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.

Thank you. Sorry, I didn’t mean to vent on this thread but received a text saying “my GP says you are killing me” while reading it and it sent me over the edge.

I lurk on the cockroach thread @yolofish. I’ve followed your story . It has helped me . Sounds really familiar @Connie222 . My husband watched his parents care for a family member so is supportive . But it is very very hard .

I’ve told my 10 year old to put me in care when the time comes and take not one bit of notice even if I’m screaming at him not to abandon me .

We are having clauses put in our poa etc . God knows how where the money will come from if I live that long. A private care home bill is 4-5k a month . We are all living longer and there is no social care provision . My mother hasn’t been particularly nice to me all my life but she fed me , clothed me and ensured I had the opportunity of supportive home life enough to reach a level of education go to to university to get a career and be independent .

But she doesn’t get that’s all gone now and for along time insisted she didn’t need a carers / cleaners or gardener and I could look after her at the expense of my life and my husband wage which surely be “ enough”!

Delete the text and then block him Connie
(Or alternatively text back that your GP says that he is killing you)

I think it depends on what you mean by care.

Day to day care, no - It's a job, most people already have a full time one (plus kids and their own housework) and it requires a lot of patience that sometimes family members are not best placed to give, and a loss of dignity and authority for the parent.

Ensuring that your parents needs are met, yes - I've helped my parents sort out their fiances, find suitable housing, ensure they get everything they're entailed to etc. I would go to appointments if beneficial, stay after an operation, make complaints if needed.

I hadn't thought of that. In terms of not having children, I have started to wonder if I I don't what will happen to my things.

My possessions. My jewellery. Things of mine of sentimental value, things I've collected over a life time

Who will look at those and want to keep some of them so they could somehow still feel a connection to me because they missed me.

Would they all just be thrown away because there is no one.

Ah shit I'm gonna making myself cry

86 yr old mil has lived with us for years due to firstly mental health problems and more recently moving problems limiting her ability to live alone. She has almost self contained accommodation in our house which works very well. We support her with shopping, laundry and increasing amounts of housework. When/if she needs personal care we will hire carers and she will pay.
It us much easier for us having her here with us, as we do not have to run backwards and forwards to visit her elsewhere, or have to deal with those alarming phone calls when something goes wrong. We can 'pop in' to her easily for a quick chat everyday. Her mental health is immeasurably better than it was when she lived alone. She is not demanding or difficult, but she does live in her own world conversations are completely one sided. She isn't someone I'd want to spend loads of time with but we don't have to spend any where near as much time or energy on her as we would if she lived seperately from us.

Walk away @Connie222.
Easier said than done when there’s no one else I know . You are his comfort blanket and that includes all that abuse.

I suggest you write to his GP and give him your side of the social picture.

Depression, apathy, denial can be early dementia symptoms are bedfellows
What people don’t realise is that selfish people get old too . And dementia is not all smiling old folk gently becoming adorably forgetful or the extreme picture of people unable to swallow or recognise their loved ones . In between there can be a period of of a decade in which supportive familial relationships are tested to the limit or broken . My husband and I often ponder what happens to people have noone and have realised now why many older people seem effectively abandoned by their family. They can become unwittingly and tragically the architects of their own demise imo

@Connie222 - you know thats not true, don't you? You know the GP hasnt told him that. It's a lie to make you feel bad. Or he's deliberately misunderstood what the GP has said because he doesn't like the truth of what the GP has said.

You are not responsible for your dad's mental or physical health. He has been wrong to make you feel that you are. Step away.

I'm not sure if you're my age op but I do know my mum got the shit end of the deal in terms of attitudes changing through the generations. She was certainly expected to care for both of my grandmothers (her mum and her mil) and actually put a lot of her life on hold to do so. She was also of the generation that was expected to give up work upon having children so she's spent a great deal of her life caring for other people. But she's also raised her children to be perhaps the first generation that aren't expected to do all the caring which must be a bitter pill for her to swallow.

As it happens she not only gave up her career to bring up myself & my siblings, then began caring for elderly relatives and now looks after my children now while I'm at work for 2 days this saving us a fortune in nursery fees so there's no way that I won't be caring for her once she needs it - she's done far too much for everybody else for it to be any other way. But I do appreciate that everybody's circumstances are different so I don't think every single person (woman) should be automatically expected to care for their elderly relatives.

