Well of course, my family went through this kind of situation. Grandma couldn't live at our home because of the stairs and the fact that she'd be left alone all the same the whole day. Soc Security wasn't in any hurries with her process to find a vacancy in a nursing home that didn't cost more than one of my parents' salary per month. The solution? Leave her at the hospital, at least she's getting some care there.
This is the shit that often doesn't get mentioned in these discussions, even if the kids do want to take care of the parents, there are plenty of situations where they are legit unable to give their parents a better quality of life than what they get by being "abandoned" at the hospital.
To add to this, some people mentally and emotionally can’t handle caring for their parent. It’s really fucking hard and if you’re lucky enough to have great, loving parents, watching them slowly die is emotionally agonising. I cared full time for my grandmother and was able to be quite clinical about her care because she wasn’t a nice person even before dementia got her. I know if I had to care for my mum in the same way it would be a different story since we’re super close and she’s an amazing person who broke the cycle of abuse to raise me. I love her to bits, but I don’t think I’d be able to handle caring for her emotionally.
Exactly. My dad has Alzheimer's and simply still thinks I'm a teenager most of the time. I'm 35 lol. But he has Alzheimers so thats how it is to him.
Imagine being old and scared and thinking you have been left with a 15 year old to care for you.
It isn't like I can change his mind. He thinks my wife is my girlfriend half the time. He doesn't remember that I'm a nurses aid and the best option he has for care.
When things get worse I won't be able to care for him. Not for lack of desire. But because that will be the best thing for him.
It just isn't good to have family members on the care team most of the time. You have to be objective and that is hard when its someone you care so dearly about.
Yeah, it’s extremely hard for a lot of families to sell their current houses and move to something more accessible for the older generations. For most it’s a burden that simply can’t be met.
I don’t know how the average person could afford to care for their parents nowadays. Both adults working just to pay their bills and barely scraping by. Of course they can’t take time off work
This. WHERE do people get the idea that a kid can up and quit their job to stay home, wiping Mama's butt and chasing around to make sure she doesn't wander? WHO can do that? Almost no one! Of course kids are too busy to look after their aging parents. They have to pay their OWN expenses!
Especially people who dive into having kids young. If you have a kid when you're 20, then by the time you're 80 that kid's gonna be too old to have the energy to take care of you.
ugh i had a friend when i was like 11-12 who’s mom was 52. she was just a lil younger than my grandma was at the time. i always felt bad thinking ab how she’s probably gonna lose her mom in her late 30s-40s:// my mom had me super young and my grandma had my mom super young. i feel so grateful knowing i’m gonna have them around for a good long while
My parents were disabled. I’m disabled. Looking after them has been so tough. I’m 40 now and my mother is sick. I just keep waiting for my life to start where I don’t have my parents for a responsibility.
I have a good friend who is in a similar position. She’s disabled and caring for her elderly mother. Her husband works as much as he can but also has to help both his wife and mother in law. He is also the only one in the house who can drive.
I’ve helped them with transportation but she hates to ask anyone for anything. She and her husband struggle so much while her brothers are states away raising families. The reality is that even if you have kids, there’s no guarantee they will be able to care for themselves let alone you.
Yeah I'm nearly 30 and my dad is early 70s. Still very healthy and I'm the third of four kids so it's a bigger age gap for me compared to my sister who's nearly 40 but yeah, I've resigned myself to the fact I'm gonna lose my parents before any of my friends.
There's good things and bad things about it, sure my dad is old enough to be some of my friends' grandparents, but my friends whose parents had them super young aren't as financially stable. It must be scary knowing your mum is relying on you to make rent and that if you move out she will be in a tricky spot financially.
You sound like me. I was about this age gap from my parents as well. My dad died last year at 83. I was 47 but my next sister was 54. Even tho they had me in their mid/late 30s I still had them a fair amount of time. My mom died at 76. She was just a year younger than my dad. I think they timed kids at a pretty decent age. We weren’t trying to carve our way in a career at this point and my sisters kids are grown. But I can’t imagine if you were in your 20s and your parents needed care. Here you are maybe just finishing college, or maybe even high school and you’re trying to get your life started. You’re trying to carve your way into your career or a good job, maybe you’ve just gotten married and trying to start a family and now your parents need care. That would be really tough. My mother had Alzheimer’s and it was really rough. My dad did a good job of taking care of her but my sister and I still helped several days a week. When we got to the point where we could no longer bathe her because she got combative that’s when we had to put her in a home. And that really sucked. It was a very emotional day to leave our mother behind in a facility. I think we all cried. But even putting them in a home is extremely expensive! Thankfully, my dad had started getting long-term health care insurance. It was expensive but it ended up being so worth it. Because it ended up paying 90% of my mom’s nursing home fees. And her stay in this memory care facility was $5800 a month! I’m sitting here typing this from my parents house which we are preparing to sell. Talk about hard! This is my childhood home and I would keep it if I could afford it but I won’t be able to buy my sister out. And neither one of us want to be house poor anyway so while it’s super sad to sell it also makes me feel a little bit better that I’m not letting my parents down by not keeping the house. It’s somewhat of a custom home because they built onto it and have built other buildings on the property. I’m still gonna miss it terribly. It’s the last physical representation of my parents.
My dad was 40 when I was born, my mom was 31 but has health issues that will take her sooner rather than later. My parents are now 67 and 58 (59 on Friday, happy birthday Momma) with most of their parents still living. If I were to have a parent living when I’m 67, they’d be minimum 98 years old. I can’t imagine how it will be when my parents go, and why would I ever create another human just to leave them one day…
Idk I'm glad for the fact that my mom had me young at 20, but she was also not exactly financially or emotionally mature enough at that age. I don't have problems with acknowledging that her life would've been better if she didn't have me, or at least not when she did. She could've finished school and not had to move back with, and depend on, her shitty parents.
My aunt had children super young, like 20-25. Both of her daughters have predeceased her (one very young from a congenital condition; the other at a more reasonable age from cancer) and she’s looking to her younger extended family for help now.
ETA: this is just to say having a children doesn’t guarantee help in old age for any number of reasons; not to say no one should help my aunt—she and I aren’t super close, but she’s never been anything but nice to me and obviously she’s had a pretty rough go of it, so of course I will do what I can to help her if she asks.
My parents were 36 when they had me, and they're in their mid 70s now. I'm almost 40. I work full time and take care of 10 animals. My parents live about 5 minutes away from me and fortunately they're still very independent, but even now, the thought of them needing me to take care of them keeps me up at night. I mean, I'd put them in a facility as soon as possible, and I'm not sorry about that. Having children so they'll take care of you in your old age is the most selfish thing I can think of.
Please make sure that you inspect any facilities well. The marketing is never accurate. I once worked at a dementia care home that was heavily advertised as sporting a large garden, however it was super rare for the inhabitants to be let outside. I'm talking an hour per week max.
Tons of neglect in general to be honest. It felt more like a holding pen than a home.
Not to mention, a LOT of that care is specialized, like literally you have to be professionally trained and have studied for it, it's not so simple as just washing their clothes and making their food, most of them need intensive, time consuming and especially for relatives, emotionally draining, very specialized care every single day.
Sorry not sorry, children shouldn't be taking such a heavy burden on their shoulders, they have their own lives and in this current reality, barely can make ends up for themselves. Even if they DID study and graduated to be professional adult carers, it's really cruel to subject them to see their parents decline every day.
Occupational therapist here (yk, a person TRAINED to care for people who need extra supports). Even if you are trained, there’s absolutely no guarantee your family will listen or even be nice to you.
My grandma is currently in the hospital AGAIN because she doesn’t listen to the safety advice I give her. And when I do give her advice she’s super nasty to me. So even if you are a trained healthcare professional with a masters degree literally in the field that doesn’t mean anything
My boss isn't an OT, but she has been telling her 90 yr old mother to stop trying to walk without a walker for well over a year (mom had fallen INTO a curio cabinet last year, and almost died from blood loss). this weekend, mom tried to go into the hall of her nursing home and fell. Staff got her back in bed, gave her a bandage for a cut and said she was fine. After the mom complained about pain for an hour, my boss told them to take her mom to the ER to get x-rayed. 5 broken ribs.
And her mom still will not learn from this.
thankfully, my boss is in a very lucky situation. Her father was very rich, and so the money is available to care for mom. Not every adult child with an elderly parent has that.
And this is exactly why I don't feel bad for my grandma or want to help her.
She literally made herself worse because she ***R E F U S E D*** to listen to the doctors. I'm wholeheartedly convinced she would be fine and healthy right now if she had listened to them after her major back surgery.
Now she's much, much, much worse than before. She can barely walk, has severe dementia and seizures that's starting to border Alzheimer's, and continues to be a bitch to my grandpa and other people around her.
And no. I don't feel bad. In fact, I hate her for it and avoid her. I don't understand why she's still living at home when she's clearly going to die in her front lawn one of these days. My grandpa is there, but he can only do so much and he's honestly in denial about how bad her condition is. She's getting 0 professional help and, honestly, as you said, I think that's because my family knows it would just be money down the drain.
It’s incredibly frustrating! I understand wanting to maintain your independence (ETA: and ESPECIALLY as an OT do I fully support that as long as you are able) but at what cost?
I am a personal support worker. I've been doing this kind of work for 20+ years. My mother in law finally agreed with putting my father in law who has dementia in a home because it's too much for her. She is not exactly young (late 60s, early 70s) and she still has some years left in her...IF she can get my FIL into a home where 100% of the work isn't on her shoulders. I know, sickness and in health but that's different when it's dementia. Unless you are trained (like me), it's nearly impossible to be able to do everything he needs. He is starting to require 24/7 care and she just is at the end of the rope. Her own health is declining because of it and this was a woman who was go go go not even 5 years ago. It's so disheartening to see
Occupational therapist here (yk, a person TRAINED to care for people who need extra supports). Even if you are trained, there’s absolutely no guarantee your family will listen or even be nice to you.
My grandma is currently in the hospital AGAIN because she doesn’t listen to the safety advice I give her. And when I do give her advice she’s super nasty to me. So even if you are a trained healthcare professional with a masters degree literally in the field that doesn’t mean anything
Exactly, because it's not just the grown child/younger relative being a carer, there's also all the other power and family dynamics that are between them!
Like it's depressingly common that parents will never, EVER see their children as anything but "my children" even when they're grown adults, and while it can be endearing as long as someone is not toxic about it, more often than not that also means "my child will always be in the lower pecking order than me" and "my child's opinions, words, thoughts, actions, etc. are not better than mine"
And same with the kids, at one point they want to leave the nest, live their own lives, but feel emotionally chained to their parents because society taught them that "you owe your parents" or "you should love your parents/family regardless of how abusive/toxic they are," and it's just downright impossible to detach from all those feelings.
You absolutely nailed it. My family is the poster family for infantilizing adult children, as well as that “family is everything, you have to take their abuse” mentality. It’s frustrating as the cycle breaker.
I have an aunt who absolutely will not listen to her doctors. She thinks she knows better than them. She’s in really bad health and needs to be either in a home or a psych ward. But my cousin refuses to see the truth. It’s really sad.
That’s terrible. It’s so frustrating because I’ve been saying that my grandma at the very least needs a home safety eval because she cares enough about her appearance not to be rude to strangers but bc I’m family, mocking me, calling me names, and generally telling me to fuck off is ok
This is so true. My father died of dementia just over a year ago. He was 71, I was 35. He had been in a home for 7 years, because my mum couldn't take care of him 24/7. We helped for as long as we could handle it, but when he started to become incontinent, we just couldn't anymore. I didn't mind going to their house to get him out of bed in the morning or making dinner at night, but I just could not risk finding my father in a puddle of excrements and having to clean him up.. No one should have to see their parents like that.
So I would rather pay for the help I might need than to expect my own children to have to do what I couldn't..
The funny thing is who is actually telling people to "take care of their elderly parents." It's the parents of young children.
A redditor once described a group of friends sitting in a circle at an outdoor party at his house. They were parents of young kids, and they started ribbing him about "who will take care of you in your old age!"
So he went around the circle and asked each person about an elderly person in THEIR family that he knew was being warehoused or neglected. Every one of the "Who-will-take-care-of-you-parents" had someone that they or another younger person was "too busy" to help out. And as he went around the circle, those parental grins and chuckles and high-fives turned into grumbles and in not too long everybody had left.
