Guardian article today that might resonate here

[thedevilinablackdress]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/mar/28/burden-of-extended-care-for-aged-parents-new-phenomenon

Extended care for aged parents isn’t a new phenomenon.

No wonder it is an opinion piece as it is an autobiographical account of one woman’s family.

Yes people died at younger ages than now, but the gap between healthy life expectancy and total life expectancy - that window where aged care is needed- has been roughly unchanged for millennia.

Instead of nursing aged parents at home, we now have institutionalised it into aged care homes. The burden on women is less than it was, not more.

I agree with that @SpiritAdder, and it was usually the daughter with grown up children or an unmarried niece who did the caring. Those elderly were known as 'invalids' when I was young. The women were basically unpaid nurses (richer people could afford the real thing). The one difference was that the drive to prolong life wasn't as aggressive as it is now. People were allowed to fade away naturally, and living into your nineties was much less common. Many people now survive cancer and heart problems in early old age which would have ended their lives sooner a couple of generations ago.

Roughly unchanged for millennia… until the last 50 years when medicines and surgical interventions meant we could treat whatever was threatening to kill someone and then they recover and wait for the next thing to come along. Heart medications, dialysis, pacemakers, antibiotics, insulin etc all allow us many more years of not being healthy but not yet being dead.

"To what end?" has become my refrain whenever my mother agrees to my poor DF getting vaccinations or antibiotics or calorie dense food and drink. He is in the depths of dementia - it's horrific.

My neighbour is 80. Until Christmas she was caring for her mother, who died aged 104. I've known her 30 years and more, she was a lovely adventurous, intelligent person. She worked till she was 65 with plans to travel, and dance, she taught dancing, but from the very beginning, her retirement was all caring. It went on and on and on, once a few years ago she told someone said 'your mother is amazing.' And I said, 'it's you who are amazing,' and she cried. She loved her mother, she was a good daughter but I hope to goodness I never do that to my dcs.

And the last 50yrs when it has (thankfully) become much much more common for women to also have a career, leave abusive marriages etc. But on the flip side, means that they are not at home full time and able to care for their elderly relatives, but now have to juggle work, and caring for children and older relatives.

For myself, for years I have opted out of everything. Smear tests, breast scans, all that. I have an Advanced Decision to refuse treatment form signed and ready, and a file packed with funeral paid for, bank details etc. It's been nice on the whole, on the carousel of life, but I'm in my late 60s and well aware that at some point in the next 10 years or so it'll be time to stop clutching onto the ride and get off. As happened a generation or two ago with much less fuss and drama than now.

I'm fairly sure I didn't say that. My point has been that there seems to me to be a creeping move towards euthanizing anything that is ' inconvenient' and , while I accept that ppl will care for their relatives in whichever way they choose, I don't want to be dragged in on that kind of normalisation. If that's not how it came across, then sorry for the confusion, but I choose to love and care for my father and I don't want my approached to be compromised because a lot of ppl are pissed off caring and would
ra ther stick a needle in the ppl who have become a pain in the arse to rhem. That is what I meant. But I certainly dont believe anyone has the right to decide someone else should DIE, except in extreme cases.

Having a different opinion to you doesnt make me naive. And as far as I'm concerned you were extremely patronising telling me to take care of myself as well. What on earth do you know about me. Why should my looking after my father mean I'm not taking care of myself. What a ridiculous assumption to make. Why conflate those two things.

If you read what I said, that is a ridiculous joining of the dots.

You don't come across as someone who is taking care of themselves. Your replies indicate that you might need to find some support yourself.

As for a creeping move towards euthanizing anything that is ' inconvenient'
Other than the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which is extremely limited in its scope, I can't see any creep at all myself.
Perhaps I'm missing something?

Yes that'scfine. If they want.that. But i dont want it to go the other way so that i have to conform to what you think should hsppen.

It's a bit silly calling someone's mental health into question because they have different opinions from you and express them strongly. Just think about what you said for a minute. It's quite disturbing. Do you undermine ppl every time they come at something from a different angle. And as for you not being able to identify the mission creep of wanting to get rid of inconvenient sections of society, well......if you haven"'t noticed anything, there's not much I can say about it. It's up to you to do the reading and draw your own conclusions.

