To not want dd to look after me in old age?

[malificent7]

I want a qualified health professional please.

Of course id like her to visit me occasionally but not only do i not want to burden her but id rather have a neutral , skilled professional who dosnt want my inheritance ( i jest! )

I just dont get why people want lots of kids so they can look after them in old age. What if they dont want to?

[icanteven]

I wouldn't want my daughters actually living with me and washing and spoon-feeding me when I'm 98, but I would certainly bloody want them involved in my life.

I am likely to be able to afford a private carer to care for me/us personally and domestically, so I am lucky that way, but I would be very disappointed if they didn't socialise with me regularly (unless they decided to live somewhere very remote and inappropriate for me - I am a city person). I would find that extraordinary, in fact, assuming our relationship is a good one as they grow up. I expect to be very active, urban and independent when I grow old. People in my family tend to live for a very long time, with mercifully few health problems, so fingers crossed I inherited all the right genes!

[SleepFreeZone]

I'm off to Switzerland too, already decided that. I'm hoping by then Euthanasia will be available in the UK. Can't think of anything worse than being trapped in a pydicsllg frail and decrepit body with total strangers pretending to care for me.

[FaFoutis]

Did you hear this tosser on the radio?
www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/31/take-care-of-your-elderly-mothers-and-fathers-says-tory-minister
Funnily enough it is generally not the sons or the wealthy who end up as carers.

YANBU. There's no way I would want to burden my children.

[RhodaBull]

As others have posted, nearly everyone says, "Oh, I'm off to Dignitas," yet hardly anyone goes. Dementia slowly creeps up, and by the time it is serious enough for the person to require care, they have lost capacity and can't make any decision let alone take any action about going off to Switzerland. Mil strenuously denied there was anything wrong with her, enabled by fil. In fact fil was adamant there was a cure just around the corner and mil would miraculously recover and be off to the garden centre and John Lewis within no time. Perhaps we all secretly think that: whilst there's hope there's life.

[Alconleigh]

I wonder if we will see a change in the law on assisted suicide when the reality of an ageing population with potentially hugely expensive medical needs, a reduced tax intake, fewer immigrants to work in care homes, and a care system savaged by years of Tory cuts kicks in......

I realise that sounds very cold put like that!

I keep making the point to my parents that if the time comes when they need care, they will need to sell the house to pay for it. Neither my sibling nor I have enough money to pay £1000 a week for a care home, and due to the way the property market has changed so much in the last decades, neither do we have big enough houses for them to move in with us. I can't move closer to them either due to my job. And nor could I give up my job to care for them, even if I wanted (which I don't) as who would pay my mortgage?

I am not sure the message is really getting through though. They may not need it of course (the most any of my grandparents needed was semi sheltered, the others all died while still living in their own homes). The reality is though we will not be able to even provide the help with medical appointments etc mentioned on here very often; none of us live close enough and we all work full time.

[RhodaBull]

My pil have paid over £500K for their care so far. House, savings... all gone. Which on the one hand is fair, as no family member was going to step up to the plate. On the other hand, unfair, as there are people in their care home who have paid nowt. It would take a Solomon to solve it.

Regardless of cuts, which political party is in power etc I don't think the current system is sustainable. There are just too many elderly people coming along. It's not personal, it's just sheer weight of numbers and of course medical advances. I know many people decry Boomer Bashing, but they are going to be the demographic which breaks the welfare state.

[ExConstance]

I don't want my sons or DH wiping my bottom, either. A good third of people reach the end of their lives without ever needing care so we should all be exercising and eating healthily to try to be one of them. If you get to be quite elderly and need home care you are only likely to live another couple of years, so there is always equity release as a possibility if SS won't fund you.

[RhodaBull]

Mil and fil ate extremely healthily - mainlined Benecol and five a day - and exercised, were slim etc. Very healthy bodies - but mil lived with dementia for ten years and fil has dementia but is in excellent physical shape. Would have been better if they had been decrepit!

[Bumpsadaisie]

OP and others who already have a strong view about this - how do you know what you will want when you are old?

