...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.

DH’s parents are in their seventies. They are caring for his nan who is in her nineties. Their days are filled with doctor, hospital and other health appointments. They do her shopping, cleaning, cooking, and take her out. They visit every day. Prior to this they spent several years caring for the grandad as well before he died 18 months ago. Parents in law are really at their wit’s end. They are exhausted, and nan is unhappy, though she has no specific health care issues. She’s just old.
I love my parents, but I don’t want to spend my later life caring for them. I’d happily help but I don’t want to give my life over completely to being a carer at a time when it’s likely my children will have only just left home. Proper geriatric care is not like having a well maintained, self sufficient older relative living in your spare room. It’s life changing.

It all depends though, doesn't it, if siblings are willing and able to share the burden. Frail MIL lives in the next village. DH's siblings are hundreds, and in one case thousands of miles away. So it naturally falls to us. We have to do it. As it happens we want to, but I can imagine that if his siblings lived as close as we do but refused to help, then we might feel very differently.

I don't believe that people should be obliged (or even forced) into caring for elderly relatives.

I loved my father dearly but he needed nursing care towards the end of his life. After a period of hospitalisation, I found him a care home close to me and I visited every day. Yes I felt guilty but even if I hadn’t had three kids to care for, one of whom had/has complex needs and a severe disability, and a job to hold down, I’m not sure that it would have been right or appropriate for me, his daughter, to have met his intimate care needs. He would have been appalled and embarrassed. When he was still partly mobile (didn’t need hoisting) I used to take him to hospital appointments but would always leave the room when he undressed, as was his wish.

I suppose, by your standards OP, he should have lived with me and I should have been providing the lion’s share of his care needs. However, I’d suggest your view is blinkered and uninformed. Not sure how it all fits into “societal trends” but that was my situation

Oh look, another lovely holier than thou post from someone who hasn't actually walked the walk yet, and therefore has no idea how bloody, grindingly hard it can be to provider elderly care.

Please do come back when you've experienced having to wipe your Mother's backside after she's had diarrhea. And whilst you are doing it, she - or rather the brain damaged remnants of her personality - is telling you that she wishes that she'd aborted you when she had the chance.

Please do come back when you've done night duty - getting up throughout the small hours because she needs the loo, or she wants a drink, or her covers need adjusting, or she needs moving up the bed.

Please come back when you have done this 24/7 with no respite, no break, no support and all the while being lectured by do-gooding arseholes about how it's your duty to provide this care - whilst juggling a FT job and your own family commitments.

Just fuck off. And when you get there, fuck off again.

My parents have infinitely more money than me, I'm the DD who never did anything right yet I'm expected to do any nursing type jobs 'because you're a nurse and used to it'.
Meanwhile my siblings get all the praise, gifts and accolades.
Stuff that if that's how I'm viewed.
I would never expect my DCs to care for me, ever, unless they truly want to do so.

And what would you do if you had a you g family and an elderly parent to look after? What if they needed round the clock care? How would you do that and hold down full time job?

@ControversialFerret 👍good one!

Well no, op, sometimes its not going to work. My mum is mid 70s with bi-polar. She has been ill for 40 years. Sometimes she has been very ill. My childhood was interesting. I love her dearly but with 4 children (from 3 to 13) still in my family home I can not care for her here. Sometimes its just not possible.

Ive worked in care and the hardest part for the elderly is their own children not even visiting them, some of them wouldn't see anyone for weeks if it wasn't for the carers.

I know some people had horrid parents and I don't blame them for not wanting anything to do with them, but a lot of people had quite a decent upbringing but won't even make a trip to visit their parents even once a month.

I'm an only child and I had a good upbringing and personally feel that I will do everything possible for my parents when they need it, they're both in their late 50s so it's a long way off yet I think

If my mum was still alive and she needed help, depending on extent I'd move closer and help with errands or if nessessary move in to look after her. But with my dad I'd help somewhat but tbh we're not that close since my mum died when I was 14 so probably not to the same extent and i wouldn't move nessarily for that reason alone I'd have to be intending to move closer in the first place which I do intend to at some point. However I wouldn't move in with him to look after him like I would with my mum.

