to ask if your older relatives don’t ‘get’ that you work?

[Knityourownyoghurt]

My dad is in his 60s, has been retired for 10 years & before that was his own boss. However he seems to have totally forgotten what full time work is like. He phones mid afternoon on weekdays expecting a chat and doesn’t ‘get’ that I don’t have half an hour to natter.

MIL, who worked sporadically but never full time and not for many years after having children, offered to look after DD one day a week as she thinks full time nursery is ‘too much for little ones’. When we explained she would have to 100% commit to that day, she seemed confused, and said if something popped up and she couldn’t have DD we would just have to take the day off

Is this a ‘thing’ or just my relatives?!

My parents are great, will text or call but don't expect a reply, though my dad works night shifts and often day shifts at his second job straight after so he's busier than us.

Fil hasn't worked in almost 40 years, he wouldn't think twice about repeatedly calling at ANY time of day or night, even at 3am cause he's bored/pissed...

Mine are the opposite, they apologise for texting if its during the working day, even though I dont have to answer

@CheesecakeAddict

My grandparents retired in their 50s and are now in their 70s and have definitely forgotten. They get really stroppy with me if I don't visit them frequently (every week) but I rarely get home till DDs bedtime and I have 3 jobs so my weekends are all tied up too. Then they randomly pop by for a cup of coffee and wonder why no one is in 😒

I think this is about family life-changing rather than work. My parents worked full-time and had 3 kids, but visited my gran every single week. This used to be common.

I'm 64, and changed jobs a couple of years ago from a full-time university post to a somewhat flexible consultancy (largely because the consultancy, even part-time, pays better). I usually work 4 days a week but it's a bit variable and I can choose to take quite a lot of (unpaid) time off if I want.

However, I married late and didn't have children until I was 46 and 49, by which time my parents were well retired. They weren't too bad during the working day, but I do remember having to make a rule that they shouldn't call between 5 and 8 pm unless someone had died, because that was the time when we were working our backsides off to get the children fed, bathed and in bed.

Now my children are teenagers and if we communicate during the work/school day it's by text only, recognising that they're in class and I'm in meetings so there may not be a quick reply.

@Kite22

It's about selfish, thoughtless attitudes, not age.

This ^ 100%

10.7% of those aged 65+ are in employment

Yes, but that is counting everyone in their 70s, 80s, 90s, and those over 100 I presume. Also including all those who are either physically and mentally incapable. It is an irrelevant figure for this discussion.

There seem to be an awful lot of older women who have never worked and seemingly don’t understand that younger women who do don’t seem to have any time to look after them, ferry them around etc.

I think some people have got their timelines confused here. OP is talking about a man in his 60s. I am close to 60 and have worked outside the home all my life, as has virtually everyone I know. My Mum would be in her 90s if she were still with us. She too worked outside the home virtually all her life, as did so many of her friends. My Grandmother (and we are now talking about someone born in the 19th Century lived on a farm most of her life, where it was all hands on deck so technically didn't go out to work but did work more than just 'keeping house'.
The idea that only people in their 20s or 30s have ever worked outside the home once married is quite frankly just not true.

I don't think we are only talking about women who have never worked. My mum worked until retirement age - full time for most of her working life. Same for my dad.

And yet, since retiring she still seems to have lost touch with what working for a living involves.

My mil will message dh and if he fails to reply within the hour she’ll message me asking if he’s okay… she can’t grasp that he might be chairing a meeting so can’t just reply to her random, unimportant question that can wait!

I would add mil is 63 and only ever worked part time but barely at all while dc were younger. She’s fairly horrified I work full time.

It's a thing definitely OP!
My parents are in their 70's and totally oblivious to the fact we don't have all day to chit chat and that then "just popping in" unannounced is a huge stress.
It causes no end of tedious drawn out calls and week in week out despite repeating myself this is a massive issue. I could scream some days !
I've tried everything but they just refuse to get it!

@Whattochoosenow

Yes my parents seem genuinely surprised I have to work between Christmas and New Year. We have the same surprised conversation every year.

