For a lot of Americans of the 30 to 50 demographic, as they live through the age-density inversion of the baby boomer generation passing out of this world, there are going to be a lot of hard and personal decisions to make.
Systematically, we can cushion the blow a bit by setting up and supporting the processes to spread the labor around. But if we do nothing, the default is going to be "gosh, I guess you're just unlucky that your parents lived so long and didn't plan for their twilight years," and that's going to result in a lot of misery, either for a younger generation or an older generation (and probably both), and possibly some changes to the aggregate moral code of the United States (what happens if an entire demographic just decides to walk out on responsibility for their parents?).
For most of human history -- and until just a few generations ago -- taking care of one's parents was every adult's duty. And adults had children, among other reasons, for their own support in their old age.
Old habits die hard. With infant mortality down in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, "have a lot of children so that at least some survive to take care of you in the future" made for explosive population growth.
Fast forward to 1970-present, and TFR has collapsed in every industrial country. The cause can't be put down to any one thing in particular, but two big reasons are (1) the modern welfare state, and (2) the fact that adults are expected to live lives wholly independent of their parents. (And so often seem to begrudge their parents.)
Strong family ties are a good thing. If not in every case, children should take care of their parents as a general rule. The collapse of this notion, /w woe-is-me bellyaching and snide commentary from the NYT, is leading modern societies to a very dark place.
The problem is, society is different now. It didn't used to be "putting your life on hold", the social mechanisms that kept the old system functional have been eroded.
For a lot of people, now, life is effectively rented. Adding care of a parent with debilitating medical issues is crippling.
The major challenge of this approach is that a lot of those traditional models were exploitation in disguise, it just changed who was being exploited.
Solving this issue by declaring, for example "Honor Your Mother and Your Father is an edict from god, and if you don't comply you're sinful and should be shunned/cast into hell" just puts a friendly face on the issue without changing the issue (and it's not even a particularly friendly face, since the consequence of bucking the system is eternal divine retribution).
I don't fault people for thinking that simply a raw deal and rejecting it.
To be honest, people are just exhausted. The economic collapse over the past decade means people have to swim hard just to stay above water. There is no stability, and I can tell you as a religious person...God isnt going to put bread on the table.
When its so difficulty just take care of your self, adding more people to the equation is impossible.
The other thing to add is that the boomers took all the economic gains and left. They left the following generations with a bleak outlook from an economy drained of any prospect of prosperity.
If you want this sort of society, you need to fix the economy and make people feel safe, secure, and comfortable. When people are no longer drained from being on the edge of poverty, then more responsibility can be taken.
What if your way of finding god is exploring a brothel with a mix of uppers and downers? I'd imagine you could find some books by Hunter S. Thompson to guide you on that path and some community of a sort on a similar journey as well.
Some like thorns and thistle. Some prefer song and dance. Some peace and harmony. Some dignity and purity. All paths lead to very same destination. The q was pithily asked by Dirty Harry: “Do you feel lucky, punk?”
This reminds me a lot of trickle-down economics. We can all see a problem - but while some people try to derive a solution using empirics (e.g. through pilot studies), other people point to some metaphysical solution and say "if we all just believe enough, everything will be fine!". I don't see a difference between a libertarian arguing for a free market, which once free enough, will optimally provide for most participants - or your examples of simply requiring "slightly-more-traditional values".
Can you show empirically that this is an actual solution? I have read studies which show that wealth concentration leads to massive social problems, partially like the ones we are now experiencing. Why should I follow your solution instead of the ones suggested by the studies?
What cultural norms do support the inverted population density though? I’m not aware of one that does. Welfare states high on individual independence rely on the young and able to work and contribute tax to support the old. In the same way that traditional cultures rely on the younger generation to support their parents.
Not sure why you're being downvoted - you're 100% correct. I believe there is good news ahead, though, at least for the United States (and the broader Americas and Europe) because of remote work being good for family.
Quite correct. To make this a family responsibility is to end up with an unjustly heterogeneous result because families are heterogeneous. For anything approaching fairness, it needs to be a societal responsibility.