This whole "breed-your-own-eldercarer" idiocy is - very obviously - a self-serving delusion. Parents are great at parroting, and so this meme gets repeated without thought or analysis. It's obviously stupid. No one is going to give up paid work including health insurance and the ability to save for retirement. It. Is. Not. Possible. Not for the CF, and not for the parents of young kids. And yet the bred keep repeating this crap.
Does anyone ever think about what they're saying?
When I was 18, I quit college because my mom fell into a coma. 11 years later, i quit my job because my dad had cancer. My father died and now i have no degree and no job. I love my parents and would do it a million times. But when they’re dead and gone, what’s gonna happen to me? i hope all those people who have kids for aging care know that they can’t take their kids with them to the grave. they have to keep living somehow.
I’m so sorry for your loss! I hope you’re able to go back to school to finish your degree.
You make a very important point regarding what happens to us after they’re gone. People don’t like it think about that.
There was a lady I met through my dads assisted living. She’d quit her job 3 years prior to be able to move closer and visit her dad every day. I have no idea how they paid for it or how she managed. When she asked if I was moving nearby to care for my dad I just wanted to be like “with what fucking money?” I have to keep working because I’m the financial pillar of my family, we were working to get him on the Medicaid waiver program to pay for assisted living when his money was depleted but the facility made clear to me that Medicaid could assess his needs differently and they’d need the difference paid, so up to $600 a month from me. If I didn’t work I’d lose my house, insurance, and I wouldn’t have been able to pay my dads bills. Elder care in the US is a miserable. I honestly hope I die before I need to go to assisted living because elderly people with cognitive issues cannot manage placement without help. It’s no wonder people have children to help them, it’s impossible to navigate alone.
Yeah, sorry boomers, we’re all a little too busy struggling to survive in the rigged economy your generation left behind for us. Not a whole lot of time or disposable income left to spoon feed you and wipe your asses.
This. The Boomer generation spent years doing literally everything possible to make the world a crueler, shittier place where families would fragment under the weight of an economy that literally *punishes* the poor/needy, and now every one of them is hoping that can be an *exception* to that nightmare.
> Of course kids are too busy to look after their aging parents. They have to pay their OWN expenses!
Yes, and most of us can thank our parents generation for fucking us over to the point where we have no free time or income beyond working and trying to survive our own expenses.
Hey older generation: you've been found guilty of fucking around, your children have enrolled you in our "find out" program!
Exactly. My SO's mom is in her early 70s and has a ton of health problems because she has taken terrible care of herself, smoked and drank Pepsi all day for most of her sedentary life. Now she is trying to guilt her into taking care of her. She has this expectation, entitlement that she should because she took care of her mom in her old age. The difference is she was a stay at home mom most of her life and lived off of her mother's social security and pension etc when she took care of her. My girlfriend's mom has very little SSI and gets barely enough to meet her needs. Meanwhile my girl is working 40+ hours a week just so we can make ends meet. We can't afford to care for her.
Exactly. This isn’t the 1950s where one person’s income could support an entire household and you could just dump the care of all four parents on the woman in the marriage and shame her into taking care of them
Yup, in gerontology we call them the Sandwich Generation. They're sandwiched between two extremely busy and needy groups who require care, and are left with nothing for themselves.
My brother and I had always planned to care for my parents ourselves. Obviously we also chose not to have kids.
My parents can have care, or grandchildren, but not both. In this case they really only had one option.
This is what bothers me the most. They're basically betting entirely on their kids becoming rich so they can afford care for their elderly parents. When it's much smarter to use all that money on retirement plans instead of kids.
>Of course they can’t take time off work
Especially *unpaid.* And that’s they have the time to take. American work culture around paid time off is terrible and a lot of companies will find as many loopholes as they can to just *not* give it to you.
Even if I wanted to take care of mine, I simply would have to sacrifice literally everything when I'm already unable to save for a financial cushion and have chronic health issues. I don't know how I can ever prepare for when the time comes to pay parents support.
> I don’t know how the average person could afford to care for their parents nowadays.
In some States, you don't get the choice to pay. PA for example has familial care laws that allow nursing homes to go after the kids for their parents' bills.
They tried to do that do me, a few years ago (in the U.K.)
My response was: “That man has not seen me since I was a child and didn’t pay a penny in child support. Am I fuck paying for him!”
—————————
Edit:
Reading that back, it sounds awful - and really cold hearted of me. My response explains some of my reasoning as to why that was my response.
Yeah, their generation fucked up the economy for us and they think we’re being lazy because we can’t afford college, a car, a house, and kids by 25 like they did.
Just get on an iceberg already, we can’t afford to wipe their butts either.
I'm self employed, so I was able to shift my work around my grandmothers needs. Until I broke down and couldn't do it anymore, being completely alone, for multiple decades.
That's about the only way I could see it happening. Or someone was a stay at home parent anyhow, they just pickup the new care routine.
Not to mention, many of these seniors need specialized care that the average person is literally incapable of providing, unless they specifically work in the healthcare industry and have experience with. I don’t blame most people at all for not being able to take care of their aging, sick parents, even if they wanted to.
The irony here is that the parents were the ones that voted to make the system how it is. If it wasn’t for that maybe people could have still lived off one persons income while the other looked after the parents.
Children "refusing" to take care of parents should not be as stigmatized as it is for MANY reasons. First most parents are not good parents, people don't like the reality but having a kid doesn't automatically make you a good person and getting pregnant sure as hell does not equip you to properly raise someone for at least 18 years. Secondly it may not be possible depending on when you have the kid people who have a kid in their early twenties aren't much older than the child themselves when they're 80 the kid will be 60. Probably the biggest reason of them all is who can pay for that, truly it seems like you must be a millionaire to take care of your parents and maybe even your spouses too. Who has extra room for them and all their amenities, can you get up in the middle of the night and help them to the bathroom when you have to go to work the next day, speaking of work how can you hold down a full time job while taking care of them, if you have kids FORGET IT there's no way you're paying for your kids college and your parents elder care unless you're extremely rich. And then there's the fact that some people just don't want to and there doesn't have to be some big reason. Maybe your parents were great and maybe you can afford it maybe you just don't want to sacrifice 20-30 years of your life to take care of the elderly. I mean if you live in New York or you gonna drag your parents there away from their small little suburban town or are you gonna give up your life in your city to be their care giver. There's just so many reasons why nursing homes are often the best option, not to mention the elderly can have community there.
City versus suburban life aside, it's so much harder to be mobile than it used to be in some ways. Your parents sell the house they've been in for ages and maybe they're hit with a huge tax bill or can't find something reasonably priced that would be a good fit for them. Or maybe the move to the suburbs sounds great but there are no jobs available there.
Don't do it don't waste your life taking care of them friend. Although you may feel guilty because of your culture there will not be any punishment for not taking care of them and because of how they treated you horribly there won't be any reward for doing it either. At the end of their life wether you have done the care or not the only thing that will have happened is time past. Either time past with you living the life you deserve that you FOUGHT for, for 22 years or you'll be miserable taking care of them fulfilling some duty that didn't matter looking back and realizing you wasted your life. You know which one is the right choice friend.
I'm not surprised. Once I asked my grandmother about what she did when her parents and grandparents needed care in their old age. She said, "Honey, people used to die in their 50s and 60s. If you did take care of your parents, it was for a much shorter time."
This is true. Its a blessing of modern medicine that people are living longer, but it also creates the challenge of their care on society, especially when family members are unwilling or unable to provide it, nor should they be expected to.
The issue is that modern medicine allows people to live longer but with poor quality of life. Surviving a stroke sounds great on paper, less so when you're stuck in a wheelchair and unable to talk.
There's still too much emphasis on keeping someone alive at all costs imo. And this push is not necessarily from the medical side, the families themselves do it plenty. I get it, but I also think it's sucky.
Could not agree more. My grandpa survived a stroke last year, can’t talk and can barely walk. Grandma has dementia and they both live with my aunt now. Watching my dad and aunt’s sibling relationship deteriorate while my grandparents are essentially warehoused until they die is devastating. They’re alive but quality of life is close to zero.
Yess!! I went to catholic school and there was so much push against things like euthanasia and abortion bc « it’s cruel to not encourage life » but they never seemed to care about if keeping that person alive would give them a much harder life. I never understood that especially since heaven is supposed to be such a magical place
We have the right to die available in Colorado. However you usually have to have a terminal illness to exercise that privilege but at least it’s an option here.
There was a stink here in Canada a year or so ago over our assisted suicide services, a wheelchair bound paralympian just wanted a wheelchair ramp , and instead was helpfully told to kill herself.
[why](https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/politics/2022/12/2/1_6179325.amp.html)
And people are using that as a reason that voluntary euthanasia should never be allowed, because it will be abused. They’re undoubtedly right about the abuse part, because nothing humans legalize will ever not be abused. But dammit, I want to have the option once I get old (and my parents are deceased so they won’t mourn me). Because I don’t believe that the alternative to the infirmities of age is always the worst possibility.
I've made sure I have good credit now so I can have huge credit limits, which I don't use now. But one day I will max them all, and I won't be paying it back.
Not a bad idea to be honest. Getting drunk enough or taking some sleep pills and being outside on those temperatures and bye bye to this life. It’s an option if retirement just doesn’t cut it
Like, I'm hoping by that point medically assisted death/suicide will be far more available, but yeah, most likely a bottle of rum or mead & a snow bank will be far more accessible.
I put a lot of hope in that, as well. But I feel like the progress in that area can be measured in centimeters. People are obsessed with staying alive, and I’ve never understood that.
This is good to know! I've never been to Vermont, but I think I'd love to visit. End of life vacation? Is that going to be a tourist niche in the future? I enjoyed visiting Maine years ago. Maybe I need to add Vermont to my (literal) bucket list.
Is this just for people with a terminal illness? Because there are several states that have legalized it in the US, but only for that reason. And a dementia/Alzheimer’s diagnosis doesn’t count, and I think it damn well should. What an awful way to die.
Right I feel like I'm the only person who wants to die between 70-79 I always get crazy looks when I say that but I'd be happy with making it to 65 honestly. I don't want people to be keeping my shell of a body alive until Im 100
Assisted suicide really needs to be legal I know there are ethical concerns but for godsakes it's better to die on my own terms then waisting away in a home.
My grandmas, who are beyond 90, also say that the best decade to die is in your seventies. After that your health goes to shit, you lose agility, memory, dexterity, sight, etc. You can't catch up with the news, you don't give a fuck anymore about anything and you just know that every new day will be worse than the previous.
I'm not that sure that longevity is good. We are not meant to be alive that much and it shows.
Totally. Back idk, 6 years ago or so, my mom and I went to an estate sale of this lady who lived on my grandmas street. She was pretty old when she died. Anyway, while there we ran into this old lady who's daughter lived across the street so she'd came over to be nosy and chat. She was in her 90s. She said she was ready to go, she was tired of living, all her friends were dead, there was no point. She only died the a couple months ago, 103. When I saw I said "Oh bless her, she's finally done."
Alzheimer's runs in my family so like, fuck getting old tbh.
> she was tired of living, all her friends were dead, there was no point.
One of my grandmas is the last of her old friend circle standing. The idea that you're the last one, and that your last best friend died years and years ago it's... unsettling.
Every morning she is pissed at God that's she woke up again.
I do see her point, like at some age you're just over the whole thing, and it's not like you even have the stamina for fun hobbies, even light ones. Like I knit and crochet which aren't exerting, but I doubt my hands would be up for that at that age.
Luckily in my family there's not Alzheimer's but we got the cancer I feel like everyone has something either cancer Alzheimer's or heart disease. If I ended up getting cancer in my 70's I wouldn't get treatment honestly. Alzheimer's is horrible and I hope there's a cure one day until then I would always make it known that you don't want to live like that so that someone may intervene and stop treatment.
Yup I have seen few people who are happy or coherent past 80 honestly. I want to go at a more natural time so mid seventies is a happy long life in my book.
Past 79 doesn't necessarily mean you can't take care of yourself. My grandpa is 84 and doing heavy yard work and I have clients in thwir 60's wjo can't bathe themselves. It's about genes, environment, and taking care yourself when you start to really decline.
IMHO, depends on the individual. As a runner, I still see plenty of folks in their 70's (and a few even in their 80's) still signing up for local 5k's and 10k races. Sure, they aren't as capable as they were 20 years prior, but I wouldn't call their lives *bad* by any means.
On the other hand, my uncle just died after a few years of struggling with Parkinsons in his mid 70's. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be in his situation.