Same with my PILs. Every year they express shock, sadness, and disbelief that my workplace expects me in on the days between Boxing Day and New Year's Day.

This is even more laughable when you know that I work in a hospital, so actually just getting the bank holidays off is a very good deal indeed.

I think also, what "full time work" involves has changed a lot in the last 20-30 years. I think this is a big part of why some retired people don't 'get' the pressures that many workers are under in 2022.

• People use to live closer to work in average, so they'd get home fairly soon after finishing work.
• In most professions, people used to finish roughly on time (or even early). Now, it's rare for someone in a 'professional' role to be able to walk out the door at 5pm on the dot. 10-12 hr days are fairly normal in many workplaces.
• Work is much more fast paced now, and a hell of a lot more gets squeezed into the working day. This is driven by lots of factors, including the instant communication that emails deliver. (Back in the day, people would dictate memos and letters.) Overall productivity may not have gone up (I'm not sure), but the 'busywork' of reading and dealing with hundreds of emails a day definitely has.

So someone who works full time in a professional role in 2022 will probably work longer hours than the equivalent worker in 1990, have a longer commute, and be expected to cram much more activity into their hours, making them more tired at the end of the day. And then they still have the normal life admin to sort out - cooking dinner etc.

Yep. My dad calls me every single day. Always at times when I’m busy. He knows I work, knows I have to get my dd from school at 3. He rarely has anything to really say as he’s retired and has admitted he’s bored. It’s usually while he waits for his partner to come out of the supermarket so I’m being used to kill time. If I don’t answer he will keep calling, then call my Dh who is also working. I feel mean but it’s really quite annoying. I wouldn’t mind if he called me in the evening after dinner time but he’s usually in bed by 7!

My parents still work but PILs are like this. They’re nearly 70 and we’re lucky to retire at 60 as did DH’s auntie and uncle at a similar time. DH’s sister hasn’t worked in years and when his grandparents were alive, they were obviously long retired. DH has a small family and therefore DH and I are the only ones in the whole family that work. The rest of them can do all sorts of lovely things during weekday days and they’ll organise important events but say they understand we can’t come because we’re working which I guess they think is understanding but it would be more inclusive of us to organise things when we’re not working!

@Octomore All the data shows hours worked have fallen over the last seventy years.

I agree it's about selfish / self-absorbed attitudes, rather than age.

My DP retired nearly 25 years ago (DF is 84, DM a few years younger) but they wouldn't dream of just randomly calling/popping in or disrespecting working hours. They both seem to remember well enough what the stress of a working week was like, as does MIL, who is similar. We speak regularly and send regular text messages through the week but they would only make an urgent call if it was a genuine emergency i.e. something medical or a car accident or something.

We are obviously very lucky but I wonder whether part of the problem is with retired people who just don't have enough in their lives to keep them occupied. My DP and inlaws all belong to various clubs and societies and are always off out doing this that and the other, they wouldn't have time to keep calling us/popping in for cups of tea etc.

Nope.

My mum and dad (born 1921 and 1914 respectively) always understood what working full time meant. Same for DH's parents (1926/1922). And now that we're retired we get that our adult DC work full time. Although with WFH and the types of jobs DS1 and DiL have, they now have more free hours during the day than we ever did. But we still don't bother them during the day. And we remember that DS2 works a late shift so we don't call him in the mornings.

I do think that part of it for my and DH's mothers was that they both worked before we were born as well as returning to work in our teen years. I can see where a person who has either never worked outside the home or hasn't for 20+ years might forget about 'working hours' or the restrictions working puts on one's flexibility.

[quote Monopolyiscrap]@Octomore All the data shows hours worked have fallen over the last seventy years.[/quote]
Ok, well that doesn't tally with my experience in office based 'professional' jobs over the last +20 years (I've worked in both public and private sector).

In my experience, workdays used to involve a lot less activity than they do now. Many workplaces used to have a culture where going for a long boozy lunch a few days a week was the norm - that's not how it is now.