Social security was created in the era of the ostensibly closely-knit, God-fearing America that people imagine was the ideal of the past. It was created because the people then observed that even with the closing at families and all of that reliance on God, the elderly died poor and ugly deaths.
>>It's not the duty of a child to take care of parents. They didn't ask me if I wanted to be born....
You are not born without responsibilities into the world. Even if you are an adult without parents or dependents, you are not free of responsibilities as long as you live in a society.
I agree with you. Of course nobody should force you. But in general it is positive thing to do, to take care of the elderly if you can. This is something to strive for as a society, isn't it?
But the phrase "They didn't ask me if I wanted to be born" is meaningless and adds nothing of a value.
I'm happy we have other people who can do to this for us too. But I don't think a stranger will take better care of a another stranger than a loving caring family member. E.g. With all my imperfections I'm still sure I'm a better caregiver for my children than an orphanage where they would be just a number, even though they are better educated about children health and development.
He’s being downvoted (as are you) because he attributed complex systemic problems to moral failures, which is a lousy discursive tactic that makes the speaker feel superior but does nothing to actually fix the problem. In this case, “just do what people did in the past” is completely useless as actionable advice, because
- people are living much longer. There’s a considerable difference between caring for someone for 3 years versus 20
- people have fewer siblings and so the burden cannot be split up. Caring for an entire person by yourself is a colossal task, such that at market rates it can cost tens of thousands per year.
- economic precariousness means the consequences of dropping out of the workforce are more dire
None of this is addressed by snooty commandments to find God or family values. Remote work might indeed help, but even that just further proves my point— that came about because the pandemic forced it on us and any effects on the family are a happy externality, not because people made individual decisions about family values.
If I had to guess the point was it didn't need to fall to one person to do everything, as most of the article is devoted to highlighting. I don't think traditional roles played as much a causal part in that as the general population pyramid though.
They definitely did, and such care fell upon the housewife or mother (and in the absence of the housewife... Yeah, people died poor and ugly deaths in old age).
Since we won't and shouldn't solve this problem by going back to the traditional patriarchal family structure, we must look to other alternatives. And one such alternative would be finding a way to recouple labor to employee earnings such that a married couple with one working spouse can support a family of four.
Completely agree. A lot of this is learned mindset. The fact that lifestyles, expectations, responsibilities etc. change somewhat quickly from generation to generation is understandable and something to factor in. However, taking care of one's parents when they grow old should be a norm. A strong family unit with inter generational contact (grandparents and grandchildren) to pass on values, a place to come home to when you're fighting inner demons, a place where young children are brought up to become responsible adults - this is vital for the long term health of a society.
I'd be willing to bet that if family units became stronger and more well knit, it would go a long way to reduce the amount of mental health problems and resulting problems that are reportedly reaching epidemic levels.
Consider that some don't want their parent's values passed on to the grandchildren. While I want my kids to have quality time with their grandparents, I absolutely do not want my children to become indoctrinated with "believing without seeing", climate-change apathy, hate those born different, men don't do housework, women don't fix cars, pull the ladder up behind you, etc.
Living separately provides some much needed space and helps maintain some healthy boundaries.
And when my kids are adults I'd rather they visit me than have to care for me. Or even that I die before developing total dependence on others, especially if it means dementia.
Your kids are not stupid, you know. Just as you learn from your environments, they will learn what is right from wrong. Indoctrination is the wrong word because the grandparent would not be the ones spending a majority of the time with the children. The children’s friends, classmates and teachers are the ones who will “indoctrinate” your child. Instead you are teaching that it is ok removing your grandparents from their lives because of boogiemen .. and that they will emulate your footsteps one day.
That’s my outlook on it, and I don’t push family values on others. So take it with as many grains of salt as necessary
The danger with this line of thinking is that it ignores the adaptability of humans, especially in younger years. None of us are fully rational actors, and all of us are influenced by what is around us. Sure, the degree will change based on a lot of factors and on the individuals positions - but even if you're staunchly against an idea, hearing it day in day out will over time affect your thinking, and not in a way you can consciously control.
