told my parents I won’t do that for them, even if my siblings do.
it’s not for me. I don’t want to and I won’t be pressured into it.

if they were terminally ill I would be at their bedside but day to day? No chance.

All families are different. Do it out of love? I don't love either of my parents. i don't even like them.

A colleague sometimes jokes about the personal care she (gladly) did for her parents, and apparently found nothing odd or off-putting about handling her elderly father's penis. But she adored them.

She really struggles to understand my perspective when I explained that once, in that split second when you have to make an instant decision in a crisis, I chose to fall down a brutal set of tiled stairs while already in a full leg cast rather than let my father grab my arm to stop me from falling. I chose serious physical injury (on top of existing serious physical injury) rather than accept minimal physical contact. That's the relationship we have.

My parents actually live with me, but we built them their own apartment at the side of the house. It's a big place and you probably wouldn't believe how easy it is to ostensibly live in the same house as someone but manage not to see them at all for weeks at a time. Obviously I have to see him occasionally but I try to avoid being within six feet of him at all times.

I will not be doing any personal care, even in an emergency. I don't quite know how we'll get round this yet but they know and accept that carers will be involved. I feel no guilt about that whatsoever.

They may have raised me but it was a fucking awful experience. I realise it's not acceptable to say that you're lucky yours died when you were young but I do envy that as I wish for their end every day. Not something it's possible to say to most people in real life. A significant private fear I have is how, in public at least, I'm going to have to pretend to feel some kind of grief when they do die, simply because society doesn't accept the opposite. That's going to feel like a huge and uncomfortable pressure but I simply don't feel able to expose my true feelings around most people. It will be far too awkward and uncomfortable for everyone. However I'm worried the mask will slip and that can only lead to conflict and drama, which I really don't want. I'm not interested in sharing these details of my relationship with them to people who've known us all for years, and around whom I've spent my whole life masking like fucking Batman so no-one has to feel uncomfortable. I have no interest in having to justify my position to people because it's far too long and complex a history.

When you haven't been in this position it will be impossible to understand but for some of us, unfortunately that's how it is.

It’s only the end of the conversation if you let it be. I’ve made it very clear I’m not doing personal care for MIL if it comes to it. I did help my DGM get out of the bath once and we both laughed about it, but I’m not wiping my MIL’s bottom.

I totally get what you are saying, OP.

My parents had paid carers three or four times a day for the last few years of both of their lives and personal care was part of their job.. My sister and I did not get involved in it - only in the odd real emergency when the carers were not due for another few hours. We wouldn't have wanted to have been involved, it's just not the image either of us would want to have of our parents. Nor do either of us want our own children to be involved in our own personal care if that need ever arises.

My parents would have been utterly mortified at the idea of us regularly cleaning up their shit and wiping their arses. Just no. It's the type of thing they were paying for the carers to do, and so are you, OP. So your mother's carers have no business making snide comments about you and implying criticism like that.

I think you should complain to the care company managers about this. It's totally unprofessional of them and isn't their place to comment at all.

Not wanting to be involved in the personal care of a parent or other very close family member isn't snobbery. Not at all. Also, it doesn't compare even remotely to changing a baby's nappy. The dickhead who drew that comparison is clearly clueless and has never even tried to clean a grown adult after a toileting accident. Though of course, if they come back again they are now likely to try and tell us how they did it regularly and how it was absolutely no problem at all.

Are the care agency carers predominantly from other cultures? I’ve found dealing with carers that certain cultures are confused as to why we don’t look after our elderly, even though they are employed in the industry… one person I know is leaving the uk in 2 weeks to return to South Africa to care for her mum. The idea that you are in the house but would rather have an outsider do the care rather than doing it yourself confuses some people though I completely understand! My dsd (adult with high needs sen) lives in full time carer so her parents can be parents and not carers!

The aim is to ensure the elderly person has the personal care, and this be provided by carers.

I'm with you OP.

Ignore the law. It generally sets out the bare minimum expected of people. I mean, there’s no law requiring parents to provide a happy childhood but we’d all surely consider that what we’re should be aiming for, by example

I’ve already told my mum I won’t be able to do that when it’s needed - I can’t even cut her toe nails

Op you are Exactly right. You have every reason to feel the way you do. I think in coming years when these posters are tasked with this issue then by all means give advice. I will go to a nursing home before I ever have my child do personal care.

Unless you have been faced with actual situation it is impossible to understand how you might feel. I was faced with this with my father (not mother as she did want held from us), if we were there some of the carers assumed we would do personal care. It’s very strange because we weren’t there they would have had to have done it - or you would have hoped they would. Once we went to private care it was clearer as we were paying for this

Your parents looking after you when you were a baby, is the law.
Providing personal care to your parents is another matter entirely.

It sounds like you’re doing a wonderful job and your mother and father are lucky to have you as a daughter.

My sil ended up doing personal care for her Dad, which she really, really didn’t want to do it. And I couldn’t understand why my mil blithely just let it go on.

She’d sit and smirk while her daughter took her Dad to the bathroom.
I was baffled.

Can I ask why to help me better understand your perspective? Isn’t it something you’d feel obliged to go out of love? Or how do you square abandoning your mother with that?

i ask as personal care is something I haven’t had to do with my parents (they both died young and thus when I was young) so not been in that situation but my thoughts are it’s something I’d loath to do but would do if needed out of love. They raised me after all

Exactly how I felt.

they will often seem puzzled as to why we have carers when I'm 'right there in the house' (as it was put to me once).

@bringincrazyback Quite frankly, that's absolutely none of their business, you're paying for their services, and they just need to provide them.