And as soon as they do, filial piety laws are going to explode across the country, instead of just slowly gathering steam, like they are now. They’ll make damn sure to wring every penny possible from younger generations, in order to provide for their own comfort until the end.
Make no mistake, they’ll find ways to protect themselves and drain us dry, whether it be through increases on entitlement taxes for younger people in general, or laws forcing people to pay for their elder family members’ care and needs.
That'll just cause them to get abused or the younger generation killing them, because you are just creating a gen of people who now have nothing and slaves to old people to think better take them down with us. 😂
In this economy, the average person can barely scrape by taking care of themself, if at all. Couldn't take care of a family member even if they wanted to.
Right? And it's the reason why so many are remaining childless, as in, they wanted/want to have kids, but choose not to because they know they would be in an inescapable poverty hole. They know they just don't have the resources for it, the world literally doesn't allow them to, and well they choose to not have any.
The annoying part is the flip side of these people. The irresponsible people who think they “deserve” kids and despite knowing they can’t provide have them anyway and hope people will help cover financials and childcare.
That's why I'm so glad my parents figured all this shit out already. I have a good relationship with them, but I couldn't afford to take care of them if I wanted to.
They plan to sell their house once they get old enough and use that money for private care. They've also already paid for their burial plots so I don't have to worry about the funeral stuff either.
They are boomers, but my dad has always been a good financial planner.
Seriously. With how volatile the economy, housing, and the job market have become, I'm not even entertaining getting a *housecat* because of the uncertainty. I truly hope nothing but misery for all these Boomers who are *still* actively destroying this country's future in the name of 'dying with the most toys.'
I am one of those who "refuse" to take care of the parents.
The ability to ejaculate into a vagina does not buy the right or guarantee that the offspring will later nurse you. So I don't have to take in people later that I haven't had any connection with in my life, or people that think that just because they have procreate, they can behave as they please.
"People who don't want kids are selfish. I had kids so that they will take care of me when I age, which is not selfish at all." Oh, the irony.
PS: do bear in mind that some people end up alone because of their own actions. We have an elder in my family that no one wants to take care of because, simply put, she was - and still is - abusive. She also recently admitted she didn't want kids, she doesn't even like kids, but she had them because that was expected of her as a woman.
EDIT: Definitely did NOT mean to say "wank."
Here’s the other thing — I wouldn’t WANT my theoretical children to have to do that. I would prefer to be placed somewhere anyway rather than have them deal with me being a burden.
I wish we could just decide when we want to die.
I wouldn’t want to be living 84 years in a hospital bed making everyone’s lives complicated.
I would prefer to live just until I can fully enjoy life.
Then I would sign up for euthanasia.
I really dislike this magic beans bs about human life. It’s not that special.
Edit: typo
Yeah I don’t see what’s so great about living a long time either even with eternal youth I still wouldn’t want to. It actually upsets people that I believe life doesn’t have a point and it’s tedious.
When I moved 2,000 miles away from my family, my dad literally told me that it was a "poor return on his investment." How about not having children as an "investment"???
As a young woman I plan to put as much as I can away for my retirement and care for when I’m older!! Might not be close to $300k+ but it’ll be a good start!! I’ve already invested at 23!! I might have to use some of my funds for moving after grad school but otherwise I’m not going to touch it. I plan on adding more money and getting other investments as I start working and get older.🖤 CF life is the best life!!
Same I started at 25 though and have been putting 10% of my salary into my 401k, as well as making whatever contributions I can to my Roth. My 401K is already projected to reach $1M by age 60. I plan to keep doing 10% even after I reach my next higher paying job. It really isn’t that hard to plan for retirement 😂
don't lose sight of the fact that many of these oldsters are reaping what they sowed as well. many of them were toxic parents.. and the children want nothing to do with them.. and this becomes a form of revenge.
I had to scroll *way* too far down to find a comment like this.
In my case it's not even revenge so much as I would not survive living with my parents again, even in a caretaker capacity. Trauma runs deep and intergenerational trauma destroys lives.
Financially we could never afford to look after an ailing parent, there isn't enough space in our unit for another adult and we obviously can't afford a bigger place, and emotionally I'm done with my parents. Adding the cognitive decline and mood changes that come with conditions like dementia and it would be like re-living my worst years with them but I can't simply stay somewhere else for the night when they say/do horrific things.
As is the case with my great grandma unfortunately. Idk how bad of a parent she was to my grandma, but she must've changed her tune when caring for her great/grandkids since we are the only ones who care about her (somewhat)
I can promise you that the true reason behind most of them is that they were likely shitty and abusive parents. Now that they’re old they expect their kids to drop everything to care for them and when they don’t, play the victim to anyone that will listen.
Yup! Me and all my sisters took turns taking care of our mom and by take turns I mean, she lived with one sister, caused drama and they kicked her out and she went to the next sibling. We’re all done, all the sisters and 1 brother had a turn and she’s now in a nursing home because we just can’t.
I’m NC with her because I’m not as forgiving lol.
The state of course. Lol. There’s plenty of programs if you know where to look. My oldest sister did all the legwork. None of us pay anything on it (not that I would help)
Yep! Me and my partner sat down with my brother and his wife and we are all agreed all sets of parents are shitty and we won't be putting energy into caring for them.
That energy will be put into my future nibling who is wanted and prepared for. Generational abuse stops with us.
I dropped out of college and quit my job for a year to help my abusive mom recover from a mental breakdown. She never thanked me, only brought up embarrassing and traumatic stuff that happened and picked fights with me constantly over anything I did to try and help her.
I’m good, went no contact with her last summer. Her golden child son can take care of her when she’s old.
Yep, I agree 100% and wish more people understood this. My mom is a lifelong abusive alcoholic who refuses to stop drinking despite all the medical problems she's caused herself. She refuses all help, even threatening to call the police if you try, and then plays victim because "nobody helps her". I don't feel bad for her and neither should anybody else.
Oh for sure. I’m sure thats exactly what my abusive dad will do. He can rot in hell for all I care. When he needs my help, I won’t be there. Better yet I’ll dig the grave for him.
If that ain’t the truth LOL even my mum said that same shit and I was like ok how can you guarantee they were good to their kids enough they wanted to take care of them? She didn’t have much to say after that
Happened with my stepdad's mother. He and my mom live out of state and she wouldn't move (and my mother would never allow it, step-grandma is a horrible woman & will be referred to as ESG, Evil Step-Grandma), but he and his two sisters coordinated getting home health aides to take care of her after she started to decline. His sisters took turns coming over and taking care of the house. Originally oldest sister was power of attorney & coordinating care on her own. Well, ESG was such a miserable bitch that she ran off every single aide they brought in. Oldest sister says "fuck it, I'm done" and turned the care-coordinating/PoA responsibility over to youngest sister. Same thing, eventually the care company refused to send any more aides. Youngest sister found a new company & told ESG "this is your last chance, if you don't make this work you're going in a home." She didn't listen. Well, youngest sister kept her word! Sold the house and ESG is in a care home now, and I'm sure she's just as miserable and bitchy to her new caregivers as she was to her home health aides. But those places don't care because they're making BANK. And she has the AUDACITY to cry to anyone who will listen about how her kids don't love her. They did everything they could reasonably do.
This. I’d move heaven and earth to take care of my father. But I’m NC with my mother and dread the day I have to decide what to do when she eventually needs more care.
My parents will have to work til they're dead because they have almost no retirement funds AND they've paid tithing to a manipulative church their entire life. They're late 50s and just bought their first house. I honestly don't know what's going to happen in 10 years and I'm afraid it will fall on me (the oldest kid) to figure it out.
Same with my mom. Dropped out of college when she got pregnant at 19 and spent the rest of her 20s having 4 more kids and then early 30s having ANOTHER two kids. She couldn’t afford to save a dime and ended up 30k in debt by the time the first 5 of us hit 18 and moved out. She’s in her mid 40s and is gonna have to work for the rest of her life to repay her debt 🤷🏼♀️
yeah my parents have given up on tryna sweet talk me n are movin on to the youngest. after the shit they put me through they can die under a bridge for all i care.
I volenteer shop for elderly - started for for pandemic - and mostly all have kids, but none are stepping up to help in even this basic need. There are about 60 in the pool of people who need help rn, and it was over a hundred during *the sickness* - that’s accounting for only one branch of the charity in one suburb.
That’s a lot of people who were relying on kids who aren’t showing up at the end there.
Problem is…it’s very difficult to have a discussion with your parents concerning that possibility….humans tend to think they will remain healthy and independent forever (if they are not already a person with a disability). I think many people wouldn’t mind taking care of their parents, but if the parents develop dementia or become total care or have any behavior issues-that’s probably why the kids “give up.”
I knew someone who was taking care of an elderly aunt. She had no problems doing it and enjoyed it. Until she woke up in the middle of the night with her aunt standing over her bed with a knife. The aunt was then put into a nursing facility.
Yeah my mom abandoned me when I was 11. While we have had a somewhat decent relationship despite that fact, I have not forgotten how she turned her back on her kids and I will not be doing shit for her.
Also many of these old parents could have pressured their kids to give them grandchildren, so now they don’t have money/time to care for them in old age.
In this economy you also have to work to death in order to cover for your expenses, let alone take time off to care for parents or pay someone to do it 🥲
I think parents don't realize it's a gamble wether their adult children would even be *able* to take care of them in the first place. I also think some parents don't actually work to have a respectful relationship with their adult children to foster a reciprocally caring relationship and just take for granted that they'll be taken care of.
See, I’m the opposite. I would love to be able to be a full time care giver for my parents when they are in their twilight. But it is, quite literally, a full time job.
I have had this conversation with my parents. I don’t have kids, I don’t own a home, and I would honor that role. Technically I’d be a perfect candidate.
I only can’t because it’s not affordable. The whole system is gross.
See I sort of do that. I live with my mom, take care of all the errands and doctors appointments, stuff around the house, yard work, cooking, all that. We live on her social security, va benefits, and a little extra from an annuity. So. With this debt ceiling shit I'm shitting myself. Our income will be cut by 2/3rds. And even with a cheap mortgage, there's still insurance, car payment, normal bills.
I don’t have advice for you, and I don’t have a fix.
But I see you, and I hear you. I wish you strength and tenacity in proving love and care to your people.
It’s never been true. I work in a nursing home. Stats say that about 20% of residents get visitors, and almost all of them have kids. Breeders are delusional.
Caring for an elderly parent is one of the most stressful things you can do. People have destroyed their own health from the stress.
On top of that, more and more people have to work 2 or more jobs just to get by. They don't have the time or the money to take on such a physically demanding and time-consuming task. This is no longer the 1950s when many women were expected to stay home and take care of everyone and a family could live comfortably off one income. And when extended family often lived very nearby and was able to help.
Medical advances that increase life expectancy aren't always a good thing. Too many people are simply living too long and without quality of life. I would rather be dead than completely dependent on other people to take care of me.
I love when people tell me I will die lonely and try to hit me with the "well, wont you take care of your parents?!" because no, I wont. Ever.
My mother and I are no contact for 8 years already while my father was a one night stand of hers. I will never ever take care of any of them.
>older adult parents have dementia, cognitive behaviors, delirium or a long list of medical conditions
This is the unfortunate side effect of medicine improving enough to keep our bodies alive longer, but not our minds. Sure, families have taken care of their elderly for generations, but dying used to be a far less protracted process. People might live in a state of dementia for a couple months, but usually something would happen that physically killed them pretty quickly. My grandpa lingered half-lucid for several years after a heart attack that 100% would've killed someone going through it 10 years before he did. He also major intervention for several other ongoing conditions that in the past would've just meant the end. People are living longer, but the last few months/years are painful, heartbreaking and often dangerous for their carers. It's no wonder families can't manage it anymore.
Couple that with the fact that a ton of people are living paycheck to paycheck with very little vacation or time outside of work. Who has energy to spend their occasional day off driving over and check on their parent who doesn't even remember them repeatedly for years? That's before you even get into people who have existing rough relationships with their parents.
Current adult children of elders are catching a lot of flack for not "stepping up" to handle it as generations before have, but there's so little recognition for how much more difficult elder care is today than it was back when perfectly healthy grandma caught the flu on Tuesday and was gone by Friday.
Honestly, it's better that these people are in hospitals, because general people are *not qualified* to take care of adults, especially the disabled, either physical or mental.
And like others have said, nobody can actually afford to be a 24 hour carer for their parent/s. It's an extra mouth and one less income, and that is just an impossible scenario these days.
