Our children owe us nothing

[Shesforeverjumpingonthatsofa]

Who agrees with this?

I truly believe my Dd (5) owes us nothing when she grows up. I hope hope hope she’ll want to visit regularly and spend time with us, because she wants to, and that is all.
Dh’s mum is always complaining, she’s on her own after fil passed some years ago, but she’s never worked, never learnt to drive. She complains that no one comes to do her garden, to take her food shopping, to pay her bills and help her sort them out etc. I remember when Dh was young and first starting working in his first job and they took a huge amount of board from him-a lot. His brother still lives at home with her and pays the majority of everything (agree he should contribute a fair amount living there, but if he moved out she’d be screwed)
I really feel like I brought my Dd into this world, everything I do for her is because she’s my daughter and I love her, she doesn’t owe me anything
Anyone agree?

I'd be heartbroken if my dd went off into the world and didn't want to ever see me again.

I don't expect her to stay local or support me financially/emotionally but I would hope she will love and care about me! I'd hope if I needed help or was unwell she'd be concerned and what to help if she could.

That's what family is for surely 🤷‍♀️

OP is this post more about the fact you dislike your MIL ? I find it quite sad that a grown woman resents her husband helping his parents .
My husband and his siblings have spent the last 4 weeks alternating sleepovers at his Mothers because her dementia has nose dived .
In the meantime I have ,with my SIL looked at 12-15 care homes for her…it’s called being a caring family!

I think this is a really sad way to describe someone who I presume is elderly, useless is a really cruel way to describe anyone really. It's sounds like your grandmother was sad and afraid and needed kindness and patience. Imagine losing your husband of decades then suddenly having all of these responsibilities thrust on you while you are wrestling with that grief.

I'm glad she got the space she needed to heal and grow.

I think parenting a five year old is quite different from raising children to adulthood and then being a parent of those children. I also think being older is different from being young, that being married is different from being widowed. And that what seems simple is often deeply complex.

I hope your life works out the way you think it will.

I had a weird family set up. Both parents grew up poor - mum ended up a doctor and dad was always in minimum wage jobs, but had several stunts being bankrolled by my mum in multiple failed self employment endeavours. As in, they were in significant debt at some points.

I’m 26 and remember my dad saying when I was a teenager that it would be “nice” if my brother and I started working full time as the family would be set financially and he could use the money to do up the house and buy another shop to be self employed etc. I remember thinking WTF, he really believed the income I got would be going straight into pockets.

I have lost both my parents, but I have one grandparent left. She did absolutely everything for her children and her grandchildren, never made any requests or asked anything from us.

We as a family ensure she won't go into a nursing home. Whilst she needs a lot of care, we can compensate that with time. None of us want to visit her in a nursing home, and we (as a family) would do anything to not let that happen.

I don't think my daughter owes me anything. It's me that chose to bring her into the world. But I would hope as she gets older, we could keep a relationship that we both value and would want to keep even if we were not family. I would also say that when she's an adult and able to look after herself, that I don't owe her anything. My financial and economic obligations to her would end there. I may want to continue to support her depending on circumstances but I'd have to judge it at that point. But by then I would've equipped her with everything she needs to succeed.

I totally agree with you OP and my kids are older than your DD. I have a teenager and two preteens.

Our children owe us nothing. I want a full and independent life for my kids, for them to be happy and fulfilled when becoming adults. I think that's what is going to make me the happiest.
The moment to have them around is now, when they are growing up. After that we need to let go.
Making someone be around you out of guilt is terrible.

PS. My own parents and MIL are the "you owe me everything" crowd. I will never become that person.

This.

Maybe your MIL wanted to work or learn to drive but those weren’t always the expectations for women of that generation. (We all know that childcare is a full time job anyway, because if you’re not doing it yourself someone else gets paid to do it)

Maybe imagine what it would be like to lose your DH. You don’t expect anything from your DD in a monitory sense (which I agree with) but I’m sure you would appreciate her and any future SIL/DIL to show you a bit of compassion, patience, and tolerance.

Unless your DH had an abusive childhood surely there was something he got from his mother that would be worth putting up with a few anxious phone calls etc

What has your Dh living at home and paying board when he first started working got to do with it ? So he should have . He was earning and an adult. Is he holding a grudge ??

I should’ve been born in a different culture because I think old people should be looked after. Parents, neighbours, grandparents. When someone needs help, I’m happy to obviously within reason).

I didn’t have my child to look after me & I’m fiercely independent but I would hope that she thinks of others & helps where possible. Not to the detriment of her own life but imo we should all be looking out for others.

I have quite a few older neighbours & if someone needed help & I could, I would.

It’s so complex.
My circumstances are that I’ve been a cater in some form or another to my mum since I was 11 years old. My older siblings have never been relied upon in the same way, and neither of them take any responsibility for my mum now.
I feel like I’ve never really had the support aspect from my mum, and feel resentful that I’m still expected to do all the stuff she needs help with now.
I know that sounds bitter, but the weight of expectation has had a really negative impact on my relationship with my mum - and my siblings, who get to live their lives exactly how they please.
I will never place demands on my children, it’s not fair.

In some ways I agree. I am early 60s and have one elderly mother and two adult DDs and grandchildren. I help my elderly DM with finances etc and adult DD with childcare. At the moment DH and I are independent and any help we give is because we love our DDs and my DM. At some point we may need help ourselves and hopefully our DDs will want to because that is what families do. However we have friends and hobbies too so our lives do not totally revolve around family.

My parents definitely don't expect things and don't imply we owe them anything. As a result we actively spend time with them, they have a good relationship with their grandchildren and we are all an active part of each others lives.

My mums mum has a very entitled "everybody owes me everything" attitude and it did nothing for their relationship so I'm assuming my mum has made a conscious decision to not be that way.

