To think there will be many more disabled adults in 20 years?

[Walkyrie]

I’m disabled myself, just to put that out there.

It just seems like the number of people with a disability, usually a psychiatric one, is going through the roof.

40% of disability benefit claimants are claiming for mental health related reasons. The number of anxious children and teens on here, and that I know in my own life and family, is really really high. So many schools refusers and kids in need of extra support, special school placements and so on. It seems there are a lot of unemployed young adults living at home who simply don’t have the mental acuity to get a job, live independently, have a life of their own.

3 children in my family are currently school refusing, one we only found out about today but it was not a surprise as she’s always been very anxious and has selective mutism.

My AIBU is, should we be doing something to prepare for what may be a very high number of adults not working in years to come? How will we sustain them all?

Sorry where do people get that pension now is longer than before? Pension age for born in 1960s is 66 or 67 with life expectancy from birth of grand age of 70, though expected 80s with changes for the group. That's really not that super long pension age on average... 14 years average if we count 80s?
Just last week there was article about life expectancy drop as well.

when the real value of salaries is less than that of pensions.

Seriously? The State Pension is only around £12.5K per annum I don't know any salaries that are that low. Maybe someone could do the maths, but that is definitely lower than the living wage.

Older parents having kids who do better in school, is probably because they are wealthier and can throw money at extra tutoring and private schools, as needed.

This has nothing to do with the fact that older parents statistically have more children with birth defects. You could be a multi millionaire - unless there's a cure, no amount of money is going to fix that.

The deal, broadly, used to be that if you get qualifications and get a full-time job you don't have to lie awake at night worrying about money. That contract has now been broken, hence why people are falling to bits. You need a certain standard of living to sustain full-time work and having to live in a house share at 35 despite working a full-time professional job is not right.

I take older parenthood to be a proxy for class/education level - more likely to leave parenthood later for career reasons, and more likely to be able to afford IVF and similar.

Minimum wage is £12.71 an hour.

£12,500 equates to £6 an hour (based on a 40 hour week).

Pensioners who never bought property have to exist on £1000 per month or less, when rent could easily swallow up that £1000. Abject poverty.

And still people drone on about getting rid of the triple lock. Erm, no!

I think people will need to adapt as an example I have ADHD and my oldest daughter has ADHD . She struggles at school , not with learning she is super intelligent but gets bored . Her potential is huge , school environment is just not great for people with adhd , she has another 2 children with adhd in her class , both really intelligent too . Adaptation here can make this 3 kids brilliant in the future , issue is while I do my best to develop my daughters capacities , one of the other parents does the opposite and his happy to drug his child to her eyeballs if it means she speaks less and gives her less trouble . They both have similar traits speak a lot because they can’t stop thinking , are advanced years academically but struggle either social aspects . As I have my own example at home my daughter never saw herself as incapable , she knows I went to uni , got a career , a job , married etc . This other girl is constantly told she will probably end up in jail , her mum is also “ disabled “ with one of those illnesses you can test for and it’s obvious this kid that has huge potential won’t do much in life because her parents don’t advocate for her .
There seems to be this idea disabled can’t do anything and while I accept some won’t , my oldest has severe autism , non verbal etc , most will be able too . We just need an overall change on the way we think .

I think there's several inter-related issues:

My severely disabled son was admitted yesterday. He's 33 and I'm 57 (as it's my husband). We're able to provide a high level of care including bedside care. This will reduce by 67 and still further by 77. If I'd had my child in my 40s, then we'd be looking at the 77 scenario right now. FYI, the condition my son has is a rare 'glitch' that can't be prevented or tested for. I guess he was just lucky to get born to young parents - as was the rest of society whose resources we're not draining.

Like others have said, despite my own struggles, I moved out fairly young and got a job to support myself. However, the cost of renting has since outstripped wage growth and, with all the other price rises, it's now more difficult for young people to 'fly the nest.'

Youth services, including CAHMS, have been decimated. Young people, especially those of school age, can't access early help. As a teacher, I quite often see kids whose MH is in the bin and yet there is no effective support system in place.

The cost of living/housing bubble has created a situation whereby parents often find that both need to work full time to keep a roof over their heads and bellies full. We're straight back to Victorian England with this one - a time when people also blamed immigration instead of realising the real issues were tied to economic policy.

Heavily processed food and huge sugar consumption isn't helping anyone's health either.

In the end though, if we consider the social model of disability, then we can see / remember a time when disabled people did have meaningful employment. The problem is that a tanking economy means those flexible extras aren't available anymore - the mother's help, the lad that came round with the milkman, the pot washer down the local, etc. If you arrange an entire society based on profit over people, then you will have the consequences of that policy decision.

Sorry, I didn't mean to distress you.

But the world is getting crazier by the day it seems and there is no telling where it is going. The government doesn't seem to have an economic solutions.

History has taught us that when we hit rock bottom, extremism begins. That's the point I was trying to make about the Purge & Nazi Germany and the fact that people start buying into these horrific ideas.

It is extremely distressing that some governments already think that war is the solution (I'm looking at you, USA, Israel, Russia). Clearly, lives are of little value to those at the top.

