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)

It’s very hard to say what you will do in that situation until you are there.

I am an only DC, DPs live an hours drive away,I work f/t and until recently- despite being very elderly- they were managing ok. House needed deep cleaning, but I had helped DM fill out the forms for full attendance allowance over a year ago and I figured she could be using the money on a cleaner so I only tackled things that were a health hazard.

Anyway 3 months ago the wheels fell off the bus and DM had a minor fall, since then she has been bed bound. It turns out DFs memory is not what it was, so that is also a concern. Thank goodness we live in Scotland so she gets free carers, as although they have more money than they know what to do with, actually getting them to spend it on their own care is a stiff battle. I finally got the cleaner in.

Work kindly let me condense my hours to 4.5 days - DH and I both tried working up there, but it wasn’t massively successful - so I go up once a week unless we have plans at the weekend. I have been doing chores I never would have imagined like changing sheets. I refuse to do anything personal- for example we have these shampoo hats for DMs hair but I just can’t bring myself to do that, but some of the carers do it occasionally so that has to be enough. DH also goes up and DS 19 sometimes goes up to take DF out for lunch to give him a break, so that’s really nice.

I refuse to give up my job - although i am on a contract so may not have much choice as don’t feel I can launch into another high powered ft role, nor my holidays- although obviously if there was an emergency that would be different. I feel like I am treading a very thin line at the minute, but the important thing for me is that I do enough so I feel in my mind I am a dutiful and loving DD, and that involves putting others expectations to the side.
My friend - same age 55 - has given up her life for her DPs. She mostly lives with him now and works and that’s it. But that’s what she wants to do, so much as I think she is sacrificing too much, itself her choice.

It’s all vastly personal OP. I do think saying you will do absolutely nothing is harsh, but I do understand rejecting a carers role when you don’t want it - most of us don’t want it, believe me !

100%. Sorry to generalise, I know this will go down badly, but I’ve found this to be a thing with SOME elderly people. I refuse to buy anything with a microchip for anyone over the age of 70 anymore, done it too many times as a gift when they’ve said they really want xyz tech thing- you get constant earache and inconveniently timed phone calls as if it’s an emergency whenever they can’t do the basics with it (despite been shown 100 times).

Nobody wants that. I'm the one (2 siblings) that has taken mum to appointments, visited, cared, done the finance and the emotional cost has been heavy.
Mum died recently and the other two don't care, really or don't seem to.
To read OP's original statement, I find heart-breaking, honestly.

I won't be sacrificing my own life to look after my aging parents. They had 10 years off me when I was younger as I had to do a lot of childcare for my siblings when I wasn't in school or work. That only ended when I finally managed to move out. So as far as I see it, I've done my time and my siblings can step up and do it since they haven't had any caring to do yet.

Well said 👏🏻🙂

OP if you’re not a troll I’m pretty shocked at this way of thinking. Unless your parents were abusive and/or you had an incredibly poor childhood due to their choices then I cannot fathom why you would not want to help them at all in their old age? I understand there are aspects of personal care that you may feel uncomfortable doing but to not even deign to take them to an appointment? Or cook them the odd meal? Or help them if they ended up in hospital? They either raised you to be selfish or you’re just programmed like that. Aging is a fact of life (for those lucky to enough to age) and you will be there too one day. You might very well say that you’re fine to just be taken care of by the state but I don’t think you understand how rough that is when you have no family in your corner looking out for your best interests.

I totally admire you and it’s really lovely you’ve done that. You know that you’ve been superb and those around you. I don’t agree that your siblings should have to pick up anything though- unless they’ve had countless babysitting, financial gifts, parents who wanted to spend time with them as adults- if that’s the case I agree they are taking the piss.

Our elderly relatives were generally quite independent well into old age but my mother in law had many health problems and needed care for the last three years which we were happy to give but we did have help from carers and a cleaner.

If you have no desire to be hands on carers you can oversee the care, make sure everything is done properly, keep an eye on things.

You do realize that someone who doesn’t have children won’t really have a choice in the matter, right?

There will literally not be anyone when the time comes.

Blooming technology!! People are either amazing with it or it’s the biggest pain.

Can relate. This will continue for me if my parents go before me too. I don’t mind this aspect at all. I’m going to be honest what I do mind is that it wasn’t ever acknowledged how much I actually did and they seem in total denial about how much I did now. That pisses me off more than anything. Sorry for the pointless post but I suppose it gives just one reason for how complex this situation can be when it comes to caring for aging parents.

There a world of grey between supporting elderly parents and giving up your life to be their carer. I wouldn't have given up my life for my parent, or expect it from my dc.

But I can support them with organising their finances when they find it harder, give them company a couple of times a week, take them to the supermarket or days out, advocate for them/support them in significant medical appointments (not routine ones), help them with tradesmen so they don't get taken advantage of etc eventually help them with the transition to supported living IF they need/want the help, not every parent does with all of those things.

Someone above said it stung that they left their money to carers- I think there’s two sides to the coin- younger people think they’re being used for cares, the person needing care is wondering why someone who’s supposed to like/ love them isn’t helping them when they’re in trouble.

