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)

Hear, hear.

It's neither fair nor unfair, it's reality.

If you have believed that working is all there is to life, you have been foolish. There re other things that people need to take the time to do, such as cultivate relationships. Unless they think what they earn can fulfil all their needs until death, which is unlikely.

There are other things we need to make time for, our heath, our minds, our human relationships, our communities.

There’s a world of difference between ‘a little help’ and the complex care often needed by a parent whose health is deteriorating. I happily provided help to my mum long before she became ill. I was there for her in her mid seventies when she had breast cancer. It was tough, but an absolute walk in the park compared to caring for an otherwise physically robust woman in her eighties who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. You don’t notice the amount of input increasing at first because it happens slowly. Then suddenly you’re drowning and you’ve become their ‘person’ and they rely on you and don’t want anyone else. It’s a huge responsibility and absolutely crushing.

A problem I saw with my own relatives was that old age crept up on them and caring duties crept up on me. If they had been asked years before they would have said they didn't want me to provide care and they wouldn't want caring duties to impact on my children and job but the situation I found myself in was that I didn't want to see them suffer and so stepped in to try and plug gaps while trying to arrange care provision at the same time. I think a lot of people find themselves in this situation.

Perfectly put and definitely my experience which I detailed much less succinctly above!

You are being ridiculous, I work 8 til 5, 5 days a week and I like my evenings with my partner and our cats, I like having time to walk or use my exercise equipment. What is it you think I should go out and do at night? And why have you hijacked this thread to slate people that work for a living for not having enough friends!
It's not easy in adulthood to make new friends!
You talk like people should all work part time and throw Hyacinth Bucket style candle light dinners!
We don't all have the pampered housewife lifestyle where hubby works and pays for wife to stay home and go to social clubs and when you don't have kids either which my partner and i don't, that lessens the avenues to interact with people. We moved down a cul de sac where everybody is anti social. Times have changed!

I think you may harbour jealousy of people that made careers for themselves, because your claim that we work because "we think that's all there is to life" is laughable! Working for a living means my partner and can have a nice house, travel extensively because we like seeing the world, have our pets, have meals and nights out together! How have you come to be so insulting to people that work, and think they are miserable with miserable lives? How do you feed and clothe kids if they don't work? Who pays for people's benefits if we all stopped working?

When I was a kid of the 80's and 90's, many mums did work but it was usually part time, my mum used to flit in and out of kart time work as did my partners mum and it's not like that now, a lot of women are careers that mean working full time hours and sometimes longer - workplaces keep lengthening the working day, 9 to 5 is a thing of the past!

I had 4 months unemployed last year due to redundancy and was only allowed to claim jobseekers to the princely sum of about £74 a week and the hoops they wanted me to jump through was ridiculous, I was allowed to look for work in my professional field for a short time but after they would want me to rip up my H&S CV and make a fake admin one and I had to agree to commute up to a three hour round commute to an admin job if I had to! I gave up the claim! It wasn't worth the hassle!

I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make in relation to my post, which was essentially that I've been crap at "work / life balance" due to an unfortunate series of events, and it's ironic that after years of providing "free" care for family, I could well end up being paid to do it for strangers? And the chances of me embracing a new career in any other field are negligible as most of my skill set is allegedly much better addressed by AI....

My mum and in laws have been carers for their parents, they have said they don't want us to do it for them as it's too much.

Authorities like social services have a habit of asking the elderly if they have children, where are they and what do their children do for them and if not, why not.

That has to stop. It puts seeds of resentment in the elderly who are made to believe they should have help from their children. Really it is just a way of authorities shifting the buck and responsibility because they have too much to do and fewer staff.

If elderly people need care they qualify for AA to help pay for it. It is something I can never understand when the news carps on about the elderly hogging beds in hospitals when all they need is domiciliary care which is hard to find.

Why don't ward staff apply for the patient to receive it? There are many people who would care for others if they are paid, and although Attendance Allowance isn't much compared with other benefits, it will at least pay for an hour a day reasonably higher than the minimum wage, and who wouldn't mind doing that hour? There is too much put upon children who are desperately hanging on to their jobs and getting older.

Sorry if you've already answered this (I didn't pick it up if you did :-) but in your OP, you mention although appreciate the relationship with siblings could get tricky)

What do you mean by this @Fragmentedbrain What do you think might happen?

Care should not be shouldered by one or even 2 people. It should be shared around. Otherwise it is too much.

You are not selfish. You are lovely.

This happened to me. It wouldn’t have been too bad if others I. The family helped out but they didn’t and I had to look after quite a few people on my own. It almost broke me. I gained so much weight. And then people talk about you behind your back saying how much you let yourself go. There were times when it was rewarding but also times when it was gruelling. I hope you’re ok.

They may not want anyone else but other people are crucial support for carers.

I've enjoyed the OPs responses, just read through them all. She sounds very down to earth and reality based. I personally was ok with a bit doing a bit of care for older relatives when it was thrust upon me, but you are absolutely right, you are not morally or ethically bound in any way to do so.

What I do find extraordinary is the way the martyrs always flock to these threads in a desperate attempt to shame and blow their own trumpets.

It's as though they are simply incapable of understanding that their point of view is not everyone's, not even the majority necessarily and cannot bear that reality.

The OP asked how it went if you refused to care for older relatives and we've got 37 pages of martyrs and saints admonishing her. 😂

The worst thing is that many of these sainted people are not actually caring for their relatives, they are paying someone else to do so. Now, that is absolutely fine by me - but you don't get to lecture anybody on caring when all you do is pay someone else to do it. Well, I mean you do, obviously, but you sound like a hypocrite.