I don't think children should be expected to provide personal care or be there 24/7 but to have them organise care for their parent, should they need it, and make sure they are being properly cared for isn't too much to ask. It isn't too much to expect regular frequent contact (even if they're on the other side of the world they could make sure skype/facetime is set up).

But does that really fall under the category of caring for your parents? I don't think phone calls and organising a couple of appointments is remotely the same thing as providing round-the-clock care, which is what I assumed you were referring to.

My parents, both teachers, saved all their lives so they could be comfortable in their old age. There was certainly no expectation from them when they were younger that I would be expected to take care of them. I can remember my mum saying to me that when she was unable to look after herself she would like to have someone look after in her own home rather than going into care home, and she certainly meant a paid person not me.

Roll on mum's dementia starting around 6 years ago. Mum was in denial, wouldn't admit to there being anything wrong, telling me she cleaned the house and cooked daily. Dad looked after her until it was apparent that due to his failing health he was unable to manage so I had to step in and assist with the cooking, cleaning, shopping, taking them out etc. I did it because my mum wouldn't accept in paid helpers and dad wouldn't do anything outside of her wishes, and I would let my parents be in a situation where they weren't eating properly in a dirty house. As I worked part time it was manageable if not ideal until we came to the point where additional personal care was needed and mum just wasn't safe.

After a difficult couple of years my parents moved into a care home and although I'm pleased I was able to support them being at home as long as possible, I think it would have been better for both of them if they had moved sooner.

I have a friend who lives with her widowed mother who had promised her that she will not let her go into a home, she has no life and is in the process of giving up her job now her mum needs someone with her full time. I have said to her that a nice care home can be the best place for someone but she has said that it's not for her.

My DS has already told me that he couldn't do for me what he watched me do for my parents - but he'll find me a nice care home!

I hope that DH and I will have the self awareness to take steps to make our lives properly manageable in our end years before it's too late to make the changes ourselves and it becomes
crisis point which is what I think happens in most cases.

Connie, you need to prioritise your marriage, your pregnancy, your children, and YOU. It is ok to keep contact to a minimum with your dad - you don't need to reply to every text, you don't need to feel responsible for his emotions and depression. Could you ask your GP/midwife to refer you for some counselling to help you deal with this?

I don't feel my children owe me anything but I hope they will value family the way they've seen us do. Nobody gave up work or moved elderly parents into our home but they did see us care for and to a certain extent, at certain times, prioritise the needs of our elderly parents. Then again, they also saw how wonderful those parents/grandparents were.

I feel like some of the posts on this thread is like when you get pregnant women coming onto baby/toddler (even teen!) threads to say how much better they'll do it all when they're parents. It's easy to think that you'll do whatever it takes to care for your parents when they currently need no care.

One thing that really, really annoys me on these kind of threads is all the posters who say they will be off to dignitas before developing advanced dementia.

Such a naive view.

One of the main problems with dementia is that it means that people are not aware that there is a problem. If people aren't capable of admitting that they need help in cleaning their house, at what point do you think a person would say, right that's it, my memory's not what it used to be, I'm packing my bags.

Such stupid comments.

@adaline it's a bit more than one or two phonecalls and a couple of appointments though. I dont provide 24 hour care for my dad but I do about 8 hours just on admin alone, liaising w social services, his carers, sorting finances, sorting a blue badge- then there are his medical appointments, the mobile chiropodist, the mobile barber, getting someone to do the gutters, paying the bloke who does the garden etc etc. Just keeping the wheels on takes tremendous effort.

One of the main problems with dementia is that it means that people are not aware that there is a problem. If people aren't capable of admitting that they need help in cleaning their house, at what point do you think a person would say, right that's it, my memory's not what it used to be, I'm packing my bags

Yep very true. I work in health and I don’t know of a single person with dementia who has actually gone to dignitas. It’s really not that simple. Most people don’t know they even have dementia or they get vascular dementia which can come on following a stroke and by then they aren’t capable of travelling to bloody Switzerland or wherever it is. It’s so easy to say casually yeah I’d just end my life but in reality it’s not easy at all.

My MiL used to say that people had children so that they would look after you when you get old.
Thankfully the old bag died before any of us had to do that. She was narcissistic and thought they world revolved around her. Even when all children were married with families of their own, she still thought she would snap her fingers and they should come running to her.