They can, if they have to.

But most of us love our parents and couldn’t be happy if we knew they needed (a reasonable amount of) help or support in their old age and we were able to give it but had chosen not to because we didn’t enjoy it.

It gets harder.

I'm 65 now. For years, I did all the admin/paperwork for my parents and my husband. (He had a stroke.)

I don't know whether it's burnout or my age - DH died 4 yrs ago - but I'm finding doing my own admin and using tech increasingly difficult.

I do find myself envying friends who have a child who is at least willing to help out with paperwork.

My grandparents died when they were in their early to mid 70s, my parents were mid 50s. Very little help and support was needed and my parents were still relatively young and energetic. By the time my parents reached their 60s they were completely free of any expectation or obligation from other people.

Now my generation, going into our 60s, are expected to sacrifice our dwindling energy and health to support people in their 80s who want so much more from us than their parents did from them.
It's not specifically anyone's fault that this is the way things have worked out, but I don't want to sacrifice my 'golden years' for anyone.

Then maybe people should be a bit more careful about what they wish for like wanting social housing tenants to be moved around like chess pieces if they want more close communities. Cant have it both ways.

My friend's parents bought some sort of insurance policy to cover care costs when they retired to Spain. It provides cover in any EU country.

There may be a UK equivalent, but it wasn't cheap.

I'm childless. DH had two adult children when we got married. When I became ill at one point, I phoned DH's daughter to emphasise that he'd need care put in place if anything happened to me. (I didn't expect them to do hands on caring - just hoped that they'd advocate for him with social services.)

Her response was "You're not thinking of leaving him are you?"

When I got the all clear, I phoned to tell her but again emphasised that DH would need care if anything happened to me. The response was "But you're all right, aren't you?"

She purported to love her father, but I didn't see much evidence of that. (After that conversation, when we had the Power of Attorney drawn up, we put DH's son's name down as the back-up POA.)

The one time that she showed concern was after DH died. She wanted a "letter" to her dad read out at the funeral, seemed anxious that her daughter might not get a mention in the eulogy and asked what I was doing with regard to a memorial.

She then phoned my solicitor to complain when her inheritance cheque "bounced". (For whatever reason, she'd waited a month before depositing it and the bank had thought that I was being swindled.)

OP your original question was how screwed will your family be if you don’t step in and I have to say, possibly quite a lot. I sympathise with your position. I too could never do personal care and despite enjoying caring for my DC, the thought of caring responsibilities for my DM was awful. It’s absolutely possible to not get too involved (I advised DM to set-up a cleaner, gardener, dog walker etc as soon as I saw the way things were going), but reality is no matter how much they have planned for old age, there will be things they need help with. For example, my DM’s care was being neglected in hospital and no one would listen to her. Even though I’m not overly close to DM, there is no way I could sit back and do nothing. That would just be cruel. I complained to PALS, spoke to management etc and got her moved. It was a hassle and I didn’t enjoy doing it, but it had to be done. Others on the ward who didn’t have family to advocate for them were in a dreadful state. Those saying, ‘oh I’ll employ professional services when the time comes’ are being flippant. Care services are in crisis, even privately funded ones. My mother has carers and sometimes they come and sometimes not. She went a whole weekend without a visit. She is able to just about cope atm, but if she had been bed ridden, it could have been the end of her. Quality of care varies greatly and no amount of planning can guarantee a safe and secure old age. Doctors don’t listen once you’re over a certain age, so my DM has been blue-lighted to hospital several times when medical professionals didn’t believe her symptoms. If I hadn’t been there with her in A&E each time, she would have been without a drink for 12+ hours and no food. Again, elderly people in beds beside her/in the corridor were in a horrible state without family to help. When you are part of a family (despite not being asked to be born!) it does come with some responsibilities, but there is a big difference between giving up your whole life to care and just being a decent human and stepping in when necessary.

I’m sorry your SD is so heartless.

I think it’s more that people feel council tenants should be like anyone else. Not treated like a superior class.

non council tenants have to move. For schools or for retirement or to downsize when a house is now too big because all the kids have grown. Why do you feel council tenants are somehow above this? Or maybe you think they are too fragile to deal with this? Bit patronising.

I agree. DH and I put a lot of time and effort into looking after his mum when she was widowed. We visited often including spending weekends with her, organised her health care, batch-cooked and did in-depth cleaning while we were there, took her out frequently, invited her for Christmas, organised parties and social events with her family and friends etc.

Her other offspring did little except “borrow” large sums of money from her, and openly refused to stay with her or let her stay with them when recovering from operations, so we had to take time off work. We felt the pressure of responsibility for her.

But we couldn’t have invited her to live with us. We would have had to move somewhere bigger and reorganise our lives. Luckily she had a large group of friends where she lived.

We became exhausted over the years we were doing this. But after she died we soon recovered our energy, and have never regretted caring for her. It’s sad that many old people are abandoned when they need help.

We are childless, so we don’t expect any relatives to care for us. But I hope friends and relatives will keep in touch.

Apart from five years ago!

This. ^