...to think that children should look after elderly parents?

[wheresmymojo]

It's not a TAAT but inspired by another thread.

It seems to be a general trend that people feel like they shouldn't have any duty/obligation to care for their elderly parents anymore.

Partly I recognise that this is because societal trends make it harder to do elder care than it used to be - it's quite common to have two full time workers, be living quite far from your parents, still have DC to care for at the same time due to later births, etc.

I find it odd though that anyone wouldn't want to care for their elderly parents and find a way to make it happen.

So for example, we have just moved to live near to DH's parents who are in their 70s as while they don't need any help now, we know they will at some point in the next 10yrs.

My DM is very young (56!) so definitely doesn't need any help. I live 200 miles away but have already had the discussion that when she is elderly I'd like her to come and live with us.

I feel like I'm in the minority though these days?

I realise there are of course exceptions - any parental abuse and there will always be people who have very complex situations that mean it isn't possible (e.g. can't afford to move, already have children of their own with special needs, etc).

But I think it's sad that the average person either (a) thinks of it as an obligation/burden that they don't want to do or (b) thinks they don't have any obligation at all.

I will re-read again because I don't think I've seen any posts that have said this...as I'd be interested to know why they think it isn't wrong.

Lots of people have said they don't think it's wrong. I certainly don't think it's wrong at all. People have their own lives to lead and can't put that on hold indefinitely to look after elderly parents - it's just not feasible.

What am I supposed to do - give up my job and lose my home? Move away from DH so we can both support our individual sets of parents? Risk my mental and physical health travelling for hours every week to see and support them? No. I'm sorry, but no. It's not feasible.

You mention the following: Help around the house (weekly shop, gardening), driving to/from appointments, daily visits, arranging carers and having parents stay for weeks at a time.

Most of that just isn't feasible for people who have full-time jobs. How are you supposed to do those things and hold down a full-time job? Do you just never have any down time? Never see your children or husband? Just spend your life eating, sleeping, working, caring and repeat? It's just not sustainable.

So, what gives? Your job? No, because you have to keep a roof over your head. You have to pay your bills and feed for your children. Your relationship? Your time with your own kids? What if you have two sets of parents living in different places who both need the same level of care? If both parents are looking after their own parents, who looks after the children? Who does the school run?

It's perfectly acceptable not to want to add anymore stress onto your own life. Caring for people (even your own mum and dad) is hard work and I wouldn't judge anyone who said "no, I can't/don't want to do it".

@Justmuddlingalong

Can I have some clarification on your current circumstances please?
Are you questioning others decisions regarding caring for elderly family members, when you've not actually been the primary carer for one of your own?

I'm questioning why people I know have said they don't want to do any general care for their parents (I'm not talking specialist care).

Those who let their siblings run themselves ragged doing this general care but don't see it as something they want to or should do.

People like my DH who would emigrate now despite his DF being 77 without remotely thinking through how his parents would manage in a few years if they need help.

Correct that I'm not doing any care yet, but have thought ahead that this will be needed and am making sure that we (to the extent our circumstances allow) will be around to help our parents out.

In my group of friends/family there are people who will happily say they do not want to do anything to help their parents (again, not talking specialist care/personal care/dementia) just general care.

I also see tonnes of threads where people in the family just don't get involved in any of this stuff.

I don't understand why someone wouldn't want their relative in a care home setting, whether a nursing home or independant living facility.

Certainly for my mother I don't want her sitting at home alone for 20+ hours a day waiting for a stream of carers to visit her 4 times a day, some of whom she may not know and hoping she doesn't mess in her incontinence pad until they turn up or her telly box doesn't go on the blink.

I want her in a setting where care is available 24/7, 365 days a year, where social activities like bingo, knitting circle, craft club, entertainment nights etc are provided, where her friends are just a few doors down and she feels confident enough to leave her flat to visit them because she knows she has a falls pendant and carers are on site if she stumbles.

That is one way in which I am privileged as hopefully the property we inherit will mean it covers the fact that DH has no pension.

I thought you were selling a house to pay for private carers?

Either way, not the greatest idea to rely on inheritance to fund a retirement. What if they live well into their 90s/100s and your husband is already into his own retirement age? What if they do need to go into proper, residential care, rather than your rose tinted idea that you'll be popping in to care for them, and so they need to fund it with the house you've got your grabby little eyes on?

My husband told me when I met him that his retirement plan was his future inheritance, which he expected to be a house. Fast forward 20 years, and he ended up inheriting £19k. Luckily for him, at the time I told him that was a ridiculous plan and insisted he save into a pension.

Correct that I'm not doing any care yet,
Thank you for the clarification. I'm out.

I'm questioning why people I know have said they don't want to do any general care for their parents

If you know these people and you really want to know the answer to this question, I don't know, perhaps ask them? Or do you prefer to offend strangers on the internet than people you know in real life?