I actually think in some ways we’ve become too aspirational for our kids and as a result they are burning out right, left and centre.

In an average classroom you will have a few kids with high intelligence, lots of average and some below average. The trouble is that we now expect all children of all abilities to perform to the same level and if they don’t we tend to diagnose them with something and try and get additional support for them so that everyone can achieve to a similar level. For many kids they do actually get a lot more support than they would have in the past and so they are supported through primary, secondary and college/ university however when it comes to actually doing a job most of that support disappears and all the wheels come off. They then become depressed because in their minds they are failing and it appears on social media that everyone has a fantastic career and are doing much better than them and they can’t understand why it’s not happening for them.

In previous generations these kids would have left school around 14/15 and many would have worked in manufacturing/ labouring/ shops etc. There was less emphasis on the idea that you have to take and pass exams or you will never get a decent job. My father left school at 15 and went to work in the local foundry which he cycled to and from every day. The pay wasn't great (£25 a week) but he was living at home so although he paid board he don’t have a lot of outgoings and by the time many kids are just coming out of university now he had been working for nearly a decade so had savings (and no university debt) and had managed to work up the ladder. Unfortunately due to the advances in technology lots of these jobs don’t exist any more and because everyone feels they need to have a big career no one wants to do these kind of jobs anyway.
My husband is a tradesman and they previously used to get multiple boys a year just getting in contact or sending over cvs in the hopes of an apprenticeship however than hasn’t happened for years.

Thank you for calculating that.

Pensioners are also taxed. Tax pays for all the increasing non workers.

The non workers are not contributing tax, so the pot will probably be empty by the time they come to retire as the government will no longer have the resources to pay state pensions.

This is the concern.

Well they have a responsibility to some extent to make themselves suitable for the role - taking on feedback and acting on it, getting rest outside of work, speaking up if support is needed, being realistic about promotions and if they are ready for it.

Thanks for that, I know you weren't advocating for it or setting out to upset. It just frightening that there are people who, from what they write anonymously at least, would seemingly not have much hesitation in supporting such actions if they followed some of their thought processes to their logical conclusion.

Sitting at home in a darkened room playing video games is just going to make you worse.

Is that seriously what you think disabled people do all day?

It would be helpful if people could share the evidence from accredited research showing why they believe what they do. There are many reasons the number of disabled adults could grow. Commenters only mention a few possible influencing factors.

Our recent LCWRA assessor for my son made this assumption about him.

I agree, and the company should have performance management processes in places for this, not putting people on paid leave.

I suffer from anxiety. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I'm also not a lazy bastard

What do you think happened before contraception became widely available?. Women had babies into their 40's , most of these children were not disabled. Same as families who can't use contraception due to religion etc. They carry on having healthy babies. If anything, there are less babies born to women in their 40's. Its more common now for the first baby to be at 40 years, that is the only difference

@Blondiebeachbabe

Older parents having kids who do better in school, is probably because they are wealthier and can throw money at extra tutoring and private schools, as needed.

It's not all about money. Older parents have more life experience, more wisdom, more workplace experience, more mature, and often more time as they've probably "had fun" in their 20's when child-free and are more settled/content to spend quality time with their kids rather than fobbing them off whilst they go to the pub, parties, hobbies, etc. or bunging them into childcare or to be "looked after" by grandparents as they're less likely to be working long hours at the start of their careers. Yes, money can be a factor, but I think time, and quality time, is just as, if not more, relevant.

But death in childbirth was higher, as was infant mortality. Quite frankly, disabled children were less likely to survive, so, no, we didn't see large numbers of disabled because they didn't make it to adulthood etc. Modern medicine has made a lot of previously untreatable illnesses treatable.

My grandmother also always maintained that midwives would often "make the decision" themselves if they were delivering a seriously disabled child, and would "help" it on it's way and then say it was still born!

The children who are failing at GCSE stage generally speaking are not because of high aspiration parents and them being burned out as a result. They fail, but instead of joining a trade they sign on instead under 'mental health'.

Poverty is increasing and disability is higher occurring in impoverished communities. Mental health related conditions are a large part of the disability statistics now and will most likely grow. More needs to be done to tackle the root cause of poverty. They are now talking about babies having poor mental health. One can only assume they will go on to have poor MH outcomes as adults.

The rate of pregnancies over 40 has tripled since 1990.

When DS was at school 10 years ago, teachers said most of his class would work in jobs that hadn’t yet been invented. This is true for those working with AI.
I had a ‘light bulb moment’ recently when DS explained a programme he built over several weeks in his spare time for a neighbour who hates his job. DS’s AI app will do this job; the neighbour working just one hour a week checking on the programme for 90% of his previous income, whilst DS takes 10% commission for what is essentially a side hustle. Win Win.
So in this case going forward, neither physically work ‘on the job’ but income (and tax) is generated as before.
Presumably the government is working on similar to a HUGE scale and in future their income will be AI generated rather than solely relying on tax receipts. This is what will fund UBI and life could be as plentiful (or not) as a government decides for its citizens.