I've just lost my mum at the beginning of the month, I turned 60 the week after. I lost my dad in 2019 & have cared for my mum until October last year when she was admitted to hospital with delirium which led her to be in hospital until the end of January before going into a care homewhere she lasted just over a month before dying. Ds & I cared for her through Covid, her being admitted to hospital with heart problems which ended up with her having a pacemaker & her catching Covid. I have watched her age, she was 80 when my dad died & fully capable of caring for herself, I've nursed her through falls, sporadic memory loss as well as the COPD & type 2 diabetes she also suffered from. I can see a way forwards once the house is cleared & sold after 7 years of my life being on pause.

Sorry for your loss @Nat6999. It's tragic really watching our parents go from strong capable people to frail shadows of themselves in a few years.

Sad

Is that honestly what you’ve got from this thread, that people’s main feeling is that it’s all “inconvenient”. Not exhausting, distressing, impossible, guilt-laden? Not to mention awful for the person being cared for. Anyone suggesting euthanasia or assisted dying on this thread is either talking about it for themself, or talking about how much their parent is suffering. My mum is only in her 60s, and nothing scares her more than the thought her last ~10 yrs of life might look like her father’s. The only solace if that happens is that if she does end up like her father, she won’t know it.

Surely that’s it? It’s not inconvenient. It’s almost impossible having to make decisions between supporting your parent, your partner or your children. Because you can’t do all those things.

And retain your own sanity and health at the same time!

On the whole on this thread, posters are not advocating for euthanising people because they’re inconvenient. What they’re arguing for (and I hope posters will correct me if I’m wrong) is allowing death to take its natural course when it arrives.

Advanced dementia combined with serious, recurring infections requiring intravenous antibiotics, for example, is surely an indication that somebody is at the end of their lives. To treat the infection aggressively with intravenous antibiotics is, to me at least, interfering in the natural process of death and not particularly compassionate. To decide not to treat with antibiotics and instead to make the person as comfortable as possible is not euthanising them because they’re ‘inconvenient.’ This is the type of situation that most posters are talking about, from my reading at least.

For example, my great grandmother voluntarily went into an assisted living-style community in her 90s, where she enjoyed a pretty high quality of life beyond 100. She then developed dementia, caught a severe infection in short order, and nobody thought to give her intravenous antibiotics because it was clear she was at the end of her life. She died having experienced a high quality of life until the last few weeks. We certainly
didn’t euthanise her by not insisting on treatment- she was old and dying, and it was allowed to just happen. To me, the course of the end of her life is what I would want for myself- good care and support in old age, but not prolonging life with intrusive interventions once severe decline starts. Of course, we were terribly sad to lose her (she was a force of nature) but overall felt, and I’m sure she would agree, that she had a life well lived and a dignified death.

My grandmother, by contrast, had a stroke in her 80s and developed dementia. For the first year or two, she seemed very happy despite her dementia and thoroughly enjoyed visits from family, enthusiastically participated in all the activities offered by the care home, could use a walker to get outside and enjoyed sitting on the patio in the sunshine, and wasn’t experiencing any pain. But as her dementia worsened, she became immobile and incontinent, unable to recognise family members, and was inconsolably distressed almost all of the time. When she developed infections, they were treated with hospital admissions and antibiotics, to be discharged back to the care home in a worse condition than before until the next crisis. It’s this type of intervention that I feel is so wrong- it prolonged suffering without any apparent goal other than keeping her alive at all costs. In comparison to great grandmother, she had a much longer period of her life spent miserable and in pain, and a much less dignified end.

On the whole on this thread, posters are not advocating for euthanising people because they’re inconvenient. What they’re arguing for (and I hope posters will correct me if I’m wrong) is allowing death to take its natural course when it arrives.

I'd go further than this. Natural deaths can be awful. I want treatment for me, mine, everybody when it can help a person lead a life which has quality. But if quality is compromised to the level that renders that life not worth living for an idividual, then I want intervention to end it earlier than it would naturally.
I realise there's a billion pitfalls, judgment calls, difficulties, complications, how long is a piece of string... so I don't know how we get to a better system with the necessary safeguards in place.

💯 @ShinyNewName1988 Your grandmother's experience sounds very similar to mine

Also echoing what several others have said this morning, my personal feeling is that it is frankly callous and cruel to trivialise the struggles of loving carers struggling with doing the best for their elderly loved ones while trying to support everybody else in the family and keeping their jobs and keeping their sanity, by dismissing their difficulties as "inconvenience."

That is very well put @redboxer321. My friend’s DM has been on end of life pathway in her care home since December. And - this may sound brutal- but my friend still has to go to work to pay her mortgage and bills, plus look after her dependent DCs.
I have very mixed feelings on euthanasia, but I don’t believe continuing to feed and hydrate a person who is clearly dying should fall into that category and helping someone to die gently when it seems their body is ready to is a kindness for all.