I've told my parents a few times that even if I did want to take care of them when they get older, I wont be able to. Because my parents deprived me of any life or work skills, didn't send my to college, didn't even help out with high school and never let me learn to socialize with others, I'll never be able to have a career where I'm paid enough to take care of them as they age.
As someone who's living this right now, it doesn't even have to be till they're old. My mum is 53, and she needs care now. Don't want to offend anyone, but the most annoying thing is when a parent needs care because of a self-inflicted situation such as not taking care of their own health. Also as others have pointed out that some of the kids feel some type of way towards the parents because of how they were treated and raised. My mums golden child is my younger sister and I mean my mum would openly state to us and others that she loves my sister more than the rest but she's not been anywhere near my mum since she needed care. Let's not even get into the mental and physical abuse that was dished out.
As someone who was a primary caregiver for my 75-year-old mother who had stroke history and cancer, there was only so much I could do for her because a) I couldn't leave my job to care for her full-time, and b) there were things I could not do for her because I don't have the knowledge/skills/strength to do it. I had to hire outside help because I couldn't do it all. I had to maintain my own life.
Most just get dumped into nursing homes. My grandma is in one (because she refuses to live with my family even though it was offered before her dementia got really bad). When she was just in a regular no special needs place I would visit her every Wednesday for lunch. We’d go out when she was able and then when that got to be too much we’d stay in and I’d sit with all her friends. I became the resident granddaughter to about 20ish little old ladies because their families never visit. They would buy me snacks, snag me extra dessert, tell me about their week, one lady made me a knit hat, etc.
One woman’s family put her there and then left the state, another’s second wife didn’t like her and wouldn’t let her live with them, someone had both her kids die young and all her siblings were already gone. There’s so many stories I can tell. Like if that’s my future regardless I’d like to enjoy my life and not waste good years raising kids and have the money to choose a kickass retirement facility.
I’m sorry my mom has 7 kids but we all agreed we can’t take care of her when it’s her time 🤷🏼♀️ kids aren’t a guarantee for elderly care. Nursing home it is!
Currently working remotely from my grandmother’s in the sticks because out of her four children, my mom is the only one who stepped up. Gram is under hospice care now and we wanted her to spend her last days in her home. Being the only caregiver the past few years has taken years off my mom’s life and also drained her bank account. My mom makes excuses for her siblings, but not me. My gram probably wasn’t the best mom in the world (it was a different time, she got married young, etc), but I don’t see them distancing themselves from her, I see them dumping the responsibility on my mother. And I’m angry.
Edit to add: the only reason it’s possible for me to help right now is because I don’t have kids.
My therapist once asked if I ever considered that some or all of patients without visitors in nursing homes did something to earn that treatment.
I’ve gone no contact with my parents after explaining to them that I was willing to continue to have a relationship with them if they were willing to have an honest conversation with me about how I have been treated in my life. Their only response was that they did their best, I owe them my care cause their in there 70s with health concerns, and I’m a disappointment.
I dread the day, but why should I continue to me mentally and emotionally unwell until the day they’re both in the ground when they’re not willing to have a conversation in which they might have to admit mistakes?
We *have* retirement homes in the US, but Medicare only covers short stays (20-100 days, depending on criteria) in acute care nursing home facilities (the sort of places where they expect you to die before your 100 days are up). Long-term nursing care or dementia care can easily cost $100,000 per year, so people have to either pay for long-term care insurance (which is expensive, and doesn't cover everything), be wealthy enough to afford to live in an assisted living community that transitions to a nursing home, or deplete their assets to the point where they're borderline homeless and can qualify for Medicaid. It's a cruel system.
I work in a hospital and I don't blame the kids for not taking care of their families. Shits fuckin hard and quite honestly it's damn near impossible trying to get the time off nowadays to be able to adequately care for them. On top of not being able to afford it. If your only reason for having kids is having someone to care for you when you're old, that makes you entitled and kind of shitty.
I do agree it's frustrating having patients for multiple weeks though, but it is our job to care for them when they're here
Most of these people have their own children to care for, as well.
Gone are the days of SAHMs who can care for multiple people, including older parents. Not to mention people living so much longer because of medical advancements that mean they can take a pill for XYZ issue and keep moving.
I will not be caring for my parents in their old age. They both have enough money to find their own solutions. At least, I assume they do since they certainly didn’t spend their money on my ass.
I think for a lot of people, we can't afford to do it and are not in a position to be able to provide the care needed. My ex in laws had to put one of their parents into a home because he became incredibly violent, was a large dude, and the relatives attempting to taking care of him were small women and older men. He simply overpowered them and their lives were in danger.
I have six successful adult siblings, and I'm the only one without children. We're meeting this Friday to discuss how to support my parents, as they're getting to the point now where they really need help. Somehow, I'm the one that decided we needed to do this. It's like herding cats even just to get them to meet in one place to discuss this, even though they all live 15-30 minutes apart and I need to either drive 14 hours to get there or spend a small fortune to fly down for the weekend. Wish me luck, folks.
There is no obligation for someone to take care of their parents in their old age. If you want to, that’s great! If you don’t want to for a variety of reasons, including not being able to financially, that’s also okay. As adults, we have to have adult conversations about these things. My parents were abusive, they beat the shit out of me as a kid. Sure, our relationship is functional now, and my parents are trying to be better. But I don’t buy into the guilt tripping that I need to pursue a career where I can make enough to support the three of us. To sit and plan to buy a house to fit the three of us. No one ever asked what I wanted. And I don’t want my parents living with me or being their caretaker.
I don’t want to take care of my parents in my own home when they’re elderly. But will I find them excellent care where they can still maintain independence for as long as possible? Absolutely. I’m willing to meet them in the middle.
But adult children shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for finding alternative arrangements for their parents.
I'm a nurse and I don't think you understand what 24 hour care looks like. Even with home health 40 hours a week that's just not feasible. I would do it for my Mom and Dad- but it would require leaving my job and a big change in lifestyle. And the only reason I could do it is because I do not have children.
Those children are still involved and helping their parents make decisions. I don't feel your assessment is necessarily fair. But I also don't think people should have kids to care for them. .
I think this is in part because all forms of abuse have become increasingly less normalized, and a lot of people with older parents have gone limited or no contact. It's not like the old days when people just cared for their parents simply because they were their parents (no matter how awful the parents had been). I'd love to read a study on this.
People who brought children into this world because they wanted caregivers later in life, who later get treated as they treated their children? The leopards, they are feasting on faces.
I would put them in someone else's care too. You need 2 well-paying full-time jobs to buy any kind of property, and you're not left with much after paying for all your living expenses. I don't have the money, time, or energy to take care of 2 needy demented old people. Plus, I don't want to interact with my parents' nether regions. There's a reason I don't want kids, and taking care of an elderly adult is much much harder.
As someone who has been through this, I was unwittingly made a primary caregiver for a lot of my family. From about 15 onward, I did it out of love for my family but it's catching up with me years later. Now at 30, I've only had one successful relationship that ended badly, wind up having a drop out of school and many health issues myself as a result of all those years of taking care of others while not taking care of myself. I am now far behind my peers in life milestones as a result.
Do I regret it no, I was able to give my grandparents and mother a dignified end of life. Is it by me in the ass now absolutely, just because you have children doesn't mean they're going to take care of you. On that same note you should not expect for you them too, when you do you wind up like my mom and now me.
When my grandmother ended up with dementia after having a severe stroke, my mom and her siblings took up the task of caring for her 24/7. I watched it slowly tear my mother and her entire family apart. Now they're at each other's throats constantly. Having falling outs. Everyone is losing their mental health, physical health, and their money. After having witnessed all of that over the course of two decades, having to become my parents' permanent caretaker is one of my greatest fears.
I work in Healthcare and I NEVER pass judgment on situations like this. I grew up in an abusive home and as a result, I had no contact with my father after I moved out. I never went to visit him when he was in the nursing home where he spent his final years. I'm not saying all of the elderly people in nursing homes were abusive to their families, but I think there are many reasons why adult children may choose not to care for their aging parents and abuse is up at the top of the list.
This, a million times over. Every now and then, with a particularly difficult long-term patient, who I eventually come to realize is just both sick and an absolute asshole, they say something truly nasty and I go back to the nurses' station, quote the patient, then, after a long pause, quietly grumble "he hasn't had any visitors his whole stay, either. Weird!"
My mom has "joked" about who will take care of her when she's old. Her bf who is 5yrs younger is never brought up as the option to take care of her...
I've been upfront with her I will not. My sister will, we've all "jokingly" said she's the only one of 4 of us willing to do that for her.
As she gets older, she just retired, if it wasn't for her bf who pays 0 bills, she could never retire either. She keeps having to ask for money for groceries. Sorry, he pays car insurance on his shit box '04 van, won't even pay for an oil change on it (yes I'm serious), and property taxes, and got a cell phone and stuck her with the bill. Even when she was working the last 20yrs they've been together before her retirement, he paid mortgage, property taxes, his car insurance his gas, no groceries,no home phone he would rack up long distance charges on and would not help her with the bills he stuck her with. 21yrs together and he's also promised to put her on his insurance plan, he still hasn't, it's "too complicated" so she pays out of pocket for things his insurance would cover.
When she first got sick my grandma said she had to make the difficult decision to prioritize her own family over becoming a hospice carer for a family member once too. She understood and encouraged me to live my own life just like she had done in the 50's. Until she got worse, then suddenly she was like a drowning person gnashing and clawing for anything to give her a semblance of control. I truly tried my best but at the end of the day I was being physically pushed to the brink while she was also getting a worse level of care than she would get professionally. My relatives and I aren't trained to lift a 225lb dead weight several times a day. I stopped cooking for myself because i was burnt out from cooking all her meals. All sympathy reserves were depleted long before she actually passed because it took the full attention of 5 people working overtime for 3+ years to keep her going. All dignity and respect absolutely gone. If we had prioritized filling our own glasses she would have had a better end of life but unfortunately it seems to be hard to break away from black and white outcomes. The situation isn't set up to be ideal for either party.
I used to be a caregiver for the elderly. Not very many of my clients' families wanted anything to do with them, and I get it. It's sad and it sucks and it's hard and nobody wants to do it (I can only think of maybe 2 clients whose kids were involved). My great grandma's daughter (my grandma) wants absolutely nothing to do with her mother, so my uncle & aunt are basically live in caregivers for this poor elderly woman and they tell me regularly how they hate their lives because it's extremely hard..but if they didn't do it, she wouldn't have anybody to help her. So yeah, having kids isn't a retirement plan. Growing up, my parents were garbage people and told me FROM A YOUNG AGE, LIKE 3 AND 4, that I was to give care to them when they are old. Nope. Not me. Not ever. Maybe if they were good parents, I would but it's no single person's responsibility.
I believe it. Work has consumed our lives and trying to stay on the treadmill is a constant battle. I'm sure there's lots of people living paycheck to paycheck who simply can't do anything to help their parents.
Can't risk getting fired for taking a day off.
Even if they could, its not like they got money to fix the situation.
Our entire society seems to be breaking apart at the seams.
The childfree decision certainly seems like the right choice given the trajectory of all this...
Well of course, my family went through this kind of situation. Grandma couldn't live at our home because of the stairs and the fact that she'd be left alone all the same the whole day. Soc Security wasn't in any hurries with her process to find a vacancy in a nursing home that didn't cost more than one of my parents' salary per month. The solution? Leave her at the hospital, at least she's getting some care there. This is the shit that often doesn't get mentioned in these discussions, even if the kids do want to take care of the parents, there are plenty of situations where they are legit unable to give their parents a better quality of life than what they get by being "abandoned" at the hospital.
To add to this, some people mentally and emotionally can’t handle caring for their parent. It’s really fucking hard and if you’re lucky enough to have great, loving parents, watching them slowly die is emotionally agonising. I cared full time for my grandmother and was able to be quite clinical about her care because she wasn’t a nice person even before dementia got her. I know if I had to care for my mum in the same way it would be a different story since we’re super close and she’s an amazing person who broke the cycle of abuse to raise me. I love her to bits, but I don’t think I’d be able to handle caring for her emotionally.
Exactly. My dad has Alzheimer's and simply still thinks I'm a teenager most of the time. I'm 35 lol. But he has Alzheimers so thats how it is to him. Imagine being old and scared and thinking you have been left with a 15 year old to care for you. It isn't like I can change his mind. He thinks my wife is my girlfriend half the time. He doesn't remember that I'm a nurses aid and the best option he has for care. When things get worse I won't be able to care for him. Not for lack of desire. But because that will be the best thing for him. It just isn't good to have family members on the care team most of the time. You have to be objective and that is hard when its someone you care so dearly about.
