What plans do you have for your old age? Do you expect your children to be involved as carers?

[bibbitybobbityyhat]

I know it sounds like a journalisty question, but honestly it's not! I'm just a regular Mumsnetter.

My plans for my old age very emphatically include not relying on my children (who will hopefully be parents of youngish adults or teens by the time I get there) to look after me or worry about me or support me in any way.

If I'm lucky enough to get there, I expect to be living in sheltered accommodation by the time I'm 80. I plan to save enough for private carers if/when I need them, but if that can't be done, then I'll go and live in a nursing home without making my children feel guilty about it!

I had my children quite late (as my mother had me - she was 31! but old at the time) so I am aware they could be in the sandwich generation and I just don't want any extra on their shoulders.

Yes all the bollocks about 'in other cultures' I'd just designed to make people here feel guilty.
There have always been people in every culture who have the space and time to have elderly parents with them, and always been people who don't.

Plus women work away from the home now and most can not afford to give up work to look after the old. We are living too long.

Honest open conversations about care for the elderly in our society desperately need to be had.

Because we don’t like to talk or deal with it until we have to, we don’t realise that certain people are making an absolute fortune out of care homes and the like. Meanwhile they are employing minimum wage staff and running them ragged in pursuit of profits. The same thing happens in nurseries. Some of the owners end up extraordinarily rich.

If we could stop hiding behind our squeamishness and embarrassment and confront the issues perhaps we could develop better ways of doing things.

Many people care for elderly parents. I’ve only really discovered that since FiL came to live with us and we started having those conversations.

If you are unable to, or simply don’t want to, care for your parents, fair enough, your choice. But to make snide, mocking comments about people who do, suggests you are uncomfortable with your own choice on some level.

I thought this was about what we wanted for ourselves - with the emphasis on making g proactive decisions and planning, not on passively having decisions made for elderly people with care needs.

If it comes to the point of deciding for your parents, they haven't planned for themselves in most cases - though Tinkly I think said her fil had been proactive but not forseen getting to the point where even a sheltered flat wasn't manageable.

The question is, back in reality, about what you want when your body or mind fails you due to aging to the degree you need carers to allow you to live in humane conditions

My family either live to 100+ with all their faculties, still digging the garden and going out doing their shopping then die in their sleep around 108 or have a heart attack in their early 70s.

None of my relatives have ever needed care so it has never crossed my mind

I think many of us imagine we'd be entirely willing to care for parents - when we still have no idea of what it can mean in practice. Many people say they'd never put their parent in a home - until reality hits them.

FiL came to live with us once we realised that he was in the early stages of dementia. We blithely thought, 'Just getting a bit more forgetful - how hard can it be?'

That was before the endless repeated questions - I once counted 35 in one hour - hiding things and then going mad when he couldn't find them, refusing to wash, being up and down half the night, banging and shouting and demanding to go out at 3 am - and the violent rages over the most minute things - he was still physically fit, and they were so bad I more than once left the house and took the frightened dog with me.

I could go on.

When it came to my mother, some years later, I don't mind admitting that there was no way I (and it was very largely me with FiL) was doing it again.

We supported her at home as best we could, until she was no longer safe to be left alone at all, when it was time for a care home. Finding the right one did take time, but it was well worth it.

Lucky you then Oliversmumsarmy for being anomalous.

As a care assistant I know a nursing home is not the worst thing, the worst thing is living alone in filthy surroundings vulnerable & scared & lonely & unkempt - I've seen this with old people who own their own homes & have dementia as their greedy relatives wont put them in a home or get carers in because it costs too much out of their inheritance.
Social services don't generally get involved with these 'self funding' adults unless they are actually sectioned.

Also I've seen people trying to care for their relatives & struggling... lifting them without proper equipment & damaging themselves; feeling guilty if said relative goes into respite; being hit & abused by violent relatives with certain types of dementia.

Don't ever feel guilty for putting a relative in a home if you can't cope.
I have no children or close young relatives but I hope someone will choose me a nice care home when / if I get infirm mentally or physically.

My family tend to live for years. 2 of them were in care homes & were quite content.

I personally don't agree with euthanasia having cared for many people who are dying & old. Just my view. Lots of other hcps have the opposite view.

I was just trying to show why I hadn’t even thought of care homes

Oliversmumsarmy you are the p.5% of the population to whom the question is irrelevant, which is why you posted such a totally irrelevant sci fi answer. Or you're deluding yourself.

How can you know you'll die suddenly or live healthy into your 100s? It sounds so unlikely and so much like wishful thinking...

The question was What plans do you have for your old age.

I answered none.

Then Do you expect children to be carers?

My family have never had any involvement with care homes or had to care for relatives.

I am nearly 60. Mother and Father still alive and still running their own businesses. My gps on fathers side were killed in the gas chambers and on my mothers side, gm is still alive and gf died of a heart attack in his 70s like his brothers.

My family cannot be a minority to never have had anything to do with the care system

My DM was a nurse and also worked in a not very cosy old folks home as a nurse. Said 'to stick her in a Home' when the time came. However, when the time came didn't want to go into a home ( she couldn't walk as far as the loo so would probably have needed overnight care and I was living abroad so only DB to deal with accidents etc and he didn't really look after himself), then also refused to sign a do not resuscitate form which the Home expected her to sign. It is definitely advisable to get everything written formally well before the time comes.

In response to never needing the care system, it isn't just old age, imagine a bad car accident or brain injury? This is why everyone should have a will and poa written and signed.