It might not pan out as you think!

[maddiemookins16mum]

I was "burdened" (not the right word I want to use actually), with the care for my elderly mum. It was horrendously stressful, I was exhausted both emotionally and mentally over a period of several years, NONE of my other family members helped at all. Part of the problem was my mum once told me (many years ago), "please don't put me in a home". This goes back to childhood where she was in a home in the 30's.

I dread my daughter ever having to go through the same with me but I just don't know what the answer is.

[Boulshired]

My mother spent all my life telling me when she needed care she did not want us to go through what she went through with her parents and IL. When the time came all she wanted was to be at home with us providing care, knowing what you believe to want now is no guarantee. It was the same with her death she was a dignitas view of mind but again when the time came she fought with every last fibre for every second.

[timeandagain1]

Agree with an earlier poster. It is impossible to declare that you would never put your parents into a care home. My mother cared for my grandfather at home with dementia for 3 years - he was doubly incontinent, violent (he once punched her in the eye giving her a very serious facial injury having previously been a very gentle man), wondered the house all night and started fires by putting things like paper in the toaster and escaped numerous time to be bought home by the police (mum eventually had to lock all doors and windows and sleep with the keys on a chain around her neck). My grandfather eventually had to move into a home. Not long after my grandfather died my mums childless sister, my aunt also developed dementia. Again my mother had her come and live with her. My aunt become doubly incontinent and used to smear poo over the walls in the night despite having pads and carers coming in daily to clean her. this was every night for about 3 months before my mum decided she couldn't do it anymore. Who in their early sixties can be cleaning human feces from walls, carpets, beds sofas every day . After 18 months and the rapid decline again my mother had to make the decision to put her into a home. My mother is racked by guilt in both these cases but nearly killed herself looking after them.

It is also not so easy to say 'I'll walk of a cliff'. My aunt especially, having see her father go through it was of this mindset but the cruelty of dementia is that you often do not realize you have it until too late to make these 'decisions'. In neither of my experiences of dementia have the people involved realized they had dementia while still maintaining clear cognitive thought. I am amazed to see TV interviews of people who realize they have the illness (say like Terry Pratchett) since this isn't always the case. The initial decline can sometimes be very quick although the dying can take years and years.

I will not be 'caring' for my parents although if necessary will of course advocate for them and visit them etc. I have also made it clear to my husband (kids a bit to young) that they are not to care for me.

And the funding for our care, 'our' being this generation and our parents , will come mainly through the person requiring care having sell their home/use their savings and care is not cheap. Unless we are prepared to pay for elderly care through taxes as is right, as we do for the young and the sick, then inheritance will become assigned to history.

[PoundingTheStreets]

I cared for my MIL until the last week of her life when she required 24-hour medical care and so went to a medical hospice. While I don't regret ever doing that, I wouldn't recommend it. I did it round a full-time job for an extremely understanding employer. Even so, I regularly had to take days off because she was particularly bad, return home because the home carer employed to do lunch hadn't turned up, etc. As someone up thread pointed out, dementia can be very difficult to manage - you can't restrain someone simply because they have a tendency to wander off or turn on the tap and forget to turn it off - you have to manage your own life around that possibility, which means massive limitations.

It worries me that the government are clearly heading towards an edict that families should be responsible for providing care for their parents. Some families simply will not be capable of that. In countries where it is the norm (e.g. China), extended families are much more the norm. In this country we have had generations encouraged to split from their families because they need to "go where the work is". Many families live miles away from their elderly parents. If they move back they have no employment prospects and run the risk of disrupting their children's schooling/lives. If the elderly parents move to them, they may not be able to afford housing nearby, they will be uprooted from everything familiar to them and their existing support network. It is just a badly thought out plan from ministers who have never really felt the same financial/practical constraints as mere mortals.

I also think this is a feminist issue, because there is no getting away from the fact that in the majority of cases the burden will fall to daughter/SILs, just as it does now.

Unfortunately, while everyone expects to bequeath their house values to their children and no one is prepared to pay more taxes, it is the way we're heading.