My experience is that expectations of employees have shifted hugely since the late 90s. It used to be rare to get requests to turn around sizable pieces of work extremely quickly at short notice, now it's almost a weekly occurrence.

This happened to my parents once they had been retired a few years . They worked for 50,+ years each so it wasn't that they had never worked. I think as they got older they just forgot what having a job was like . A bit like me having forgotten what having s baby / toddler is like now I am in my 50s

My parents died in their late 80s/ early 90d and retired at (60 ) my mother) and 65 ( my father) so were retired for 25+ years. Long enough to forget the specifics of their working lives

Yup. We have this with PIL. Before covid, it was whether I wore a uniform because "the girls in the bank do", and whether DH gives me much housekeeping. I was in a profession in finance.

During the first lockdown we were both WFH full-time, looking after two year old and I was heavily pregnant - were we enjoying our break?

These days DH is back in the office roughly once a week. Every Sunday they ask "are you working at all this week?". Drives him insane.

They have a very stereotypical public sector view of work being 9-5 and not a minute more - things like no one covering our work if we're on holidays are completely alien. They were flabbergasted when I had to nip away and do an hour on a Sunday recently.

My mum who gave up work years before she had DC is the one who fully gets it. MIL worked til her 60s, albeit part-time, and FIL still works at 78 in his own business. It's bizarre and infuriating in equal measure.

Average working hours in UK are 16750 a year.

clockify.me/working-hours

Personally, I worked much harder hours when younger in the 80's and 90's. And have a much easier time now. But I think it depends on your type of job. DP has the opposite experience in terms of the amount of paperwork, but is expected to work with less people per day than in the past.

Yep.. my father still believes I work for 'pin money' he cannot actually believe that its necessary for two incomes to run a home these days.

@Octomore I agree, I think demands have changed. I work with volunteers, many whom are retired and although they definitely understand working hours they really dont seem to understand how pressurised those hours are, or the costs and formalities involved. They cant grasp that I wont have time to dedicate to their pet projects for example, or that I cant just call up a mate at the council and sort something out rather than book a meeting a month in advance... I think when they were at work things were more relaxed and a lot just got agreed on a handshake over lunch. Not the same now.

@Cluelessasacucumber I worked in the council in the eighties. In my team we worked hard. With Tory cuts there was not enough of us. But things were less formal. So you could easily call people and ask them for favours and get it if it was for a good project. We borrowed equipment from events for our outreach work, because my manager was married to a manager in events.

My parents respect the working week but don't get how time poor we are. My mum didn't return to work after having me and my dad had his own business so could pop out in a quiet five minutes to pick something up for a diy project or go to the bank or whatever - things we only have time to do at the weekends. And sometimes one of us ends up working then too. They also had a lot of help from my grandparents who would baby sit. We've never had any babysitting from them. They turn up to visit and remark that the gutters need clearing or the weeds are coming up. I once pointed out that when I was growing up out of their 2x7 days in the week as a couple, there were 5 out of 14 spent at work. We spend 10-11 at work, and commute (my dad worked locally). They seemed quite offended when I pointed out this difference.

I think this is about family life-changing rather than work. My parents worked full-time and had 3 kids, but visited my gran every single week. This used to be common.

For you maybe. We saw our Grandparents about 3 times a year.

We are all different and it is difficult to generalise.

The fact I can now work at home gives me a freedom and autonomy I couldn't have dreamt of 20 years ago.
I've only been at work 40 years, but have never worked anywhere that involved "going for long boozy lunches". I don't recognise @Octomore 's experience at all.

Which, once again, brings us back to all being different.

@Kite22 I have been at work for nearly 40 years now. I am working class though. And spending one day at the weekend visiting grandparents was very common. Some families still do this even if they both work full time.
I am NOT saying you or anyone else should do this. But it is about different ideas of how families should interact and priorities for how you spend your time.
I have friends who work full time and spend most weekends going to family and family events, often Saturday and Sunday. I wouldn't do this, but they just see this as being a close family.