OP it's not really a British thing to up sticks to another country. In all countries and cultures there are a proportion of people willing to do this & many more who aren't.

I would never emigrate, I'm close to my family and wish one of my siblings lived closer than 1.5 hours away (the others are closer). You are making big assumptions having some across a small number of people with views at odds with your own. Millions of people in the UK provide some level of support to elderly relatives, we just don't consider this "care" in the sense of something requiring co-habiting or round the clock time.

You mention the following: Help around the house (weekly shop, gardening), driving to/from appointments, daily visits, arranging carers and having parents stay for weeks at a time.
*
Most of that just isn't feasible for people who have full-time jobs.*

I disagree that this isn't feasible with a FT job. It means making sacrifices - yes. But it's feasible.

What "This isn't feasible with a FT job" means is "This would be hard for me and I would need to sacrifice other things to help my parents and I don't want to".

• Weekly shop can be done whenever you do your own shop or online for delivery at the weekend

• Helping around the house/garden can be done at the weekend

• Daily visits if that's what is needed can be done straight after work

Yes. It means the majority of a day at the weekend will be taken up doing these things, yes of course it would be tiring and some other things may have to be sacrificed.

Another thread discussing how we won’t be retiring til around 70+, so I won’t be looking for my mum in her old age as I’ll still be working full time. Ditto paying my dc uni digs fees while barely able to afford my own day to day living. I just feel at breaking point constantly.

And trust us, most people will have extensive & sensible reasons why they actually can't do more they do, even if it comes across from chatting to them that they don't want to.

@wheresmymojo if your mother moves in and ends up needing lots of care. There will be a huge period where she needs care home level care m, but you cant access.

Plenty of people are not well enough to take care of themseleves but not bad enough to access care. Especially, if it has to be paid for.

This is what you arent getting. Getting a well elderly person living with you, great if that's what you want. But 10 - 15 years down the line when you are juggling work, children, life and the ill parents it's not easy.

It will be harder to access care with you living with them. Because you are there.

They refused to send my grandfather home because he was on his own. Had he have lived with one of us, they would have sent him home.

Basically, you are judging anyone who moves far away from their family so cant pop to the shops a couple of times a week.

All your caveats are the realistic difficult side of caring for your parents.

@soulrunner - you can download a form from Compassion in Dying, to specify DNR plus refusal of treatment, including antibiotics, in many situations. I've just filled one in.
@Frequency - great post.

with young, fit and able parents you aren't really qualified to judge other people.

I wouldn't say a definite yes or no, but based on my current reality with an elderly frail parent I would be swaying towards no. When she was in her 50s I would probably been closer to a yes.

Come back when you've had your parent age 75+ living with you for 10+ years and let us know how it went.

Weekly shop can be done whenever you do your own shop or online for delivery at the weekend

Helping around the house/garden can be done at the weekend

Daily visits if that's what is needed can be done straight after work

LOL that is so far removed from your OP that it's laughable. Your OP talked about care, not doing some shopping and gardening. If you'd said shopping, gardening and visiting in your OP, this would have been a whole different thread.

I'm also out.

Having parents to stay can be done with annual leave or unpaid leave (if possible) or paid carers dropping in.

Yes, this paid carers cost money but most people I know have had paid childcare or even pay £££ for their dogs to go to daycare and yet some of the same people would baulk at paying for carers in this way.

They would (by their own admission) prefer that their parents went into a care home, not because they need specialist care or because they aren't in the circumstances to help, but because they don't want to help.

Again, I'm not talking here about people who aren't in the circumstances to help due to money/house size/etc. I'm not talking about putting parents in a home when they need specialist care like dementia care or 24/7 care.

I'm talking about financially solvent people who have no reasons not to help their parents other than because it would impact their own life.

People like my DH who would emigrate now despite his DF being 77 without remotely thinking through how his parents would manage in a few years if they need help.

So you say your DH is the one that will have the responsibility for caring for your ILs, yet he cannot be that close go them if he'd be happy to emigrate. Are you sure that your DH is fully on board with your care plans?

My DF has chosen to live with his partner in a part of the country that would be very difficult for us to live in for a variety of reasons (non commutable to London, small town, no friends, family or connections nearby). So I don't see how it would be possible for me to care for him.

My family members have a very negative view of homes and are desperate not to have to sell their houses for care fees. This leads to all many of conversations like "you'll have to shoot me rather than put me in a home" (I'm a middle class SAHM, not sure where I'd procure a gun) and some relatives nearly destroying themselves to care for older relatives in their homes.

My nan probably would have enjoyed herself in a home as she would have liked the activities and chatting to people. Instead she was stuck in an upstairs bedroom by herself for hours. That can't be the better option.

LOL that is so far removed from your OP that it's laughable. Your OP talked about care, not doing some shopping and gardening. If you'd said shopping, gardening and visiting in your OP, this would have been a whole different thread.