Such a difficult topic. I am probably only at the start of all of this, dealing with my parents and my husbands parents getting old and my only sibling has a life limiting illness which means their care will also likely fall to me. My husband has a condition which could result in significant disability as he gets older.

I myself have been ill since my late 20's with a chronic condition and just recently started a new treatment which is giving me some of my life back in my late 40's. I want to focus on regaining my physical strength and energy and to go back to the career I used to love in some form or another as well as make up for all the lost time of adventures with my husband especially as this might get difficult for him in a few years. However I can see that within the next few years I might have most of my new health and energy taken up with looking after other people. Its difficult because I love these people and want to be there for them but I only have one life too.

I find the article and the replies depressing as well, not because they are wrong or even unreasonable but I suppose just because of what they reveal about the reality of life, love, human relationships and the limits of these things. I feel that life is always a struggle and always has us in the back foot, perhaps except for the lucky one's in childhood. We are struggling with trying to attain some version of the life we envision for ourselves when we are young, struggling in our careers, to pay for everything, to raise our families and then just as we get a bit older and we think we will have some time to really live we go though the menopause, begin to really experience our own aging, then our parents aging, and needing care and their suffering and decline not just physically but often in their mental and emotional state, its really painful and you also know that you'll end much the same and then buy the time you are free of those responsibilities your are likely facing down your own decline into old age as well. That is exactly what happened to my mum who spent 2 decades both working fulltime and caring for various family members though illness or old age and as soon as that all stopped literally a year or two into her retirement her own health began to seriously decline and she is now quite frail and her mental and emotional state quite negative and fragile. I often feel that its mostly the more negative parts of her personality that remain without the fun and clever parts. Its difficult to see a fiercely intelligent woman spend her days scrolling tiktok and buying stuff on temu as a way to get some kind of stimulation and refusing all other offers.

I think years ago she would have said she didn't want to go on if she was like that and yet now she very much wants to live even if from the outside her life looks grim. I kind of get that, I spend years in almost constant pain and 20 year old me would have rather died than live like that but I still wanted to live when I got there even at my worst I never wanted to die, obviously being much younger means I still had a chance of recovery but also your tolerance and expectations change according to your circumstances to its problematic to assume that elderly people you perceive as having little to no quality of life would be better off just dying.

I don't know what the answer is because those of us doing the caring are also suffering and feeling like we can't really live our own last good years fully. Perhaps life is just meant to be hard and full of struggle and pain and we all (myself more than most) expect more personal fulfilment than is reasonable? Perhaps people should just be euthanized at state of poor health to free up, time energy, property, wealth and so on for younger generations? I do see an increasingly Utilitarianism in society which might be pragmatic but also dangerous. I think it is motivated by the extreme pressures families and the state faces. I've also see calls to not try to save the babies more with the most severe illnesses because if is felt they don't have a good quality of life the cost of their care is astronomical.

I am not opposed to assisted dying but I also have a lot of doubts about it in a society that is so desperately struggling to cope both on an individual and collective scale. Ideally I want older people to have access to life saving medication but with a focus on an increased health span over just living on in frailty and ill health.

I agree with everyone its a conversation we need to be able to have and I am really thankful to all the posters who shared their stories and feelings on this thread.

I think euthanasia should be an option for individuals to take if they want it.

But at the moment the NHS seems hellbent on keeping people alive in awful circumstances - if that stopped then it would go some way to resolving the euthanasia issue for many individuals and families.

Caring for very ill, elderly people can shorten the lives of the carers for various reasons - stress, mental ill health, hard repetitive physical work, substances, lack of exercise, lack of money so poorer diet and lifestyle. It's not just about popping granny off the mortal coil so her family can skip off to Benidorm via the local Spoons.

Fine i get it. But i also wonder what kind of care people get in care homes behind closed doors when nobody is looking. 2 members of staff to god knows how many residents....just so the care home owners can.make a nice tidy profit. Care in this country is abysmal. They do it far better in some other countries. Please do not underestimate how shit care can be here. Just like so many other things that this country seems to be crap at. If i was younger i would definitely leave UK. We"ve got hundreds of thousands of unemployed people that we seem incapable of training. We have thousands of old prople who could have a more productive life with a bit of tweaking and imagination. But we just like to dump everybody on the slag heap in this country. Why? Why is there such poverty of thought, action.