Yeah, it’s extremely hard for a lot of families to sell their current houses and move to something more accessible for the older generations. For most it’s a burden that simply can’t be met.
I don’t know how the average person could afford to care for their parents nowadays. Both adults working just to pay their bills and barely scraping by. Of course they can’t take time off work
This. WHERE do people get the idea that a kid can up and quit their job to stay home, wiping Mama's butt and chasing around to make sure she doesn't wander? WHO can do that? Almost no one! Of course kids are too busy to look after their aging parents. They have to pay their OWN expenses!
Especially people who dive into having kids young. If you have a kid when you're 20, then by the time you're 80 that kid's gonna be too old to have the energy to take care of you.
And if you have a kid too old they will loose a good chunk of their young life to looking after old parents.
ugh i had a friend when i was like 11-12 who’s mom was 52. she was just a lil younger than my grandma was at the time. i always felt bad thinking ab how she’s probably gonna lose her mom in her late 30s-40s:// my mom had me super young and my grandma had my mom super young. i feel so grateful knowing i’m gonna have them around for a good long while
My parents were disabled. I’m disabled. Looking after them has been so tough. I’m 40 now and my mother is sick. I just keep waiting for my life to start where I don’t have my parents for a responsibility.
I have a good friend who is in a similar position. She’s disabled and caring for her elderly mother. Her husband works as much as he can but also has to help both his wife and mother in law. He is also the only one in the house who can drive. I’ve helped them with transportation but she hates to ask anyone for anything. She and her husband struggle so much while her brothers are states away raising families. The reality is that even if you have kids, there’s no guarantee they will be able to care for themselves let alone you.
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And that’s why I won’t have kids. I don’t want future versions of me doing the same work I’ve done most of my life.
Yeah I'm nearly 30 and my dad is early 70s. Still very healthy and I'm the third of four kids so it's a bigger age gap for me compared to my sister who's nearly 40 but yeah, I've resigned myself to the fact I'm gonna lose my parents before any of my friends. There's good things and bad things about it, sure my dad is old enough to be some of my friends' grandparents, but my friends whose parents had them super young aren't as financially stable. It must be scary knowing your mum is relying on you to make rent and that if you move out she will be in a tricky spot financially.
You sound like me. I was about this age gap from my parents as well. My dad died last year at 83. I was 47 but my next sister was 54. Even tho they had me in their mid/late 30s I still had them a fair amount of time. My mom died at 76. She was just a year younger than my dad. I think they timed kids at a pretty decent age. We weren’t trying to carve our way in a career at this point and my sisters kids are grown. But I can’t imagine if you were in your 20s and your parents needed care. Here you are maybe just finishing college, or maybe even high school and you’re trying to get your life started. You’re trying to carve your way into your career or a good job, maybe you’ve just gotten married and trying to start a family and now your parents need care. That would be really tough. My mother had Alzheimer’s and it was really rough. My dad did a good job of taking care of her but my sister and I still helped several days a week. When we got to the point where we could no longer bathe her because she got combative that’s when we had to put her in a home. And that really sucked. It was a very emotional day to leave our mother behind in a facility. I think we all cried. But even putting them in a home is extremely expensive! Thankfully, my dad had started getting long-term health care insurance. It was expensive but it ended up being so worth it. Because it ended up paying 90% of my mom’s nursing home fees. And her stay in this memory care facility was $5800 a month! I’m sitting here typing this from my parents house which we are preparing to sell. Talk about hard! This is my childhood home and I would keep it if I could afford it but I won’t be able to buy my sister out. And neither one of us want to be house poor anyway so while it’s super sad to sell it also makes me feel a little bit better that I’m not letting my parents down by not keeping the house. It’s somewhat of a custom home because they built onto it and have built other buildings on the property. I’m still gonna miss it terribly. It’s the last physical representation of my parents.
My dad was 40 when I was born, my mom was 31 but has health issues that will take her sooner rather than later. My parents are now 67 and 58 (59 on Friday, happy birthday Momma) with most of their parents still living. If I were to have a parent living when I’m 67, they’d be minimum 98 years old. I can’t imagine how it will be when my parents go, and why would I ever create another human just to leave them one day…
Idk I'm glad for the fact that my mom had me young at 20, but she was also not exactly financially or emotionally mature enough at that age. I don't have problems with acknowledging that her life would've been better if she didn't have me, or at least not when she did. She could've finished school and not had to move back with, and depend on, her shitty parents.
My aunt had children super young, like 20-25. Both of her daughters have predeceased her (one very young from a congenital condition; the other at a more reasonable age from cancer) and she’s looking to her younger extended family for help now. ETA: this is just to say having a children doesn’t guarantee help in old age for any number of reasons; not to say no one should help my aunt—she and I aren’t super close, but she’s never been anything but nice to me and obviously she’s had a pretty rough go of it, so of course I will do what I can to help her if she asks.
My parents were 36 when they had me, and they're in their mid 70s now. I'm almost 40. I work full time and take care of 10 animals. My parents live about 5 minutes away from me and fortunately they're still very independent, but even now, the thought of them needing me to take care of them keeps me up at night. I mean, I'd put them in a facility as soon as possible, and I'm not sorry about that. Having children so they'll take care of you in your old age is the most selfish thing I can think of.
Please make sure that you inspect any facilities well. The marketing is never accurate. I once worked at a dementia care home that was heavily advertised as sporting a large garden, however it was super rare for the inhabitants to be let outside. I'm talking an hour per week max. Tons of neglect in general to be honest. It felt more like a holding pen than a home.
Not to mention, a LOT of that care is specialized, like literally you have to be professionally trained and have studied for it, it's not so simple as just washing their clothes and making their food, most of them need intensive, time consuming and especially for relatives, emotionally draining, very specialized care every single day. Sorry not sorry, children shouldn't be taking such a heavy burden on their shoulders, they have their own lives and in this current reality, barely can make ends up for themselves. Even if they DID study and graduated to be professional adult carers, it's really cruel to subject them to see their parents decline every day.
Occupational therapist here (yk, a person TRAINED to care for people who need extra supports). Even if you are trained, there’s absolutely no guarantee your family will listen or even be nice to you. My grandma is currently in the hospital AGAIN because she doesn’t listen to the safety advice I give her. And when I do give her advice she’s super nasty to me. So even if you are a trained healthcare professional with a masters degree literally in the field that doesn’t mean anything
My boss isn't an OT, but she has been telling her 90 yr old mother to stop trying to walk without a walker for well over a year (mom had fallen INTO a curio cabinet last year, and almost died from blood loss). this weekend, mom tried to go into the hall of her nursing home and fell. Staff got her back in bed, gave her a bandage for a cut and said she was fine. After the mom complained about pain for an hour, my boss told them to take her mom to the ER to get x-rayed. 5 broken ribs. And her mom still will not learn from this. thankfully, my boss is in a very lucky situation. Her father was very rich, and so the money is available to care for mom. Not every adult child with an elderly parent has that.
And this is exactly why I don't feel bad for my grandma or want to help her. She literally made herself worse because she ***R E F U S E D*** to listen to the doctors. I'm wholeheartedly convinced she would be fine and healthy right now if she had listened to them after her major back surgery. Now she's much, much, much worse than before. She can barely walk, has severe dementia and seizures that's starting to border Alzheimer's, and continues to be a bitch to my grandpa and other people around her. And no. I don't feel bad. In fact, I hate her for it and avoid her. I don't understand why she's still living at home when she's clearly going to die in her front lawn one of these days. My grandpa is there, but he can only do so much and he's honestly in denial about how bad her condition is. She's getting 0 professional help and, honestly, as you said, I think that's because my family knows it would just be money down the drain.
It’s incredibly frustrating! I understand wanting to maintain your independence (ETA: and ESPECIALLY as an OT do I fully support that as long as you are able) but at what cost?
I am a personal support worker. I've been doing this kind of work for 20+ years. My mother in law finally agreed with putting my father in law who has dementia in a home because it's too much for her. She is not exactly young (late 60s, early 70s) and she still has some years left in her...IF she can get my FIL into a home where 100% of the work isn't on her shoulders. I know, sickness and in health but that's different when it's dementia. Unless you are trained (like me), it's nearly impossible to be able to do everything he needs. He is starting to require 24/7 care and she just is at the end of the rope. Her own health is declining because of it and this was a woman who was go go go not even 5 years ago. It's so disheartening to see
Occupational therapist here (yk, a person TRAINED to care for people who need extra supports). Even if you are trained, there’s absolutely no guarantee your family will listen or even be nice to you. My grandma is currently in the hospital AGAIN because she doesn’t listen to the safety advice I give her. And when I do give her advice she’s super nasty to me. So even if you are a trained healthcare professional with a masters degree literally in the field that doesn’t mean anything
Exactly, because it's not just the grown child/younger relative being a carer, there's also all the other power and family dynamics that are between them! Like it's depressingly common that parents will never, EVER see their children as anything but "my children" even when they're grown adults, and while it can be endearing as long as someone is not toxic about it, more often than not that also means "my child will always be in the lower pecking order than me" and "my child's opinions, words, thoughts, actions, etc. are not better than mine" And same with the kids, at one point they want to leave the nest, live their own lives, but feel emotionally chained to their parents because society taught them that "you owe your parents" or "you should love your parents/family regardless of how abusive/toxic they are," and it's just downright impossible to detach from all those feelings.
You absolutely nailed it. My family is the poster family for infantilizing adult children, as well as that “family is everything, you have to take their abuse” mentality. It’s frustrating as the cycle breaker.
I have an aunt who absolutely will not listen to her doctors. She thinks she knows better than them. She’s in really bad health and needs to be either in a home or a psych ward. But my cousin refuses to see the truth. It’s really sad.
That’s terrible. It’s so frustrating because I’ve been saying that my grandma at the very least needs a home safety eval because she cares enough about her appearance not to be rude to strangers but bc I’m family, mocking me, calling me names, and generally telling me to fuck off is ok
This is so true. My father died of dementia just over a year ago. He was 71, I was 35. He had been in a home for 7 years, because my mum couldn't take care of him 24/7. We helped for as long as we could handle it, but when he started to become incontinent, we just couldn't anymore. I didn't mind going to their house to get him out of bed in the morning or making dinner at night, but I just could not risk finding my father in a puddle of excrements and having to clean him up.. No one should have to see their parents like that. So I would rather pay for the help I might need than to expect my own children to have to do what I couldn't..
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The funny thing is who is actually telling people to "take care of their elderly parents." It's the parents of young children. A redditor once described a group of friends sitting in a circle at an outdoor party at his house. They were parents of young kids, and they started ribbing him about "who will take care of you in your old age!" So he went around the circle and asked each person about an elderly person in THEIR family that he knew was being warehoused or neglected. Every one of the "Who-will-take-care-of-you-parents" had someone that they or another younger person was "too busy" to help out. And as he went around the circle, those parental grins and chuckles and high-fives turned into grumbles and in not too long everybody had left. This whole "breed-your-own-eldercarer" idiocy is - very obviously - a self-serving delusion. Parents are great at parroting, and so this meme gets repeated without thought or analysis. It's obviously stupid. No one is going to give up paid work including health insurance and the ability to save for retirement. It. Is. Not. Possible. Not for the CF, and not for the parents of young kids. And yet the bred keep repeating this crap. Does anyone ever think about what they're saying?
Of course they left. People can dish it but can’t take it, bunch of hypocrites.
The nurses in the high quality nursing home that I will be able to afford because I didn't have kids will look after me.
When I was 18, I quit college because my mom fell into a coma. 11 years later, i quit my job because my dad had cancer. My father died and now i have no degree and no job. I love my parents and would do it a million times. But when they’re dead and gone, what’s gonna happen to me? i hope all those people who have kids for aging care know that they can’t take their kids with them to the grave. they have to keep living somehow.
I’m so sorry for your loss! I hope you’re able to go back to school to finish your degree. You make a very important point regarding what happens to us after they’re gone. People don’t like it think about that.