I agree, and the majority of people do treat their parents well. However, that is not the same as what the OP is talking about - a woman in her late 60s who seems to think her children should be running after her and doing things most people of her age are quite capable of organising themselves. I have friends who are older than she is who are still helping out their children, and require no help themselves, others are still working at that age. OP's MIL is not elderly, and should be able to organise her own life - not relying on her family who no doubt have busy enough lives of their own.

I felt, when I had my own children, that I owed my mum a huge debt of gratitude for all that she had done to raise 4 children. I never thought about this until I had my own kids. I hope they will feel similarly and stay in close contact over the years.

Unless you’ve been an abusive parent I actually think adults owe their parents basic respect. Which means visits, the occasional helping out when needed. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to if you’re not NC.

There seems to be a phenomena (encouraged on MN) of going NC with your parents over the tiniest insignificant thing and I know some absolute arsehole adults who treat their parents like total shit but will no doubt be expecting a big fat inheritance. I think it’s really sad.

Same.

I actually called my mum when my eldest was a toddler and said thank you for everything and sorry for all the times I was a shit.

This is a very British opinion and while I agree to a certain extent because I am from the UK (although living abroad now), I also think it’s an unhealthy and cold perspective. In the UK it’s become so common to put ourselves, as an individual, and our own feelings first, before anything else. We are shedding any sense of decency, responsibility, duty, kindness, morality, all to make sure we never ever have to do anything we don’t want to. As a result we have a country full of spoilt, entitled babies and it’s causing a lot of issues.

So many posters on this thread are not getting the point. Of course most of us are happy to do things for our parents, to help them out etc. especially as they age - but that is very different from the EXPECTATIONS some parents have of their children, which is what the OP is saying. No-one is saying that children shouldn't help their parents, but when relatively young parents are expecting their adult children to run after them and do things they really could do, or sort out, themselves then that is where they are going wrong. Children do not ask to be born, they have no say in the matter, but it seems there are a (hopefully) small minority of parents who seem to think that their children, who they chose to have, owe them for life, and that having children means those children will give up their own lives to care for them. That sort of relationship is unhealthy.

It's such a hard question because every answer will differ based on your own families experience. I grew up with no grandparents, no extended family, therefore my own parents never had any support, yet they didnt have any caring responsibilities either. Just under 2 years after our daughter was born they moved abroad, they didn't want to engage in any caring for her, before, during or after (they came back to the uk after 8 years abroad) probably because it didn't occur to them as they never had it themselves. My husband's family are a different kettle of fish, their lives have always revolved around family, they have taken an active role in wanting to help us clean and decorate our first home, wanted to look after our daughter one day a week since she was small, etc. my parents will never have the same bond with our daughter as my parents in law do. I still find it strange (but lovely!) that our daughter so actively loves her grandparents because it's not my normal, if that makes sense. My own parents who have been completely self obsessed (not a criticism, just what they are used to) and have never offered any kind of emotional support,are now becoming quite elderly and I am struggling to cope with the concept of looking after them whilst working full time, looking after our daughter and doing all the usual life maintenance that is the norm. Partly because I don't feel I ought to be responsible (they were never anything other than social friends really, we have been through considerable trauma and we never had support from them if it didn't match their routine)and partly because life is so busy. I don't feel the same about my parents in law, who, despite their somewhat archaic social norms, have never been anything other than kind, helpful and devoted to our daughter and actively wanting to build a relationship with her. It's not your responsibility to look after elderly parents if it is going to be to the detriment of your own nuclear family, if you have not been given the same whilst younger. My father's first words to me on my 18th birthday were "I am no longer legally responsible for you" and upon buying our first home, whilst my lovely parents in law were helping us clean, my parents brought round all my childhood thing (school books etc) and said we don't need to store these in the loft for you now, you can have them. You can guess who I am going to want to help most in the future....

It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, or so transactional. Inter-generational care and reciprocity exist in functional, loving families who generally communicate well. Levels of dependence and independence have to be (re)worked out at different stages of life.

My parents were so good to me - were incredibly loving and kind, supportive, fed and clothed me, even spoiled me compared to my friends.
They put me through university without a single complaint, and if I got in a jam were always there with love and support.
In the end, I always felt that I owed them so much - they never demanded it, they never told me I owed them - I just felt that way.
Good parents don’t require thanks or support or respect: they earn it.

I imagine this is like saying what kind of parent you’ll be before you have kids- you don’t really have any idea what it’s like, what your grown up kids will be like or how you’ll be behave.

That's exactly it. You have no idea how you're going to feel when you get to that stage (which is the stage that I'm at).

I recall just how perfect a parent I was going to be when I was pregnant. Just how great a parent of teenagers I was going to be when my kids were primary school age. What a hands off parent of adults I was going to be, when my kids were early teens. I've done my best but I didn't match up to any of those expectations of myself.

Realistically, they change and we change. Life throws things at us in the meantime.

I'm now in my late 60s and widowed. I'm fortunate at the moment to be in good health, fully mobile, and independent of character. But there are often things around the house, maintenance wise, that I can't do alone. And sometimes I'm lonely.
At this point I very much avoid having to ask my children for help, though I know they'd be happy to. And mumsnet threads like this have affected my reluctance.

Strokes run in my family. For all I know I could be incapacitated at some point. I very much don't want my children's lives to be dominated by having to do things for me. But realistically will I be hurt if they don't at all? Will I look back at the (large) amount of emotional and practical help that I've given them and wish that they'd want to reciprocate just a little?

If I'm 100% honest, I think it would be human for me to feel that way. Even if I can tell myself now that they don't owe me anything.

Your children may not have asked to be born, but once here they never cease asking.