Having children to take care of you in old age

[ThatsNotMyCherry]

I want to know how to articulate why this is is wrong.

In recent years as her kids have flown the nest my mum has started going on about this a lot. She’s always saying how parents do so much for their children when they’re young so it’s their children’s duty to do the same when they’re old. I think she believes that in every relationship you should get back as much as you put in. She’s been a housewife her whole life and in recent years does a fair bit of care for her own mother. She tells me about people she knows who are unwell but their kids are busy working and raising their own families. Obviously neglecting your parents when they’re old isn’t right but people have their own lives and are entitled to live them. I think part of the problem may be that she’s never had a life outside of caring. When I tell her I don’t expect this from my children and want them to have their own happy, fulfilled lives she says I will only understand when they grow up, leave and then need them.

My parents’ care home was £1k a week each. Yes, £104k a year, fortunately thanks to POAs they never found out.

If I live to the age DM was, I will have another 30 years here. I am hoping for 25 good ones, and then a very short (pref painless) illness and/or the option of assisted suicide. DM had a catastrophic fall which turned it all tits up, too long to go into, but she developed dementia and it was tragic.

We are already dealing with DH cancer (hopefully cured) so I have done a lot of big thinking about what would happen if he died.

I will not do to my children what happened to me through my mother.

Same here, mine were 99 and 97 and my mum’s family lived for ever, she had two sisters who were over 100. I’m hoping for a massive stroke or heart attack in my mid/late 80s. That gives me 20 years. Better make them count!

Sorry @Alsohuman - your initial comment grated . I’m stuck in a nightmare . 7 years in . My mother will never accept care . We must wait till the biggest ever crisis beating in mind I have stood in a & e dept and refused to take her home as she would not be safe on her own .
However as she regularly tips into delirium as opposed to delusion as well I’m so so so tired .
When people complain about “ kid stuff “ , mil problems I just cock and eyebrow . At the school gate I only “ get” a mum who has a family member with terminal cancer . We are beyond beyond beyond exhausted .

There’s no need to apologise, geek, that sounds absolutely dreadful and you have my sympathy. It’s way beyond anything I ever had to face. My mum was the one with dementia and she was a delight to the end. Dad was the tricky one, when I put my foot down and insisted on the care home (which he chose), he wouldn’t speak to me for ten days. Which was a bit awkward as I was living in their house to look after them.

Thanks x as mum is self funding There is little I can do . I think we are are now at the edge of a care home admission but having been there last year with” the people in the loft episodes “ finally sorted by the psychiatrist - I’m. Just so done . The social worker questioned on the phone this week I might have “de-skilled” my mother by putting 3 x calls a day . I was speechless .
If this sounds horrific to anyone reading this thread - it all slides and Ramps up like a lobster boiling .

Does having a social worker actually help? At the point where a care package had to be put in place for my mum, I called social services. The first question they asked was how much money she had, as soon as it was established she was self funding they just sent me a list of care agencies and basically told me to get on with it.

Could your mum’s GP help you with getting her into a care home? It sounds as if you can’t go on much longer or you’ll be broken. Once again, I’m so sorry you’re going through this.

Those who have been through the mill (and seemingly very often to hell and back) do you have, in hindsight, any advice for the rest of us?
anything you could have done differently that would have have made the journey easier?

We’ve pushed for a care assessment because the cpn said we may have to prove everything has been tried to keep mum living independently at home as per the care act . A year ago mum refused one . There was nothing I could do . She’s started to wander and leave the door unlocked . She rings through the night . The GP promised me an emergency referral back to the memory clinic 2 weeks ago . I rang the duty team . Because mum is not psychotic; violent and understands 20/24 hours a day where she might be living and existing in the universe the law ignited us . The cpn told me to stop answering the phone . Helpful.

We don’t have a social worker . This is only very recent involvement because both I and the private care agency made a referal mum was at risk . We were discharged by the community mental health team at one point after diagnosis last summer once I’d put a care package in place . I’ve had to fight to get them back on board .

@alsohuman I had the same as you from social services. We had referrals made to them by police and ambulance staff who had to come out to incidents with my parents, social services called me, I spent 20 minutes explaining (what they should already have got in their files), then the question of finances and they didn't want to know.

This was at the point I just wanted to get someone in a couple of times a day to supervise medication and ensure they were eating properly. By the time I had to arrange live in care my mother's resistance had gone. I'd had to move in for a few weeks due to my father's hospitalisation as mum just wasn't safe, but with a DH and teenage DS this couldn't be permanent for me. Moving to a care home was the beginning of the end for my dad, very sad. It's been good for my mum though. And it means I can be a daughter again, rather than her carer.

@OYScuti I can't think of anything that happened in the journey with my parents that I think could have been done differently, not considering choices I had at the time. I would have liked to have had better communication with my dad at the end, but given his dementia symptoms (different to my mum's) I don't see how.

What an absolute nightmare. It sounds as if all the people who are supposed to be supporting you are actively working against you. How can you possibly not answer the phone? If you didn’t, you’d worry to death and, if something awful befell her, you’d never forgive yourself. I complained about the level of support I got but it was light years better than yours. No wonder what I said hit a nerve. I wish I could do something more than sympathise.