Interestingly enough, this is even acknowledged in a lot of folksy wisdom (e.g. "you are what you eat", or the very common idea of parents that children shouldn't hang out "with bad crowds", although the definition of what this is differs between parents).
My parents had a huge influence on me, because kids are impressionable. My kids are homeschooled for now (don't recommend) so having their grandparents here 24/7 means the grandparents would have more time with my own kids than any other human.
IME, indoctrination happens in the home more than anywhere else. Having attended public school I think the outside perspectives and opinions are the only reason I (eventually) escaped the believe-without-seeing cult, yet it took more than 15 years of being out of that house.
>>Consider that some don't want their parent's values passed on to the grandchildren.
Nobody is forcing you/them. Not everybody is born to a happy family. But why would you be against a general rule or norm for tighter family connections? Isn't this is something worth striving to achieve. I think there is positive correlation between children's success and multiple generations working together, just as children from stable marriages are better off as the ones from broken families.
You have to be more specific. Do you mean by law or by twitter mobs,...?
It a weird argument anyway. Almost anything good can be used for a bad purpose. We strive to write code that is performant, extendable and bug free, but sometimes we can't, because practical reasons trump the 'ideal'. If we were compelled to do so always, that would be disastrous for our livelihoods. By your logic we shouldn't even strive for it, because of the negative possibility.
OK so again, how are we making others who don't instrinsically share this value strive for it? Compulsion? Indoctrination? Ostracism? You're talking around the issue.
Have you ever read a book, watched a movie, a TV show, read an opinion article? Why should you compel, indoctrinate or ostracize somebody when all is needed are positive messages about positive things in our society. That is what culture is for and about.
You are making an awfully lot of moral judgements on how others live their lives in this comment.
It should also be allowed to complain about the toll it is to care for someone else, without being told you're a "woe-me-complainer". What if caring for your parent means you have to neglect your own kid? Or who takes care of the care-taker?
> taking care of one's parents was every adult's duty.
Taking care of 1/6 of one's parents (families had 5 kids or more, and sharing of responsibility. This also worked the other way around, parents subsidize their kids' houses and passed on inheritance early.
Our age is so much different. People living so much longer (and aging so much longer), fewer kids than parents, housing prices making it impossible for kids to host their parents etc etc.
Strong family ties are not always a good thing when societies don't adapt to their needs but fall for traditionalism. Southern europe is an example of traditional values, population collapse and an even increasing burden of aging that is weighing down on social and economic prospects
If you propose some kind of moral axiom and we can use it to “prove” the morality of some extreme things we all agree are immoral then that means the axiom is not true. Nobody is being rude by using that logic.
It's easier to take care of a parent when they had 5-6 children, not when you're the single one.
And to add to that, I am a single child. Knowledge that I'll be never able to leave my country or even my city because I'll have to take care of my parents isn't really uplifting.
When I was growing up I dreamed of living abroad, after I finished college I worked in a few foreign countries and then I came back home to pursue some career opportunities.
I saw most of my siblings leave and settle in different countries far from home, all of them had the stereotypical expat experience, they're considered foreigners in their new country and they don't feel like they belong, and when they visit home they don't feel like they belong here either. They don't have a strong social support system and our parents also suffer because their children left, they can never see them and they can't get any help when any problem arises.
Meanwhile looking at one of my sisters who stayed, she bought her house much faster than any of us, she has a long term partner, children, she lives close to our parents and her in-laws meaning she can get help from great array of people for childcare as well as any issues she encounters. She also has a rich social life that comes with all this.
I used to feel the same way you do about having to stay close to my parents, and I really wanted to go back out there but I've come to think living abroad might be a mirage, the call of exoticism rather than something that will improve your life in any way.
It's true that you lead a different life as a migrant. There are cons for sure and childcare is a big one. The problem with your anecdote is that you can't know your life otherwise - you may not have been happy or formed those social connections or been able to buy a place even if you'd stayed, just because your sister did those things. For all you know people would just talk about her weird brother who never goes out.
I grew up in one of the least affordable places in the UK and if I had stayed near my parents then I'm not sure we'd have had kids at all, and I know the kind of housing we'd have and owning that sooner doesn't appeal.