Oh, and I don't have DC either - so presumably I need to just shuffle off my mortal coil quietly as nobody will look after me?

In reality, I'm trying to get my pension and later life arrangements in place so that I can take care of myself and get help if I need it, because nobody is obliged to look after me. And if it gets to the stage where I need huge intervention, I'd rather bob off to Dignitas than go through the indignities of the geriatric illnesses that my Mum's suffered. Just because medical science can keep you alive, doesn't mean that you have quality of life. I wouldn't put a dog through what she has to cope with.

I would not have anywhere for my mother to sleep plus she would not manage the stairs and me and my husband will need to work full time so would not be possible full time amx did would not want to move on if she was healthy

I look at my parents.. on the one hand my Dad looked after his Mum in the later years of his life. On the other hand, my Mum left Bolivia to come to the UK in the 1970s along with her sister. Her brother and half brother remained in Bolivia and looked after my grandmother, and other half-brothers and sisterslooked after my grandfather.

Then I look at me. An only child with divorced parents both of which remained single. My dad is 67, my mum is 61. I'm 37 and am not a particular fan of the UK and long to live somewhere with better weather. They are both fine now, but in 5 years time it could be a different story.

Given I have no brothers or sisters to shoulder the burden with, and given they chose to stay single after divorcing, I am not impressed with the burden that awaits me. Especially given the financial help my dad could have (but hasn't) provided my with, using my past mistakes of my early 20s as an excuse to hold on to every penny he has.

If it wasn't for the inheritance issue, I'd wash my hands of them I think and move abroad. But I can see that at least one would write me out of the will. So I guess I'm stuck here.

Unlike the OP, I have actually been in the position where my older relatives needed care. In fact 2 of them needed help at the same time. They lived 300 miles apart. I had 2 young children at the time. They both had complex needs (one was blind, deaf and had mobility problems, completely with it mentally, the other had mental and physical issues following a series of strokes) but desperately wanted to remain in their own homes and live an independent life. What should I have done in your ideal world?

This kind of crap really upsets me, other people acting like they are so selfless that they would never 'leave their relatives in a home' as someone has said on this thread. How can you deliver 24 hour care and also keep your own life on track, e.g. making sure your own house, family, financial affairs are in some kind of order?

I don't know.

My dad is dead and my mother was abusive. She tolerated me and begrudgingly clothed and housed me for the first 18 years of my life. I have no contact with her anymore. I have never been welcome in her home. I'm not in her Will.

She's on her own as far as I'm concerned.

As far as my children go...

I hope not to be here for long enough to be a burden to them. I want them to have amazing lives not to have them curtailed by caring for me.

Thank you so much for this post OP. You have expressed ill-thought out and ignorant views but it has been so heart-warming (as well as heart breaking)to read the thread. The professional carers who've posted have given so much wisdom, and so calmly; and the family carers trying to hold things together and do their best have done the same and given me a feeling of hope for humanity; and a slap round the face to show me that my difficulties dealing with my elderly mother's needs whilst desperately trying to be a good and present mum, a vaguely sane wife and decent human being (probably failed!) have been nothing compared to what some people have coped with.
Please, all of you who have felt guilty because of the ignorance and thoughtlessness of the OP, don't. Caring for an elderly parent (whatever the level of care you can provide) is so so hard; as is making the sometimes necessary choices not to.
Thank you everyone for the reams of wisdom and kindness (and also for the laughs - I do love a short, apt "fuck off" post where merited!)

This is one of the most interesting and thought provoking threads I have read on MN so far.

I am literally in tears here, did all that, have the T shirt and so on. Was a very difficult journey, and I have the bruises and scars to prove it, literally.

But as my first gambit, sometimes those who need care can be incredibly selfish in what they expect us to do for them.

Will be back when I wipe my tears away.

Of course it's ideal to look after your parents,
as is ideal for grandparents to look after grandchildren and families in general to be there to support each other. This is the norm in many countries. However, generally in those countries, families live closer to each other, have larger families meaning more people can help, don't have the same access/funds to care homes/social care or in the case of children childcare providers etc.