I don't think those who have had no involvement understand how broken the care system is.
My father refused to have anyone in. In the end we just gave a date to him and said from this date we will do nothing. It was really hard, but by the end of 2-weeks he was keen to have carers and a cleaner.
I know that sounds cruel, but we were at the end of our tether.

It alarms me though the number of people on this thread who are saying euthanasia is the way out. We have a terrible society if that is the solution.

It alarms me though the number of people on this thread who are saying euthanasia is the way out. We have a terrible society if that is the solution

We do have a terrible society which just doesn’t value old people or invest in their care. God help us when my generation (boomers) need care. Legal assisted suicide is the only solution or not keeping us alive with endless courses of antibiotics and other drugs so we die in the way people did 50 years ago. We need to lose our obsession with keeping people alive just because we can.

But it is basically saying people who are old don't matter. If we say this about old people who need care, then why not disabled people as well?

As long as people still want to be alive, they should be helped to do so.

I think normal care is part of a loving family relationship - popping in most days, taking out shopping once a week, having them over for dinner once or twice a week, doing a bit of tidying, taking to medical appointments weekly maybe.

Anything beyond that I think you need to look at proper carers. It’s not fair to expect grown kids to put their lives on hold and devote themselves to 24/7 care. My friend in her 30s has a dad in his late 70s with dementia and she is in there before and after work and then back to put him to bed. She says she wants to do it but her whole life revolves around it for years.

Were far more individualistic here/at this time than in collectivist cultures/earlier times where it is the norm for 3 generations to live together. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.

I dont have children and do suspect I'm a lot more likely to lie undiscovered for weeks than my siblings with kids so I think there is some level of expectation that our children will look after us, even if we pretend otherwise.

I think it makes sense to effectively outsource personal care. But carers coming in will make sure the person is clean, etc, but they do not do social care.
So for the person to have a decent time families do need to do things like visit, take the person out on little trips, manage their money, and make sure if they need new clothes they are purchased.

OP is realistic I think.
But I do judge my DP's friend who moved far away from his very elderly, very frail and nearly blind mother. He did not move from work, but because he wanted to retire somewhere pretty. I could not leave a non abusive parent who was so vulnerable, living so far away from me.

As long as people still want to be alive, they should be helped to do so

And that’s the crux of it. My dad and my gran both wanted to die and expressed that on more than one occasion. I’m a great believer in quality over quantity. There’s no point in keeping people alive for the hell of it when their quality of life has gone. I’d far, far rather die than live the way my poor mum did in her last years.

Yes some people do want to die. My dad wanted to die but is religious and in his religion suicide is wrong. So he would never have chosen euthanasia.

I will never expect my children to take care of me. They’ll have their own children, spouses, jobs, bills, stress, and saving for retirement to worry about. What, then they’re supposed to worry about Mother, too? This is not a quid pro quo, “I did for you when you were children, now you’ve got to do for me in my second childhood” type of thing. That’s selfish.

People live longer now. Those who say it’s only fair that adult children care for elderly parents need to remember that those parents were in their 20s and 30s, raising children – they were stronger and energetic. Nowadays you can easily have a scenario where a 65-year-old daughter is caring for her parents who are in their mid-‘90s. Lifting, bathing, and feeding a couple of toddlers when you're 29 is very different from lifting, bathing and feeding two grown adults when you're 65.

I’ve told my kids that I am to be put in a nursing home when the time comes. Let a trained professional do that stuff. I have another 15 or so years left of working and I’m saving to have plenty to fund my own retirement. Why should my kids reach into their own pockets to fund my life?

I’ll only ask that they visit me occasionally. And bring chocolate.

@outonthetilez - And what will you do before you get bad enough to need a nursing home? Because although some people do go from independent to needing full-time nursing, most people slowly and gradually decline.

Also only the very wealthy can fund their social care for more than a year or two. My father spent £60k on home carers before he had to move to state funded care which was inadequate. He was not eligible for a care home funded by the state.

@janemaster, then I'll get a carer in if I have to. A coworker of mine is in her mid-forties and obviously still has to work. She can't stay with her mother, who is mentally declining but physically healthy, full-time. So she's hired an in-house carer for her mother.

A woman I know has mentioned that she's planning on following her kids wherever they go as she plans on living with them. I think that's a horrible sentiment. Is that why people have kids? To act as nursemaids?

As long as people still want to be alive, they should be helped to do so.

But we force them to stay alive when they do not want to, for the sake of that there may those who want to stay alive. Why is this right for one subset and not another? And particularly in the face of terminal illness or illness which has no cure.

There was a Dutch man in the UK who had sulfuric acid thrown over him by his ex girlfriend and survived, but his doctors all admitted there was no way to every fully assuage his pain. The nature of the injury was such that he would endure agonising nerve pain which could not be fully assuaged by any means known for the duration of his life. Being a dual national, he was able to express his wish to be delivered of his suffering and was removed to Belgium, where his life was terminated according to his wishes and surrounded by his family.

It is, IMO, very troubling that there is no such option available to those who have no such recourse.