Actually, worse than that was a funeral I attended on a livestream just recently where one of the sisters in law made it the all about her show. She got up to speak and endlessly wittered on and on and on and on and made sure to mention in passing several times how fantastic she personally was having taken on the tasks of old age care. He was in a home, mind you, but she was definitely the saint. Her husband also gave her kudos for her choices. Actually pissed me right off, the man they were discussing had been in good health until he declined sharply after a fall in his late 80s, he was a very dignified man and would have been utterly horrified to know people had mentioned wiping his arse at his funeral.

We all make choices. I have a friend whose mother breaks into his home (she does have a key when I say breaks in she uses it against his wishes) every year and puts a nativity scene up in his living room, even though she knows he's not religious. This has been going on for decades. He claimed he couldn't stop her. I pointed out he could change the locks. He immediately became super defensive and went into a long and boring list of reasons why that would be a bad idea.

Bottom line, he didn't want to deal with her tantrums, so he was putting up with it.

That's fine, entirely his choice. If yours is to be a martyr, go for it. I can see that not getting recognition for that martyrdom has turned some of you into scolds with little understanding of other people's needs and feelings and several of you are behaving like downright c**ts for all your claims of being nice and loving people.

Meh, who cares, really, just a few thoughts.

Anyway, good on you for being so firm on it OP, as can be seen you will face a mountain of opposition from a vocal minority and it's best to be prepared in advance.

That's the whole point of OP's post! She doesn't have kids because she has said that she doesn't want to provide care for anyone. If she had kids, she would be required to look after them to a certain standard (otherwise they could be taken into care and OP could be prosecuted for neglect), but she isn't required to provide any sort of care to her parents.

You'd better both be saving hard for the day you're on the receiving end OP. Fingers crossed you don't get divorced along the way and that the ageing parents have the same approach to caring as you do, so don't expect to inherit the houses as that money will be going to care fees.

I never understand the concern over inheritance.

I've said up thread that I won't be providing any hands on care to my mum. I work, live 3 hours away, have a husband who stays away most weeks so we don't see eachother until Friday, and my only sibling lives abroad (so I cant shoulder the burden with anyone). I'm happy to sit and do an online food shop, or get mum a better car insurance deal or whatever, and when I visit I'll be happy to take some batch cooked food for the freezer, but that's it.

That means I ABSOLUTELY want mum to use every single penny she has on paying for care, if she ever needs it.

I mean, being left £150k OR having my life wrecked by the expectation that I should give up all of my time and putting my career on hold to become a hands on carer, running myself ragged in the process and likely ending up divorced?

Ill pass on the cash, thanks.

… have a friend whose mother breaks into his home (she does have a key when I say breaks in she uses it against his wishes) every year and puts a nativity scene up in his living room, even though she knows he's not religious. This has been going on for decades. He claimed he couldn't stop her. I pointed out he could change the locks. He immediately became super defensive and went into a long and boring list of reasons why that would be a bad idea.

There are hills worth dying on. This probably isn’t one of them.

You and your partner are going to get old...

Not martyrs, just matter of factly explaining situations. And in fact organising the care of another person is bloody hard work. It does your head in. In the immediate aftermath of covid there was a severe shortage of carers (still is but I'm not in that game anymore because all my parents and in laws are dead). Throw Brexit in, with care homes and agencies saying 'sorry, we can't help - no staff.. Brexit', and it was a nightmare. But that sort of phoning around was not what my stroke and dementia-ridden parents could do, so of course I stepped in.

The point of explaining this is to push aside the misapprehension of many that care involves wiping bottoms. It doesn't. My parents would have hated taht even more than me! It's about doing the things that time and energy to arrange the care and get it in place.

I really think a lot of people who are blithely saying 'no, not me, I'm not doing it' are decades away from the reality. The care we're talking about is nothing to do with martyrdom and everything to do with practical common sense. And yes, a dose of compassion.

I wish I was still in the position of being able to pick up the phone and help my parents. Or drop in and put the shopping away. But I'm so glad I did what I could when it was needed. It does lessen the sadness and grief a tiny tiny bit. Which is a win for me.

Generally on this thread I've been shocked at the lack of compassion from some - not you specifically @Boddica2000 , so don't come back at me. Either some people have suffered genuinely abusive relationships with their parents (and no one has a perfect childhood - there's always stuff, so I mean real abuse) or something has happened to society which I don't much like.

And add to this what I've seen in hospitals (it still upsets me four years on to remember how my mum was treated) - older people need advocates. You cannot trust the system any more to deliver compassion. Families need their eyes on the ball, and that's pretty much all I mean by care.

I realise I sounded quite angry there. i think I am - I've learned four times over how the process of dying is hard and brutal and ugly, and that's why I cannot believe the lack of compassion displayed here. And lack of grown up grasping of the fact

It’s fine! We can all sit in front of the TV in our 80’s for 16 hours a day. Someone will come for 15 minutes in the morning to get us out of bed and stuff medication down us, someone else will throw lunch through the door in a foil tray snd a third person will put us to bed at 8ish in the evening. We’ll get a bath once a week if we’re lucky
We’ll wander sometimes at night, possibly naked and then ever so often be hospitalised with kidney problems because of dehydration. When that happens too often they’ll stick us in a home where men with dementia come in and assault us and so called carers steal our jewellery.
But at least our children will be living the lives they want, so it’s fine!

All those people saying that we are “not morally or ethically bound to look after elder people”
We absolutely bloody well are, we can choose to ignore that fact, but that doesn’t change it.