@shinynewapple2020

Well said Everyone I know who has a parent with dementia in a care home went through years of stress beforehand. In the end it's usually a series of crisis that does the trick, or you have to wait til their mind is so far gone that you can tell them they are there on holiday.

As people lose their faculties and their agency then cling more strongly to what they know. It's a rare person who says "yep, care home for me" esp knowing they may only be able to afford it for a year or two - and then what?

It’s so easy to say casually yeah I’d just end my life but in reality it’s not easy at all.

That's true, but I think that's why we need advanced directive recognised in law and assisted suicide in the UK not just expensive Dignitas. It will never happen, though, so we'll find a lot of terrible things happening as social care is more and more demanding and there are not the resources to cope with it and more and more people living longer and therefore developing dementia, as the chief cause of it is age.

It's an inconvenient truth, but people weren't meant to live so long and expect to enjoy good health. For every anecdote about 90-somethings who sail round the world and run marathons there are legions more requiring full time care.

I'm not that sure that seeing it happen to other people does make people age 'better', by the way. After my grandparents died my parents were adamant that they would move to a more suitable property while still young and healthy enough to not 'need' to, to avoid the nightmare they'd seen with my grandparents not refusing to move even though living in their house was unsustainable and only possible with unreasonable demands being put on their adult children. They agreed they would do this at 60. Well, 60 has been and gone a while ago and they still live in their house that needs loads of maintenance, would be a nightmare to adapt, and - crucially - isn't actually going to be viable to live in once they can't drive. A few years ago they could talk openly about moving and getting older, now they get upset and prickly about it. It's very clear to me that they're just going to repeat the pattern - a desire not to admit they're ageing and will, eventually, need more help has outweighed the lesson they thought they'd learned.

How would the advance directive stuff work though data. Would I be expected to deliver my trusting, confused father who is reasonably happy for euthanasia just because its what his former self wanted (and he absolutely would not have wanted to end up like this)? Because I'm not sure I could do that. What would I tell him "Dont worry dad it's just a little injection"? And why is who he was and what he wanted then more important than who he is and what he wants now?

That's probably exactly what's going to need to happen, though, Porcupine, because we'll have an ageing population with increasing levels of dementia and we won't have the social care available for them, unless we're able to automate that care. Again, it's a harsh truth, but that's mostly the way of things.

Would you expect your parents to move near you? I think my parents expect us to move near them, but that would mean a huge change in our life circumstances include job opportunities and being not near good schools. I'm more than happy to care for my parents but I don't think we should have to sacrifice our lives to do so.

That was the issue with my grandparents @puppy78 - they did accept in the end (though reluctantly, and they later accused my dad of forcing them into it) that they would have to move near us but they hated where my parents live and complained constantly about how horrible and expensive it is. The trouble is that they couldn't see that their preferred solution - my dad continuing to do a six hour round trip every Saturday after working long hours all week to sort out everything they needed doing - wasn't actually a good solution. It was a good solution for them and they just ignored that it was totally unsustainable for him. Their suggestion was that he just started staying overnight on a Saturday if he found it too tiring, ie that he just stopped seeing his wife and children at all.

It is easy to say you should look after your parents but it is not easy to do. My grandmother needed care and it has caused serious problems in the family that persist to this day. Everyone worked, I am disabled, almost everyone had young children. It was a huge strain however much we loved her, plus as often happens, the majority of the care fell to the women of the family. It ended up in arguments that people weren't pulling their weight, especially when she needed someone overnight. Everyone was exhausted, one marriage almost fell apart and I was bed bound for almost a month after she died because I was expected to help her move around when I could barely walk myself some days.

Things in this country aren't set up for caring. Now many couples both work full time and as a lot of children are born to older when their parents need care, they still have young children. Housing is expensive so it can be impossible to have a place big enough for parents to stay too and if they sell their own home and pay into your, there can be issues with care home fees when the time comes. Plus, it can really strain a marriage as well if your partner isn't happy with the situation. In addition, many people don't even live near their parents anymore so it isn't as easy as popping down the road. I also don't think anyone should be expected to do personal care either. People make a choice to have children, the child does not choose to be born, there is no debt to repay.