To ask if you refused to help with older relatives and how that went down?

[Fragmentedbrain]

I have 2 parents and 2 parents in law closing in on needing care. Reading other threads here it sounds as though this has a high chance of ruining my life over the next decade or so.

My husband and I work full time, love our jobs and don't have any caring responsibilities or instincts, not even a cat. I don't want to give up work or holidays or enjoying this bit of my life before I in turn am too old.

If we refuse to get involved beyond visits to say hello, how screwed are our parents?

(As we are child free I am not worried about any example setting although appreciate the relationship with siblings could get tricky)

I don’t think a lot of older people are entitled.
It’s simply a form of learned behaviour from different periods of history. The extended families from the last century lived near each other & looked after each other.
Social mobility has altered this.
Our family has always helped elderly relatives & neighbours where possible. Not with personal care, but certainly finding out problems & assisting where possible.
We have all worked full time with children.
I still lead an incredibly busy life & enjoy holidays as much as everyone else.
I really appreciate the time my children take to support me when I need a bit of extra help or advice. In turn I have always helped them too.
The OP here does seem quite self centred. Fine for them.

What a sad world we live in. As my sister lived near my parents, she helped them with admin tasks. As I live 120 miles away, I visited every week to sort out their freezer (they had meals delivered ) and ensure they had enough toiletries, tablets etc. Mum had a carer to help her shower and dress. We did it willingly as we loved them and they had given us a very happy childhood. When Dad died, we found a suitable nursing home for her needs and visited as often as we could.
I am now a widow, waiting for a hip replacement, and try to be independent. However, I will forever be grateful for the help my sons have given me. Particularly with re-organising my financial affairs, taking me to hospital and doing the odd bit of shopping. As a family, we love each other and help each other. For me, that is what life is all about.

Exactly, well put.

Can people please not spam this thread with judgements about how someone with elderly parents should or shouldn’t behave?

Point is the OP is who they are and if they don’t feel able to provide direct care themselves then they are being responsible by trying to understand in advance what options there may be rather than just wholly burying their heads in the sand when the time comes - which definitely is not ethical if the parents themselves wrongly assumed immediate family would sort out every little need.

I think this thread could be very helpful for people in a similar position with elderly parents or relatives.

My parents are dead...I wouldn't have wanted to provide full time care...very few people do. It's extremely hard but I wouldn't have limited my relationship to saying hello to them every now and then. I hope I'd have supported them with things they may have needed... families should help each other.

In laws are a slightly different case imo.... I do have a mil who has shown zero interest in our family or her gc....I won't be lifting a finger for her. If she'd been a lovely, kind supportive mil and lovely grandma, I'd have happily helped out with things

Leave them to.it.

Un the end they'll end up in a home when they can't cope anymore. Or if they are found fallen down stairs or something and can't get up.

Just ignore them if they ask for help, they'll eventually get shipped into a home via the social.

I don’t plan on doing physical caring but I’m happy to help with life admin and doing stuff that will make their lives slightly pleasanter.

My motto will be
Help them to help themselves by buying in as much as you can and support with the practicalities of doing this.

Can people please not spam this thread with judgements about how someone with elderly parents should or shouldn’t behave?

Tbh MNs is a fairly old forum so that will influence opinions.

I hear what you're saying but it really isn't about a lift to the chiropodist. There are numerous visits to the health clinic, opticians, hearing centres, hospital appointments etc. It might start as one lift to somewhere but that's not where it ends and my advice is not to start what you can't finish. Far better to plan in advance how it all will be managed as it escalates.

Not all families are alike. Your 'should' is prescriptive, judgy, and unhelpful.

Exactly

Leave the ILs to your husband

In terms of your parents, it doesn’t sound too bad a situation if they can afford care.. if you don’t want a tricky relationship with your siblings chat through any organising that needs doing and take on a modest couple or tasks. Or if you don’t care, just be upfront you won’t get involved so they know where they are.

My dad already needs care and pays for that himself. I have several siblings and we’re all either too far away or working flat out to provide day to day care. He gets that. We’ve all taken care of him in a pinch but no one is in a position to do that 24/7.

My mum also is coming up to needing care and has said she won’t be going into a home or be looked after by strangers. She’s not getting looked after by her adult kids either, for the same reasons above, so hopefully she will come to terms with having to pay for her care sooner rather than later.

My parents are long divorced btw.

Urgh, you sound awful OP.

This isn’t going to be a popular opinion, but I think most decent people do feel a sense of responsibility towards their parents when they start becoming less capable of looking after themselves.

Can people please not spam this thread with judgements about how someone with elderly parents should or shouldn’t behave

But that's the entire premise of the thread surely? Of course the op doesn't have to help her parents...she doesn't have to utter a word to them or acknowledge their existence if that's what she wants.

A funny story. A friend of mine was retired & having a lovely life with her husband when her MIL started needing help, long story short they put their lives on hold to help her with some paid support. MIL always pleaded poverty but it turns out when she died so was very well off. She did leave a substantial sum to my friend & her husband but my friend was livid & was very clear that she would have rather the money was spent on her MILs care so she & her husband could have been 'free' & enjoyed their time together instead of mowing lawns, fixing the heating, providing a taxi service, shopping, cooking, collecting prescriptions & night sitting.

She doesn’t at all.

The way I see it is that my children didn’t ask to be born. It was my decision to have children and to look after them, they didn’t ask me to.

So therefore I won’t expect them to give up their lives to look after me when I am old as some kind of “repayment” for me looking after them as children.

Whether my parents will see things the same way, I don’t know… Obviously I won’t abandon them and will help out with things - but I won’t be providing full-on care.

And surely even if people make plans for their later years...they may still need assistance in accessing the help and support that they've planned to have.

You don’t need to do much in the way of organising. You don’t even have to have LPA if you don’t want to. They buy in help or have social services assess for help and a financial assessment.

My mother’s the same, 85. Miserly, always has been. Tens of thousands in her personal account. Two homes worth over£1mn. She has dementia and it’s coming to the point where stepdad (80 himself) will have to assume financial control. Thankfully.

We don’t want her bloody money, or for it to be distributed to various charities (who have gotten their hooks well and truly into her), we want her professionally cared for!

Yikes this thread. I’ve gone NC with selfish siblings who only care for themselves and no one else. Looks like there’s quite a few of them out there….

It's not just the responsibility towards the parents, it's the whole family. Why should it all fall on siblings?
I just can't imagine seeing my family struggle and sitting back and thinking "phew, glad they're doing it and not me, I can't have any impact on my precious life, I'd rather one person had the whole burden rather than share it out so we can all have a life".
And inevitably, no matter how many siblings there are, it's always one sibling it all falls on, I never see them share it out equally, or even share at all. In our family, that one person everything falls on is me, and in DH's family, it's him. It's exhausting and supremely unfair, but the other siblings are just selfish takers, not givers, so that's just how it is.
I did everything throughout my mum's cancer treatment. I asked my sister to take her to one singular hospital appointment just so that I could attend my daughter's school play but she said she was "away". I assumed she'd booked something she couldn't get out of. I missed the play in order to take mum, turns out all my sister ha done was drive her campervan up to some pub so she could sit in the carpark and get pissed, then drive home again the next morning. Could have done that any night.

People like the OP sicken me, quite honestly. The selfishness and the "me, me, me". It's just horrible to see.

She does. She sounds supremely selfish and uncaring towards her family.

This is where online AI chats are invaluable. Most companies, organisations and government depts. guide you through step by step online.

Today’s elderly are pretty tech savvy and these skills will only increase with each new generation of elderly people.

The majority on the thread appear to disagree with you.