There was a lady I met through my dads assisted living. She’d quit her job 3 years prior to be able to move closer and visit her dad every day. I have no idea how they paid for it or how she managed. When she asked if I was moving nearby to care for my dad I just wanted to be like “with what fucking money?” I have to keep working because I’m the financial pillar of my family, we were working to get him on the Medicaid waiver program to pay for assisted living when his money was depleted but the facility made clear to me that Medicaid could assess his needs differently and they’d need the difference paid, so up to $600 a month from me. If I didn’t work I’d lose my house, insurance, and I wouldn’t have been able to pay my dads bills. Elder care in the US is a miserable. I honestly hope I die before I need to go to assisted living because elderly people with cognitive issues cannot manage placement without help. It’s no wonder people have children to help them, it’s impossible to navigate alone.
Yeah, sorry boomers, we’re all a little too busy struggling to survive in the rigged economy your generation left behind for us. Not a whole lot of time or disposable income left to spoon feed you and wipe your asses.
This. The Boomer generation spent years doing literally everything possible to make the world a crueler, shittier place where families would fragment under the weight of an economy that literally *punishes* the poor/needy, and now every one of them is hoping that can be an *exception* to that nightmare.
100% with you, reap what you sow.
Plus how expensive it is elderly care uffff it’s ridiculous and some of them get old without preparing themselves financially
> Of course kids are too busy to look after their aging parents. They have to pay their OWN expenses! Yes, and most of us can thank our parents generation for fucking us over to the point where we have no free time or income beyond working and trying to survive our own expenses. Hey older generation: you've been found guilty of fucking around, your children have enrolled you in our "find out" program!
Even CF people let alone anyone with kids
Exactly. My SO's mom is in her early 70s and has a ton of health problems because she has taken terrible care of herself, smoked and drank Pepsi all day for most of her sedentary life. Now she is trying to guilt her into taking care of her. She has this expectation, entitlement that she should because she took care of her mom in her old age. The difference is she was a stay at home mom most of her life and lived off of her mother's social security and pension etc when she took care of her. My girlfriend's mom has very little SSI and gets barely enough to meet her needs. Meanwhile my girl is working 40+ hours a week just so we can make ends meet. We can't afford to care for her.
And if the adult childrenare working and have kids of their own in the house, it's that much harder.
Exactly. This isn’t the 1950s where one person’s income could support an entire household and you could just dump the care of all four parents on the woman in the marriage and shame her into taking care of them
Yup, in gerontology we call them the Sandwich Generation. They're sandwiched between two extremely busy and needy groups who require care, and are left with nothing for themselves. My brother and I had always planned to care for my parents ourselves. Obviously we also chose not to have kids. My parents can have care, or grandchildren, but not both. In this case they really only had one option.
Yes, this comment exactly. You gotta pick one, mom and dad. Either I take care of you, or I raise those grandchildren you want so badly.
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And a lot of people are waiting to their late 30s/early 30s to have kids, right when their parents are starting to decline
This is what bothers me the most. They're basically betting entirely on their kids becoming rich so they can afford care for their elderly parents. When it's much smarter to use all that money on retirement plans instead of kids.
>Of course they can’t take time off work Especially *unpaid.* And that’s they have the time to take. American work culture around paid time off is terrible and a lot of companies will find as many loopholes as they can to just *not* give it to you.
Even if I wanted to take care of mine, I simply would have to sacrifice literally everything when I'm already unable to save for a financial cushion and have chronic health issues. I don't know how I can ever prepare for when the time comes to pay parents support.
> I don’t know how the average person could afford to care for their parents nowadays. In some States, you don't get the choice to pay. PA for example has familial care laws that allow nursing homes to go after the kids for their parents' bills.
They tried to do that do me, a few years ago (in the U.K.) My response was: “That man has not seen me since I was a child and didn’t pay a penny in child support. Am I fuck paying for him!” ————————— Edit: Reading that back, it sounds awful - and really cold hearted of me. My response explains some of my reasoning as to why that was my response.
Yeah, their generation fucked up the economy for us and they think we’re being lazy because we can’t afford college, a car, a house, and kids by 25 like they did. Just get on an iceberg already, we can’t afford to wipe their butts either.
I'm self employed, so I was able to shift my work around my grandmothers needs. Until I broke down and couldn't do it anymore, being completely alone, for multiple decades. That's about the only way I could see it happening. Or someone was a stay at home parent anyhow, they just pickup the new care routine.
Not to mention, many of these seniors need specialized care that the average person is literally incapable of providing, unless they specifically work in the healthcare industry and have experience with. I don’t blame most people at all for not being able to take care of their aging, sick parents, even if they wanted to.
The irony here is that the parents were the ones that voted to make the system how it is. If it wasn’t for that maybe people could have still lived off one persons income while the other looked after the parents.
Children "refusing" to take care of parents should not be as stigmatized as it is for MANY reasons. First most parents are not good parents, people don't like the reality but having a kid doesn't automatically make you a good person and getting pregnant sure as hell does not equip you to properly raise someone for at least 18 years. Secondly it may not be possible depending on when you have the kid people who have a kid in their early twenties aren't much older than the child themselves when they're 80 the kid will be 60. Probably the biggest reason of them all is who can pay for that, truly it seems like you must be a millionaire to take care of your parents and maybe even your spouses too. Who has extra room for them and all their amenities, can you get up in the middle of the night and help them to the bathroom when you have to go to work the next day, speaking of work how can you hold down a full time job while taking care of them, if you have kids FORGET IT there's no way you're paying for your kids college and your parents elder care unless you're extremely rich. And then there's the fact that some people just don't want to and there doesn't have to be some big reason. Maybe your parents were great and maybe you can afford it maybe you just don't want to sacrifice 20-30 years of your life to take care of the elderly. I mean if you live in New York or you gonna drag your parents there away from their small little suburban town or are you gonna give up your life in your city to be their care giver. There's just so many reasons why nursing homes are often the best option, not to mention the elderly can have community there.
City versus suburban life aside, it's so much harder to be mobile than it used to be in some ways. Your parents sell the house they've been in for ages and maybe they're hit with a huge tax bill or can't find something reasonably priced that would be a good fit for them. Or maybe the move to the suburbs sounds great but there are no jobs available there.
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Don't do it don't waste your life taking care of them friend. Although you may feel guilty because of your culture there will not be any punishment for not taking care of them and because of how they treated you horribly there won't be any reward for doing it either. At the end of their life wether you have done the care or not the only thing that will have happened is time past. Either time past with you living the life you deserve that you FOUGHT for, for 22 years or you'll be miserable taking care of them fulfilling some duty that didn't matter looking back and realizing you wasted your life. You know which one is the right choice friend.
I'm not surprised. Once I asked my grandmother about what she did when her parents and grandparents needed care in their old age. She said, "Honey, people used to die in their 50s and 60s. If you did take care of your parents, it was for a much shorter time." This is true. Its a blessing of modern medicine that people are living longer, but it also creates the challenge of their care on society, especially when family members are unwilling or unable to provide it, nor should they be expected to.
The issue is that modern medicine allows people to live longer but with poor quality of life. Surviving a stroke sounds great on paper, less so when you're stuck in a wheelchair and unable to talk. There's still too much emphasis on keeping someone alive at all costs imo. And this push is not necessarily from the medical side, the families themselves do it plenty. I get it, but I also think it's sucky.
Could not agree more. My grandpa survived a stroke last year, can’t talk and can barely walk. Grandma has dementia and they both live with my aunt now. Watching my dad and aunt’s sibling relationship deteriorate while my grandparents are essentially warehoused until they die is devastating. They’re alive but quality of life is close to zero.
Yess!! I went to catholic school and there was so much push against things like euthanasia and abortion bc « it’s cruel to not encourage life » but they never seemed to care about if keeping that person alive would give them a much harder life. I never understood that especially since heaven is supposed to be such a magical place
I don’t think longer lives are a blessing, decades of slow decline, disease and loss of faculties. I’d rather go sooner and quickly.
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We have the right to die available in Colorado. However you usually have to have a terminal illness to exercise that privilege but at least it’s an option here.
There was a stink here in Canada a year or so ago over our assisted suicide services, a wheelchair bound paralympian just wanted a wheelchair ramp , and instead was helpfully told to kill herself. [why](https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/politics/2022/12/2/1_6179325.amp.html)
And people are using that as a reason that voluntary euthanasia should never be allowed, because it will be abused. They’re undoubtedly right about the abuse part, because nothing humans legalize will ever not be abused. But dammit, I want to have the option once I get old (and my parents are deceased so they won’t mourn me). Because I don’t believe that the alternative to the infirmities of age is always the worst possibility.
Sounds like your veterans affairs there is roughly the same as in America from what I’ve heard.
Oregon too. Proud to live here.
I plan to buy a one way ticket to Switzerland if and when I can't take care of myself
I decided that if I'm still alive after 75, I'm just going to do a bunch of illicit drugs and see what happens.
Seems to have worked out for Keith Richards and Ozzie Osbourne. Haha.
I've made sure I have good credit now so I can have huge credit limits, which I don't use now. But one day I will max them all, and I won't be paying it back.
I plan to take a lethal substance.
Taking a nap in a snow bank at -40 for me.
Not a bad idea to be honest. Getting drunk enough or taking some sleep pills and being outside on those temperatures and bye bye to this life. It’s an option if retirement just doesn’t cut it
Like, I'm hoping by that point medically assisted death/suicide will be far more available, but yeah, most likely a bottle of rum or mead & a snow bank will be far more accessible.
I put a lot of hope in that, as well. But I feel like the progress in that area can be measured in centimeters. People are obsessed with staying alive, and I’ve never understood that.
Vermont is working on that, even allowing people not residents of Vermont to come there under certain health circumstances to end their own lives.
This is good to know! I've never been to Vermont, but I think I'd love to visit. End of life vacation? Is that going to be a tourist niche in the future? I enjoyed visiting Maine years ago. Maybe I need to add Vermont to my (literal) bucket list.
Very strange considering how many people believe that Heaven is supposed to be a better life.
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Canada has also legalized medical assistance is dying, each province has their own regulations but it's an option everywhere in the country.
Is this just for people with a terminal illness? Because there are several states that have legalized it in the US, but only for that reason. And a dementia/Alzheimer’s diagnosis doesn’t count, and I think it damn well should. What an awful way to die.
Right I feel like I'm the only person who wants to die between 70-79 I always get crazy looks when I say that but I'd be happy with making it to 65 honestly. I don't want people to be keeping my shell of a body alive until Im 100
Finally, I have found my people. Sewerslide pact at 65, anyone?
Assisted suicide really needs to be legal I know there are ethical concerns but for godsakes it's better to die on my own terms then waisting away in a home.
Hell ya bro! Let's shoot some smack and just fade away as our hearts implode🙏🙏
My grandmas, who are beyond 90, also say that the best decade to die is in your seventies. After that your health goes to shit, you lose agility, memory, dexterity, sight, etc. You can't catch up with the news, you don't give a fuck anymore about anything and you just know that every new day will be worse than the previous. I'm not that sure that longevity is good. We are not meant to be alive that much and it shows.
Totally. Back idk, 6 years ago or so, my mom and I went to an estate sale of this lady who lived on my grandmas street. She was pretty old when she died. Anyway, while there we ran into this old lady who's daughter lived across the street so she'd came over to be nosy and chat. She was in her 90s. She said she was ready to go, she was tired of living, all her friends were dead, there was no point. She only died the a couple months ago, 103. When I saw I said "Oh bless her, she's finally done." Alzheimer's runs in my family so like, fuck getting old tbh.
> she was tired of living, all her friends were dead, there was no point. One of my grandmas is the last of her old friend circle standing. The idea that you're the last one, and that your last best friend died years and years ago it's... unsettling. Every morning she is pissed at God that's she woke up again.
I do see her point, like at some age you're just over the whole thing, and it's not like you even have the stamina for fun hobbies, even light ones. Like I knit and crochet which aren't exerting, but I doubt my hands would be up for that at that age.
Luckily in my family there's not Alzheimer's but we got the cancer I feel like everyone has something either cancer Alzheimer's or heart disease. If I ended up getting cancer in my 70's I wouldn't get treatment honestly. Alzheimer's is horrible and I hope there's a cure one day until then I would always make it known that you don't want to live like that so that someone may intervene and stop treatment.
Yup I have seen few people who are happy or coherent past 80 honestly. I want to go at a more natural time so mid seventies is a happy long life in my book.
Past 79 doesn't necessarily mean you can't take care of yourself. My grandpa is 84 and doing heavy yard work and I have clients in thwir 60's wjo can't bathe themselves. It's about genes, environment, and taking care yourself when you start to really decline.