It used to be the norm in the UK years ago, but things have changed a lot since then.

If it wasn't for the inheritance issue, I'd wash my hands of them I think and move abroad
all the money may well be used up by care fee's....

Reasons why people don't want to care for parents? Let's just look at my family and DH's, for starters.

My mum - hurt me more than anyone can imagine when she reacted to my pregnancy and subsequent dumping by the father with the words 'If you have that baby and keep it, you'll never see your father or brother again as long as I draw breath'. She later committed suicide because of the 'shame' of my brother divorcing his wife. I hated the bitch.

My dad - adored him but he'd moved to a remote village 150 miles from where we lived and wanted to stay there. One-bedroom bungalow. No space for us to move in with him, nowhere in his village we could have stayed and no work locally for DH.

FIL - paranoid schizophrenic who spent his last 3 years in secure psychiatric care with good reason. Lovely man when not stealing cars and trying to shunt other cars off the road.

MIL - again, wanted to stay in own home where there was no space for any of our belongings. By the time she needed care I was disabled with osteoarthritis and in no fit state to become anyone's full time carer.

Judge us how you like - I don't give a fuck. We have no children who can care for us and neither do a lot of people. The world changes.

My family moved in with my grandmother after my grandfather passed away, my mam looked after and my dad worked full time. Me, my sisters and brother were teenagers at the time and my mam in her 40s.
My other grandmother is now incapable of looking after herself, my mam is 60 and I can see it’s tiring her out although she really doesn’t mind doing it, I feel she lacks support from the rest of the family.
I would help my mother in her old age too but I would expect my siblings to help out also.

I will be honest and say I am not sure about it as have spent 3 years looking after DD1 and then DH who have both been seriously ill and it took a big toll on me . I am an ex nurse too and know what’s involved in every way in caring for someone particularly when they are family and would never be critical of anyone who chose not to care for elderly parents . It’s a big responsibility and if the person had complex needs it could be a huge strain . On a positive note every one copes differently and could find it hugely rewarding too .

I doubt that anyone who is incontinent /terminally ill / suffering from dementia to the point that they don't even know who they are actually wants to live. I know that I certainly wouldn't. We demonise those that support euthanasia though and persecute the relatives of those that dare to leave the country to visit Dignitas and have them criminally investigated. I hope that when my end is near, I either go quickly or gave the wherewithal to bring my own end quickly anx effectively so that my children don't have to suffer watching me die, or becoming an inconvenience. I'm sure they'll miss me, but I certainly don't want to destroy or limit their lives in the process. For the record, I wouldn't want anyone to clean up my shit, let alone my kids.

Good to hear all the stories. A lot of them resonate with me.

Mum at a young age (64) had a massive stroke. We as a family (whilst working FT) visited every day and ensured she had carers. She sacked every one of them, or they just left! She was a demon, but her illness was probable cause.

Dad worked hard to pay for all this. Then he got cancer and was cared for at home with the hospice nurses. Mum would roar things like " I am the one who is sick, he's fine". OMG nightmare.

Then sadly Dad died, the most wonderful man you could ever meet. Still miss him after 18 years. So mum just went off grid and blamed everyone for everything.

I spoke to siblings and said, no way can we look after her. Are you all, every day prepared to do it all including personal care (she would not have carers in).

I stood my ground and said no, I will not do it.

So they finally agreed. Told Mum she would be going to respite for a fortnight. Lovely place right by me (of course), and she lived for many a long year after that.

If she had had to be cared for by family she would have been dead within a year. My back is gone now, and my mental health has suffered a lot from her kicking, hitting, spitting at me. None of my siblings suffered this.

She was a lovely woman, and I loved her dearly, but the time comes when you really do have to hand over 24 hour care to the professionals. The important thing to remember is carers in facilities have no emotional involvement. They do their job and go home.

We could not do our jobs and go home without trauma for years.

I am not broken, but I have significant scars.

I would expect my siblings to help out also
from what I observe they rarely do, if one person steps up the others heave a big sigh of relief and take several steps back