British families should take elderly relatives to live with them - like in Asia

[juneau]

According to Jeremy Hunt anyway.

So, could you see yourself doing this? Would your elderly relatives actually WANT you to? Do you have the space.

I would rather kill myself than have my DM living with me. I could possibly cope with my dad, although he's terribly dithery and likes things done his way. As for my step-parents and in-laws - again, death (either theirs or mine), would be preferable

'what did people do 50 years ago? They coped. They got on with it.'

PMSL! This is precisely the type of lazy thinking the Tories want people to exhibit.

Let's see, 50 years ago, most people didn't live as long as they do now, nor was it as common to live longer in poor health - there simply wasn't the medical technology to keep someone with say, heart failure, alive for as long as can often happen now.

It was possible then to buy a family home on one wage, so good ol' Mum could stay home and do all the work, including care for relatives.

People usually got married and had children younger as well, so good ol' Mum wasn't in her 60s herself.

50 years ago was a time when domestic violence was commonly tolerated, when raping your spouse was legal, when drunk driving was also tolerated.

Yeah, let's go back to those great times.

A lot of people didn't 'cope' - they lived shorter, miserable lives trapped in shit marriages in shit accommodation.

I don't buy this race for the bottom for a minute.

Great Grandmother in law refuses to move out of London & her beautiful house or share it with anyone else. We don't want / cannot afford to live in London. So it's a bit of a moot point.
Our parents don't think of themselves as old yet and would be insulted if we offered. To be fair they seem to be enjoying a very wild & comfortable retirements so I'm pretty sure coming and hanging out full time in a house full of noisy kids holds little appeal.

Spot on ocelot, and the Daily Mail will be with us in the front ranks. Just read the comments section of that paper to see how 'Middle England' won't take this crap.

Too right, claig!

I think it is a practical solution to the problem of increasing poverty (and elder isolation) in the UK.

My children's generation will be poorer than my generation. I could watch the DC's struggle to afford a decent house and childcare. Or I could muck in, sell my house to help them afford somewhere decent and help them out with childcare. I think it is out of our way of thinking now, but in 20 years time, there'll be much more of it about.

Well said wonkylegs My father is on the autistic spectrum and can just about manage an hour in the company of our delightful but very active 3 year old DS without going completely insane. But the mess, the noise, the unpredictability, the bits of bloody Lego you tread on in the night, the 5am wake ups...Really how many old people, let alone those with their own special needs would enjoy that unless they had, say, a castle wing all to themselves?

My mother would jump at the chance (she is not old, let alone elderly) but there is absolutely no way on this earth that I would allow her to live with me.

My father doesn't want to, but we've talked (in hypothetical terms) about how it could work if the elderly parent and the family both sell up and buy a house with a cottage in the garden, granny flat, whatever...I don't think his wife would like to live with us though, so we're ok.

DH's mum would not want to live with us. I strongly suspect she has used up all her tolerance of me and I would wither and die inside if I had to live with her.

DH of course thinks it would be ok having his mum around but he wouldn't have to deal with her as much (he would be able to make sure of this by e.g. organising trips abroad, which is not an option available to me) so fuck that

I am a nurse and I will not be having my parents or my parents in law moving in with us. I also won't want to move in with my DCs when I am older - I am already planning who I want to live in my nursing home. I'm planning to have a nursing home full of friends I'm looking forward to it

Distance, as mentioned by choocotrekkie, is one thing. Most people like being near old friends and having their privacy.

Its the frail and elderly, perhaps with dehabilitating diseases that need specialist care. Your house might not have a suitable room for a parent or both downstairs, or a downstairs loo/ bathroom. Your parents may sell their house to pay for it, but its more likely they will refuse to imagine that scenario until its too late and they are in and out of hospital.

My dm, always said one benefit of being an orphan was she didn't have elderly parents. She took in her mil when none of mils children would. I had to give up my room and sleep in my parents on a camp bed. I had nowhere to do homework or hang out as a teen. Of course, my alcoholic df used to wake me up coming into the bedroom drunk and shouting. It disturbed granny, who hated my dm. And so on, for about 6 months before my dm said enough!

My dm refused to live with any of us. She refused a home as she wanted to be in her own house. She wasnt sociable and knew it. She didnt want us seeing her the way she was. That was her right. We respected it. It wasnt about us and how we felt.

My dc, well who knows where they will end up, or who with. I don't expect them to make life decisions based on my care when old.

The Asia model - how old are the stats they are looking at? Asians have embraced globalisation too, they might not be in a position to do that. No doubt active gp may live with them, but not when needing care, medical and otherwise round the clock.

All this assumes every old person has dc they like and like them back. Not always the case!

I would live with my parents and in laws now gladly. I would live with my brother to. I see and speak to all of them daily.

I swear to God if a single one of the GPs forced their drinking, racism, self-centredness, grandchild-ignoring story-for-the-thousandth-time-re-telling vegetable-boiling-to-unrecognisable-mush on us for more than 48 hours I would make myself voluntarily homeless.

I just wish instead of preaching politicians actually looked at what works. The Rowntree Foundation in York has been involved in a 'living research' project about what makes older people happy and enables them to have a good quality of life for decades now. They're bloody brilliant. But no, why ask those with decades of expertise when you can do cheap political point scoring?