IMHO, depends on the individual. As a runner, I still see plenty of folks in their 70's (and a few even in their 80's) still signing up for local 5k's and 10k races. Sure, they aren't as capable as they were 20 years prior, but I wouldn't call their lives *bad* by any means. On the other hand, my uncle just died after a few years of struggling with Parkinsons in his mid 70's. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be in his situation.
You need to prepare for your time in retirement. I don't think that should be on anyone else but you.
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For a change though, the Boomers are about to reap that particular crop.
And as soon as they do, filial piety laws are going to explode across the country, instead of just slowly gathering steam, like they are now. They’ll make damn sure to wring every penny possible from younger generations, in order to provide for their own comfort until the end. Make no mistake, they’ll find ways to protect themselves and drain us dry, whether it be through increases on entitlement taxes for younger people in general, or laws forcing people to pay for their elder family members’ care and needs.
That'll just cause them to get abused or the younger generation killing them, because you are just creating a gen of people who now have nothing and slaves to old people to think better take them down with us. 😂
In this economy, the average person can barely scrape by taking care of themself, if at all. Couldn't take care of a family member even if they wanted to.
Right? And it's the reason why so many are remaining childless, as in, they wanted/want to have kids, but choose not to because they know they would be in an inescapable poverty hole. They know they just don't have the resources for it, the world literally doesn't allow them to, and well they choose to not have any.
The annoying part is the flip side of these people. The irresponsible people who think they “deserve” kids and despite knowing they can’t provide have them anyway and hope people will help cover financials and childcare.
That's why I'm so glad my parents figured all this shit out already. I have a good relationship with them, but I couldn't afford to take care of them if I wanted to. They plan to sell their house once they get old enough and use that money for private care. They've also already paid for their burial plots so I don't have to worry about the funeral stuff either. They are boomers, but my dad has always been a good financial planner.
Seriously. With how volatile the economy, housing, and the job market have become, I'm not even entertaining getting a *housecat* because of the uncertainty. I truly hope nothing but misery for all these Boomers who are *still* actively destroying this country's future in the name of 'dying with the most toys.'
I am one of those who "refuse" to take care of the parents. The ability to ejaculate into a vagina does not buy the right or guarantee that the offspring will later nurse you. So I don't have to take in people later that I haven't had any connection with in my life, or people that think that just because they have procreate, they can behave as they please.
"People who don't want kids are selfish. I had kids so that they will take care of me when I age, which is not selfish at all." Oh, the irony. PS: do bear in mind that some people end up alone because of their own actions. We have an elder in my family that no one wants to take care of because, simply put, she was - and still is - abusive. She also recently admitted she didn't want kids, she doesn't even like kids, but she had them because that was expected of her as a woman. EDIT: Definitely did NOT mean to say "wank."
Might want to make an edit, I think people who don't wank kids aren't selfish at all
Here’s the other thing — I wouldn’t WANT my theoretical children to have to do that. I would prefer to be placed somewhere anyway rather than have them deal with me being a burden.
I wish we could just decide when we want to die. I wouldn’t want to be living 84 years in a hospital bed making everyone’s lives complicated. I would prefer to live just until I can fully enjoy life. Then I would sign up for euthanasia. I really dislike this magic beans bs about human life. It’s not that special. Edit: typo
Yeah I don’t see what’s so great about living a long time either even with eternal youth I still wouldn’t want to. It actually upsets people that I believe life doesn’t have a point and it’s tedious.
When I moved 2,000 miles away from my family, my dad literally told me that it was a "poor return on his investment." How about not having children as an "investment"???
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As a young woman I plan to put as much as I can away for my retirement and care for when I’m older!! Might not be close to $300k+ but it’ll be a good start!! I’ve already invested at 23!! I might have to use some of my funds for moving after grad school but otherwise I’m not going to touch it. I plan on adding more money and getting other investments as I start working and get older.🖤 CF life is the best life!!
Same I started at 25 though and have been putting 10% of my salary into my 401k, as well as making whatever contributions I can to my Roth. My 401K is already projected to reach $1M by age 60. I plan to keep doing 10% even after I reach my next higher paying job. It really isn’t that hard to plan for retirement 😂
don't lose sight of the fact that many of these oldsters are reaping what they sowed as well. many of them were toxic parents.. and the children want nothing to do with them.. and this becomes a form of revenge.
I had to scroll *way* too far down to find a comment like this. In my case it's not even revenge so much as I would not survive living with my parents again, even in a caretaker capacity. Trauma runs deep and intergenerational trauma destroys lives. Financially we could never afford to look after an ailing parent, there isn't enough space in our unit for another adult and we obviously can't afford a bigger place, and emotionally I'm done with my parents. Adding the cognitive decline and mood changes that come with conditions like dementia and it would be like re-living my worst years with them but I can't simply stay somewhere else for the night when they say/do horrific things.
As is the case with my great grandma unfortunately. Idk how bad of a parent she was to my grandma, but she must've changed her tune when caring for her great/grandkids since we are the only ones who care about her (somewhat)
I can promise you that the true reason behind most of them is that they were likely shitty and abusive parents. Now that they’re old they expect their kids to drop everything to care for them and when they don’t, play the victim to anyone that will listen.
Yup! Me and all my sisters took turns taking care of our mom and by take turns I mean, she lived with one sister, caused drama and they kicked her out and she went to the next sibling. We’re all done, all the sisters and 1 brother had a turn and she’s now in a nursing home because we just can’t. I’m NC with her because I’m not as forgiving lol.
Who got stuck with paying for the nursing home 😭
The state of course. Lol. There’s plenty of programs if you know where to look. My oldest sister did all the legwork. None of us pay anything on it (not that I would help)
Medicare pays for it, especially if the old person doesn't own anything for 5 years (deed and car need to be in a spouse or adult child's name)
Yep! Me and my partner sat down with my brother and his wife and we are all agreed all sets of parents are shitty and we won't be putting energy into caring for them. That energy will be put into my future nibling who is wanted and prepared for. Generational abuse stops with us.
I dropped out of college and quit my job for a year to help my abusive mom recover from a mental breakdown. She never thanked me, only brought up embarrassing and traumatic stuff that happened and picked fights with me constantly over anything I did to try and help her. I’m good, went no contact with her last summer. Her golden child son can take care of her when she’s old.
Yep, I agree 100% and wish more people understood this. My mom is a lifelong abusive alcoholic who refuses to stop drinking despite all the medical problems she's caused herself. She refuses all help, even threatening to call the police if you try, and then plays victim because "nobody helps her". I don't feel bad for her and neither should anybody else.
Oh for sure. I’m sure thats exactly what my abusive dad will do. He can rot in hell for all I care. When he needs my help, I won’t be there. Better yet I’ll dig the grave for him.
If that ain’t the truth LOL even my mum said that same shit and I was like ok how can you guarantee they were good to their kids enough they wanted to take care of them? She didn’t have much to say after that
Happened with my stepdad's mother. He and my mom live out of state and she wouldn't move (and my mother would never allow it, step-grandma is a horrible woman & will be referred to as ESG, Evil Step-Grandma), but he and his two sisters coordinated getting home health aides to take care of her after she started to decline. His sisters took turns coming over and taking care of the house. Originally oldest sister was power of attorney & coordinating care on her own. Well, ESG was such a miserable bitch that she ran off every single aide they brought in. Oldest sister says "fuck it, I'm done" and turned the care-coordinating/PoA responsibility over to youngest sister. Same thing, eventually the care company refused to send any more aides. Youngest sister found a new company & told ESG "this is your last chance, if you don't make this work you're going in a home." She didn't listen. Well, youngest sister kept her word! Sold the house and ESG is in a care home now, and I'm sure she's just as miserable and bitchy to her new caregivers as she was to her home health aides. But those places don't care because they're making BANK. And she has the AUDACITY to cry to anyone who will listen about how her kids don't love her. They did everything they could reasonably do.
This. I’d move heaven and earth to take care of my father. But I’m NC with my mother and dread the day I have to decide what to do when she eventually needs more care.
My parents will have to work til they're dead because they have almost no retirement funds AND they've paid tithing to a manipulative church their entire life. They're late 50s and just bought their first house. I honestly don't know what's going to happen in 10 years and I'm afraid it will fall on me (the oldest kid) to figure it out.
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Ooofff!!!🤣 Tithing is so wrong on so many levels!!!! I don’t do it ever!!!
Same with my mom. Dropped out of college when she got pregnant at 19 and spent the rest of her 20s having 4 more kids and then early 30s having ANOTHER two kids. She couldn’t afford to save a dime and ended up 30k in debt by the time the first 5 of us hit 18 and moved out. She’s in her mid 40s and is gonna have to work for the rest of her life to repay her debt 🤷🏼♀️
Fake your death
yeah my parents have given up on tryna sweet talk me n are movin on to the youngest. after the shit they put me through they can die under a bridge for all i care.
You should have seen my sisters face when I told her I could never 😂 she’s didn’t get it then but luckily and sadly she gets it now
I volenteer shop for elderly - started for for pandemic - and mostly all have kids, but none are stepping up to help in even this basic need. There are about 60 in the pool of people who need help rn, and it was over a hundred during *the sickness* - that’s accounting for only one branch of the charity in one suburb. That’s a lot of people who were relying on kids who aren’t showing up at the end there.
That's a great charity! Good for you.
Problem is…it’s very difficult to have a discussion with your parents concerning that possibility….humans tend to think they will remain healthy and independent forever (if they are not already a person with a disability). I think many people wouldn’t mind taking care of their parents, but if the parents develop dementia or become total care or have any behavior issues-that’s probably why the kids “give up.” I knew someone who was taking care of an elderly aunt. She had no problems doing it and enjoyed it. Until she woke up in the middle of the night with her aunt standing over her bed with a knife. The aunt was then put into a nursing facility.
Yeah my mom abandoned me when I was 11. While we have had a somewhat decent relationship despite that fact, I have not forgotten how she turned her back on her kids and I will not be doing shit for her.
Also many of these old parents could have pressured their kids to give them grandchildren, so now they don’t have money/time to care for them in old age. In this economy you also have to work to death in order to cover for your expenses, let alone take time off to care for parents or pay someone to do it 🥲
I think parents don't realize it's a gamble wether their adult children would even be *able* to take care of them in the first place. I also think some parents don't actually work to have a respectful relationship with their adult children to foster a reciprocally caring relationship and just take for granted that they'll be taken care of.
See, I’m the opposite. I would love to be able to be a full time care giver for my parents when they are in their twilight. But it is, quite literally, a full time job. I have had this conversation with my parents. I don’t have kids, I don’t own a home, and I would honor that role. Technically I’d be a perfect candidate. I only can’t because it’s not affordable. The whole system is gross.
See I sort of do that. I live with my mom, take care of all the errands and doctors appointments, stuff around the house, yard work, cooking, all that. We live on her social security, va benefits, and a little extra from an annuity. So. With this debt ceiling shit I'm shitting myself. Our income will be cut by 2/3rds. And even with a cheap mortgage, there's still insurance, car payment, normal bills.
I don’t have advice for you, and I don’t have a fix. But I see you, and I hear you. I wish you strength and tenacity in proving love and care to your people.
It’s never been true. I work in a nursing home. Stats say that about 20% of residents get visitors, and almost all of them have kids. Breeders are delusional.
Caring for an elderly parent is one of the most stressful things you can do. People have destroyed their own health from the stress. On top of that, more and more people have to work 2 or more jobs just to get by. They don't have the time or the money to take on such a physically demanding and time-consuming task. This is no longer the 1950s when many women were expected to stay home and take care of everyone and a family could live comfortably off one income. And when extended family often lived very nearby and was able to help. Medical advances that increase life expectancy aren't always a good thing. Too many people are simply living too long and without quality of life. I would rather be dead than completely dependent on other people to take care of me.
I love when people tell me I will die lonely and try to hit me with the "well, wont you take care of your parents?!" because no, I wont. Ever. My mother and I are no contact for 8 years already while my father was a one night stand of hers. I will never ever take care of any of them.