I agree that I wasn't clear enough. I've said in a previous post that when I said 'care' I didn't mean specialist dementia care or 24/7 care.

I don't just mean shopping and gardening though.

In my experience with grandparents and others there have been a few years where they have either early stages of dementia (so not violent, not fully incontinent) on a gradual decline or are mentally agile but very unsteady on their feet.

They don't need specialist 24/7 care - just general care.

"I'm questioning why people I know have said they don't want to do any general care for their parents (I'm not talking specialist care)"

Because they are more realistic than you. Because they are less privileged than you so know they can't so don't waste time virtue signalling and hand wringing that they would love to but...

Correct that I'm not doing any care yet,
"Thank you for the clarification. I'm out"

Me too.

You are really being quite offensive, OP.

Because they know that the kind of dewey eyed vision that you have...the tender care up to the point of arse wiping and clearing up incontinence (and why stop there, OP?) is still bloody hard and restricts your life. A person who needs help to go to the toilet is not a person who can be left alone during the day.

People do not want to do this.

Many elderly parents do not want their grown up children to compromise their jobs and leisure, their time with their own children, to take them to the toilet. They don't want the indignity of being taken to the toilet by their children.

Take a look at the posts where people who have been carers for their parents, for years, have had no choice than to neglect their family because their priority is looking after their elderly, ill parents. Carers of elderly, parents become ground down and broken. Have a think about why people who have cared for their parents are stating they don't want their children to care for them.

I've told my children if I get so bad that I lose my independence and need daily care, above a cup of tea and a chat, to put a pillow over my face and I mean it! I don't want my children to have to live the nightmare I've lived for the past 18 years!

If you're banking on any support from SS....dream on!

- Daily visits if that's what is needed can be done straight after work

If daily visits are just for a 30 min chat, yes, and if the commute allows. Many people barely manage to get home, cook a quick dinner, have some time with children and partner or watch a bit of telly/read/MN to relax before going back to bed.
If it involves washing, cooking meals, feeding, cleaning, etc, then you're looking at a couple of hours visit, which is not really feasible daily unless you don't want to have a family live or if want to drive yourself ill.

You reap what you sow.
My DM was a 'adequate' mother. If adequate means I had a bed, clothes, and didn't starve to death.
When I had my own DC, she said she "wasn't about to start babysitting as she was too young for being stuck in being a Granny".
Fair enough.

Now she has a degenerative condition, she requires a f/t carer, the Adult SS contacted me because she'd made a request for family support. I refused, and she is on her own. I raised my DC without her support, and now I'm enjoying my new found independence. I'm too young to be stuck in being a carer.
It works both ways.

I don't feel guilty in the slightest.

Weekly shop can be done whenever you do your own shop or online for delivery at the weekend

Who is carrying it in and unpacking it? People may not have 2 hours to sit in their parents house for a shop.

Gatdening can be done at weekends yes. But you will also have your own garden to do. And stuff in your own house. And actually spend time with your kids. Oh and find some down time to face the coming week.

Daily visits if that's what is needed can be done straight after work

Nope. Finish work at 5pm. Go straight for ds, in at 5.30-5.45pm. Homework, bath, dinner and bed for him by 8pm. Then jobs in my own house. In bed by about 9.30pm because I need to be up at 6am. I dont have an hour to go do jobs for someone else. Besides which, I am exhausted.

My son shouldnt have to be out until 7pm every night. I want to spend quality time with him. Kids need that.

If there are 2 parents there, the other soon gets sick of doing the nightly routine. Every night and not being able to eat late, not eat as a family. The one doing it, may sometimes just want to get home and relax. But cant. Ever. Then facing weekends where one day is spent doing jobs at their house and the other making sure everything is done at home to facilitate an hour AFTER work each evening?

You can not be this naive. Its not possibly for everyone.

Ok OP, all these things may seem feasible with a FT job by making sacrifices, but what you don't appreciate is the slow burn as these things accumulate and suddenly your FT employer is getting twitchy because you have to start taking random time off for the bits that can't be done online or at the weekend. It's the uncertainty of this situations which can escalate really rapidly and throw every bit of good planning you put in place out the window.

Your sacrifices include - not seeing people socially when they are available as they too have FT jobs and other responsibilities. This means you become very isolated. Missing milestone events in your children's lives. Having to put every bit of your emotional and mental welfare to the bottom of the pile because you have to be on stand by for the person being cared for and minimise the negative impact of your absence on other people who rely on you - like your FT employer and your children.

Imagine if you have a two year old with total autonomy and still judged as having capacity - their needs and wishes are paramount because they are a sentient adult - if all caring boiled down to a bit of gardening, an online shop and tea and cake, dear MIL would still be living with us.

I know you are "exempting" extreme conditions like dementia in your analysis, however, it's a slippery slope and the system is a bit haphazard in terms of support these days........