It was much more common when I was v little - it was unusual NOT to have elderly Mum or Dad with one of their children (we're going back to the late 50's here.)

My widowed maternal GM lived with my Mum & Dad till she died.
My paternal widowed GM lived in their family house with her eldest daughter and one of her many sons.

I wonder why it has changed so much? In one generation?

When men say that "families" should look after elders, they mean women in the families.

They have no intention of doing the work, giving up their job/ going part time/ damaging their marketability/ pension rights themselves.

When they say families, they mean women.

Both my parents see their mothers daily but don't live with them. One is in a care home and the other in warden assisted housing. I think this is vastly preferable to visiting once a month or less.

I'm lucky to have lots of sisters so, being women, we have planned for our parents' old age! The eldest (a caring type) would like to live with our mother and any in laws who want to. We'll use sale of houses and cash payments from anyone not doing the caring to ensure she has enough space and daily home help. My DH and I will happily have my dad and step-mother, again buying in lots of caring support.

It is straightforward for us: we live very near each other and all appreciate the love and support the extended family give each other (in sickness and in health).

Its very easy to say you would never put a relative into care, or that you'd just have to cope. Until you are in the situation yourself.

My mum will be in care within 6 months, maybe sooner. This makes me feel wretched - but dementia isn't something that makes granny lovably dotty. It can be something that means granny spits food, hides soiled pants round the house, hoards rotting food, screams at your children, and isn't safe to be left. And as I'm 41 with a 7 year old, and a ft job its not really going to work is it?

CMOTdibbler, Jeremy Hunt et al would be happy for you to give up your job so you could look after your mother until you can't do it any longer.

And then send you down to the pound shop to work for benefits (not wages) because you're a scrounger, having given up your job.

True Basil.

Its not always possible to do that these days. Families live further away from each other and more often than not both people need to work if they are in a couple. I would take my parents in, but I would have to get paid support for them during the day so I could work. Otherwise we wouldn't have a house to live in. Its not always easy looking after an older person with deteriorating health. I've seen plenty of people crack up under the strain by trying to do the right thing. It sounds like another unworkable money saving exercise to me.

Fat chance! I'd love to look after my parents if they needed it but what with dh and I working all the hours to pay the mortgage on our far too small house it'll never be a possibility.

To be honest though, I have worked in elderly care for over ten years and the amount of people who's kids just couldn't give a shit is astonishing. I have watched people sit there and watch their mother being spoon fed by a carer instead of mucking in themselves and the amount of people who only come out of the woodwork when their dear old parent has passed away never fails to amaze.

There are a lot of parents in out society who don't think caring for their parents is anything to do with them at all.

There are also a lot of people who would love to look after an elderly relative but can't because of the constraints of living in 2013!

So which member of the family is going to give up work to care for the relative (the woman I'm guessing hmm) and how will they manage financially with mortgage (and other) costs so bloody high?

My nan lived with us for 13 years until she died. We only had a tiny house, she had the box room with just a bed and a wardrobe (no room for anything else!) and my sister and I had bunkbeds but we managed, just!
Actually the fact that she was there enabled my mum to work as when we were younger Nan would pick us up from school and take us to the park. By the time Nan was unable to walk well enough to do this we were at secondary and Mum never had to worry about us coming home to an empty house. As Nan got more infirm she enjoyed going to a lunch club/daycentre place (they would pick her up and bring her back) so she didn't have to be alone in the house all day while the rest of us were at work/school and we didn't have to worry about her falling over or burning the house down (which she almost did once).

Luckily my mum is still very fit and active for her age so I haven't got to worry about this just yet but I couldn't put her in a home if there was any alternative. Circumstances are very different though, for a start I already have a disabled son who will never be independent so we will just have to wait and see.

BMW6: "I wonder why it has changed so much? In one generation?"

Expat has explained it perfectly. The point is, LOTS has changed, which makes those sort of arrangements unfeasible for most families these days.

People also had bigger families so there was less burden on just one or two family members to look after granny. Other people could help out.

I remember posting on this type of thread before. Googling had produced the info that the average life expectancy in India is something like 60 and much less in Pakistan. So the caring would be for less time than in the UK. And in Asian countries it would be much more likely to be the females in the house doing the caring, even more so than here.

Didn't the conservatives come up with a sum of 37,000 pounds or something which everyone would have to contribute by the time they retire, to cover their care? Seemed a good idea and a start, at least, to deal with the issue, but that's gone by the by.

I'm also not sure why this attitude that hell must freeze over before someone's home can be sold for their care fees. Seems a reasonable expectation. Perhaps it is that the upshot would be many oldies living in unsuitable accommodation having downsized and passed the money on to their DCs to avoid the state getting their hands on it.

I would say that the general pop does see there is and in the future will be a problem over care for the elderly and might accept some sort of proposition eg half of someone's total assets can be put into a trust for care costs whilst the rest goes to whoever they bequeath it to, but instead everyone just buries their heads.

People also had bigger families so there was less burden on just one or two family members to look after granny. Other people could help out.
Fat chance.
I barely knew what my aunties looked like and I've never met my uncle. They never lifted a finger (even though the aunties never worked and one lived in the same town as us) or paid a penny, it was all left to my mum who was the youngest child .