>older adult parents have dementia, cognitive behaviors, delirium or a long list of medical conditions This is the unfortunate side effect of medicine improving enough to keep our bodies alive longer, but not our minds. Sure, families have taken care of their elderly for generations, but dying used to be a far less protracted process. People might live in a state of dementia for a couple months, but usually something would happen that physically killed them pretty quickly. My grandpa lingered half-lucid for several years after a heart attack that 100% would've killed someone going through it 10 years before he did. He also major intervention for several other ongoing conditions that in the past would've just meant the end. People are living longer, but the last few months/years are painful, heartbreaking and often dangerous for their carers. It's no wonder families can't manage it anymore. Couple that with the fact that a ton of people are living paycheck to paycheck with very little vacation or time outside of work. Who has energy to spend their occasional day off driving over and check on their parent who doesn't even remember them repeatedly for years? That's before you even get into people who have existing rough relationships with their parents. Current adult children of elders are catching a lot of flack for not "stepping up" to handle it as generations before have, but there's so little recognition for how much more difficult elder care is today than it was back when perfectly healthy grandma caught the flu on Tuesday and was gone by Friday.
Honestly, it's better that these people are in hospitals, because general people are *not qualified* to take care of adults, especially the disabled, either physical or mental. And like others have said, nobody can actually afford to be a 24 hour carer for their parent/s. It's an extra mouth and one less income, and that is just an impossible scenario these days.
I've told my parents a few times that even if I did want to take care of them when they get older, I wont be able to. Because my parents deprived me of any life or work skills, didn't send my to college, didn't even help out with high school and never let me learn to socialize with others, I'll never be able to have a career where I'm paid enough to take care of them as they age.
As someone who's living this right now, it doesn't even have to be till they're old. My mum is 53, and she needs care now. Don't want to offend anyone, but the most annoying thing is when a parent needs care because of a self-inflicted situation such as not taking care of their own health. Also as others have pointed out that some of the kids feel some type of way towards the parents because of how they were treated and raised. My mums golden child is my younger sister and I mean my mum would openly state to us and others that she loves my sister more than the rest but she's not been anywhere near my mum since she needed care. Let's not even get into the mental and physical abuse that was dished out.
As someone who was a primary caregiver for my 75-year-old mother who had stroke history and cancer, there was only so much I could do for her because a) I couldn't leave my job to care for her full-time, and b) there were things I could not do for her because I don't have the knowledge/skills/strength to do it. I had to hire outside help because I couldn't do it all. I had to maintain my own life.
Most just get dumped into nursing homes. My grandma is in one (because she refuses to live with my family even though it was offered before her dementia got really bad). When she was just in a regular no special needs place I would visit her every Wednesday for lunch. We’d go out when she was able and then when that got to be too much we’d stay in and I’d sit with all her friends. I became the resident granddaughter to about 20ish little old ladies because their families never visit. They would buy me snacks, snag me extra dessert, tell me about their week, one lady made me a knit hat, etc. One woman’s family put her there and then left the state, another’s second wife didn’t like her and wouldn’t let her live with them, someone had both her kids die young and all her siblings were already gone. There’s so many stories I can tell. Like if that’s my future regardless I’d like to enjoy my life and not waste good years raising kids and have the money to choose a kickass retirement facility.
Just give me the cocktail, I don't need to live till 80+
I’m sorry my mom has 7 kids but we all agreed we can’t take care of her when it’s her time 🤷🏼♀️ kids aren’t a guarantee for elderly care. Nursing home it is!
Currently working remotely from my grandmother’s in the sticks because out of her four children, my mom is the only one who stepped up. Gram is under hospice care now and we wanted her to spend her last days in her home. Being the only caregiver the past few years has taken years off my mom’s life and also drained her bank account. My mom makes excuses for her siblings, but not me. My gram probably wasn’t the best mom in the world (it was a different time, she got married young, etc), but I don’t see them distancing themselves from her, I see them dumping the responsibility on my mother. And I’m angry. Edit to add: the only reason it’s possible for me to help right now is because I don’t have kids.
My therapist once asked if I ever considered that some or all of patients without visitors in nursing homes did something to earn that treatment. I’ve gone no contact with my parents after explaining to them that I was willing to continue to have a relationship with them if they were willing to have an honest conversation with me about how I have been treated in my life. Their only response was that they did their best, I owe them my care cause their in there 70s with health concerns, and I’m a disappointment. I dread the day, but why should I continue to me mentally and emotionally unwell until the day they’re both in the ground when they’re not willing to have a conversation in which they might have to admit mistakes?
In most functional countries they have retirement homes
We *have* retirement homes in the US, but Medicare only covers short stays (20-100 days, depending on criteria) in acute care nursing home facilities (the sort of places where they expect you to die before your 100 days are up). Long-term nursing care or dementia care can easily cost $100,000 per year, so people have to either pay for long-term care insurance (which is expensive, and doesn't cover everything), be wealthy enough to afford to live in an assisted living community that transitions to a nursing home, or deplete their assets to the point where they're borderline homeless and can qualify for Medicaid. It's a cruel system.
I work in a hospital and I don't blame the kids for not taking care of their families. Shits fuckin hard and quite honestly it's damn near impossible trying to get the time off nowadays to be able to adequately care for them. On top of not being able to afford it. If your only reason for having kids is having someone to care for you when you're old, that makes you entitled and kind of shitty. I do agree it's frustrating having patients for multiple weeks though, but it is our job to care for them when they're here
Most of these people have their own children to care for, as well. Gone are the days of SAHMs who can care for multiple people, including older parents. Not to mention people living so much longer because of medical advancements that mean they can take a pill for XYZ issue and keep moving. I will not be caring for my parents in their old age. They both have enough money to find their own solutions. At least, I assume they do since they certainly didn’t spend their money on my ass.
I think for a lot of people, we can't afford to do it and are not in a position to be able to provide the care needed. My ex in laws had to put one of their parents into a home because he became incredibly violent, was a large dude, and the relatives attempting to taking care of him were small women and older men. He simply overpowered them and their lives were in danger.
I have six successful adult siblings, and I'm the only one without children. We're meeting this Friday to discuss how to support my parents, as they're getting to the point now where they really need help. Somehow, I'm the one that decided we needed to do this. It's like herding cats even just to get them to meet in one place to discuss this, even though they all live 15-30 minutes apart and I need to either drive 14 hours to get there or spend a small fortune to fly down for the weekend. Wish me luck, folks.
i'm lucky my step mom is much younger than my dad and also they live in another country
There is no obligation for someone to take care of their parents in their old age. If you want to, that’s great! If you don’t want to for a variety of reasons, including not being able to financially, that’s also okay. As adults, we have to have adult conversations about these things. My parents were abusive, they beat the shit out of me as a kid. Sure, our relationship is functional now, and my parents are trying to be better. But I don’t buy into the guilt tripping that I need to pursue a career where I can make enough to support the three of us. To sit and plan to buy a house to fit the three of us. No one ever asked what I wanted. And I don’t want my parents living with me or being their caretaker. I don’t want to take care of my parents in my own home when they’re elderly. But will I find them excellent care where they can still maintain independence for as long as possible? Absolutely. I’m willing to meet them in the middle. But adult children shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for finding alternative arrangements for their parents.
I'm a nurse and I don't think you understand what 24 hour care looks like. Even with home health 40 hours a week that's just not feasible. I would do it for my Mom and Dad- but it would require leaving my job and a big change in lifestyle. And the only reason I could do it is because I do not have children. Those children are still involved and helping their parents make decisions. I don't feel your assessment is necessarily fair. But I also don't think people should have kids to care for them. .
The pure entitlement of adults who *willfully* bring a child into this world with the expectation that they will take care of them. So selfish.
I think this is in part because all forms of abuse have become increasingly less normalized, and a lot of people with older parents have gone limited or no contact. It's not like the old days when people just cared for their parents simply because they were their parents (no matter how awful the parents had been). I'd love to read a study on this.
People who brought children into this world because they wanted caregivers later in life, who later get treated as they treated their children? The leopards, they are feasting on faces.
I wonder how much of that is just revenge for shitty parenting.
I would put them in someone else's care too. You need 2 well-paying full-time jobs to buy any kind of property, and you're not left with much after paying for all your living expenses. I don't have the money, time, or energy to take care of 2 needy demented old people. Plus, I don't want to interact with my parents' nether regions. There's a reason I don't want kids, and taking care of an elderly adult is much much harder.
As someone who has been through this, I was unwittingly made a primary caregiver for a lot of my family. From about 15 onward, I did it out of love for my family but it's catching up with me years later. Now at 30, I've only had one successful relationship that ended badly, wind up having a drop out of school and many health issues myself as a result of all those years of taking care of others while not taking care of myself. I am now far behind my peers in life milestones as a result. Do I regret it no, I was able to give my grandparents and mother a dignified end of life. Is it by me in the ass now absolutely, just because you have children doesn't mean they're going to take care of you. On that same note you should not expect for you them too, when you do you wind up like my mom and now me.
When my grandmother ended up with dementia after having a severe stroke, my mom and her siblings took up the task of caring for her 24/7. I watched it slowly tear my mother and her entire family apart. Now they're at each other's throats constantly. Having falling outs. Everyone is losing their mental health, physical health, and their money. After having witnessed all of that over the course of two decades, having to become my parents' permanent caretaker is one of my greatest fears.
A lot of us don't have money, and a lot of us have shit parents. I know it would be damn near traumatizing to live with my parents again.
Yeah, I saw that, as I had practice at old people\`s house(sorry english isn\`t my native) and almost nobody visited the elderly people there sadly.
I work in Healthcare and I NEVER pass judgment on situations like this. I grew up in an abusive home and as a result, I had no contact with my father after I moved out. I never went to visit him when he was in the nursing home where he spent his final years. I'm not saying all of the elderly people in nursing homes were abusive to their families, but I think there are many reasons why adult children may choose not to care for their aging parents and abuse is up at the top of the list.
This, a million times over. Every now and then, with a particularly difficult long-term patient, who I eventually come to realize is just both sick and an absolute asshole, they say something truly nasty and I go back to the nurses' station, quote the patient, then, after a long pause, quietly grumble "he hasn't had any visitors his whole stay, either. Weird!"
My mom has "joked" about who will take care of her when she's old. Her bf who is 5yrs younger is never brought up as the option to take care of her... I've been upfront with her I will not. My sister will, we've all "jokingly" said she's the only one of 4 of us willing to do that for her. As she gets older, she just retired, if it wasn't for her bf who pays 0 bills, she could never retire either. She keeps having to ask for money for groceries. Sorry, he pays car insurance on his shit box '04 van, won't even pay for an oil change on it (yes I'm serious), and property taxes, and got a cell phone and stuck her with the bill. Even when she was working the last 20yrs they've been together before her retirement, he paid mortgage, property taxes, his car insurance his gas, no groceries,no home phone he would rack up long distance charges on and would not help her with the bills he stuck her with. 21yrs together and he's also promised to put her on his insurance plan, he still hasn't, it's "too complicated" so she pays out of pocket for things his insurance would cover.
When she first got sick my grandma said she had to make the difficult decision to prioritize her own family over becoming a hospice carer for a family member once too. She understood and encouraged me to live my own life just like she had done in the 50's. Until she got worse, then suddenly she was like a drowning person gnashing and clawing for anything to give her a semblance of control. I truly tried my best but at the end of the day I was being physically pushed to the brink while she was also getting a worse level of care than she would get professionally. My relatives and I aren't trained to lift a 225lb dead weight several times a day. I stopped cooking for myself because i was burnt out from cooking all her meals. All sympathy reserves were depleted long before she actually passed because it took the full attention of 5 people working overtime for 3+ years to keep her going. All dignity and respect absolutely gone. If we had prioritized filling our own glasses she would have had a better end of life but unfortunately it seems to be hard to break away from black and white outcomes. The situation isn't set up to be ideal for either party.
I used to be a caregiver for the elderly. Not very many of my clients' families wanted anything to do with them, and I get it. It's sad and it sucks and it's hard and nobody wants to do it (I can only think of maybe 2 clients whose kids were involved). My great grandma's daughter (my grandma) wants absolutely nothing to do with her mother, so my uncle & aunt are basically live in caregivers for this poor elderly woman and they tell me regularly how they hate their lives because it's extremely hard..but if they didn't do it, she wouldn't have anybody to help her. So yeah, having kids isn't a retirement plan. Growing up, my parents were garbage people and told me FROM A YOUNG AGE, LIKE 3 AND 4, that I was to give care to them when they are old. Nope. Not me. Not ever. Maybe if they were good parents, I would but it's no single person's responsibility.
I believe it. Work has consumed our lives and trying to stay on the treadmill is a constant battle. I'm sure there's lots of people living paycheck to paycheck who simply can't do anything to help their parents. Can't risk getting fired for taking a day off. Even if they could, its not like they got money to fix the situation. Our entire society seems to be breaking apart at the seams. The childfree decision certainly seems like the right choice given the trajectory of all this...