> the fact that adults are expected to live lives wholly independent of their parents. (And so often seem to begrudge their parents.)
Divorce rates used to be lower. Was that because people were genuinely happier with each other, or was the divorce just not a viable option for many people? In the same way - yes, people used to live around their multigenerational families more, but was it really their choice?
I’m interested in understanding what sentences in the linked article you consider “snide,” as I did not get that at all from the article.
While everything you said is true, I believe the message of the article is not “boy it sucks to have to care for your parents,” it’s “We have a generation of people who are required to do it at a younger age and for longer, preventing them from building wealth at a key age when our current economic system expects that.”
Throughout human history you had societies that would kill or shame the elderly because they became burdens on society. Simplifying it to just be that 'taking care of one parents was every adults duty' isn't really correct at all. Many it was the duty of the son. In Roman times if you were not of use to society you were considered a burden. Poorer families would leave the elderly to die, richer ones would marry younger women to serve as caregivers.
This reminded me of a scene in a forgotten movie (North), where Elijah Wood goes on a quest to find the perfect parents. He's initially taken with Eskimo culture and his potential new parents who expect nothing of their children. However, he's fairly quickly disillusioned when they take grandpa out to an iceberg to abandon him to the sea as he has outlived his usefulness. Grandpa does make some half-hearted assurances that this is what he wants, and so it's all ok.
Elderly kept contributing in someway or an other. Maybe not the hardest physical labour, but what they could still do. And those who weren't functional I would guess tended to die pretty quickly if not extremely wealthy to pay servants to keep them around.
I wonder if the things if not for current pensioners, but those coming will change and we are not ready as society to keep them barely living despite them not being able to carry out most basic tasks like going to bathroom.
Soooo tired of people with their eyeballs too close together scolding others about this based on an idealized postcard-picture idea of what a typical family is. “Strong family ties are a good thing” — you know what? In a good family, they’re good; in a bad family, they’re evil. So much of what people call the disintegration of family ties in the past century is really the exposing of outright exploitation, abuse and subjugation inflicted on children by parents with traditional family structures and dependencies as their main lever. It’s decades past time for people to stop talking about blood family ties as if they’re a sacred, unmitigated good. The lived experience of people all around you ought to be a clue.
And that is why I decided not to have children myself. I never want another person to go through the atrocity that was done to me. Yes my parents were particularly horrific, but I even think the coercion of the compulsory education system that nearly everyone goes through, is wrong.
And I don't expect anyone to ever have to care for me, to me that's slavery, and instead I'll down a bottle of dog euthanasia solution when I'm ~80 and cannot survive on my own anymore.
> Children should take care of their parents as a general rule.
Your long drawn out comment doesn’t actually support your core argument, which can be shortened to one sentence, copied above.
In fact, it’s ironic that you’re calling out the author for being self-centered when you, yourself, are presupposing that your subjective family values are best without any rhyme or reason.
I somewhat agree with where you're coming from, but I don't see why you're calling the article a "bad take". The article doesn't really judge causes or solutions of the situation, but rather just describes it. And if you think taking care of aging parent(s) is possible without an emotional toll, then I seriously question whether you've actually ever done it!
My perspective of what compounds the problem:
1. Tiny 1950's ranches intended for a single nuclear family, that don't provide breathing room for multiple generations.
2. The trend of moving far far away for work / lifestyle, which then collapses to provide in-person care.
3. The trend of needing to move into cities for economically lucrative work, which creates an ongoing tension even when you are in the same region.
4. Abjectly terrible healthcare system, that makes it so even professional nurses/therapists have to be managed. (This is a bigger issue that's driving the return to DIY care)
5. As always, the economic treadmill that strips wealth away from the edges, making it so the sheer majority don't have extra cash to hire help. Providing around the clock care is at least two people's worth of full time jobs (it's really at least three, to be sustainable).
6. The expectation of women in the workforce, rather than as homemakers. What supported most historic customs was having one person able to focus on all that informal work required for living, as the other went out and battled to navigate economic society. Now our economic puppetmasters have come to expect two full time workers while the informal tasks get neglected.
By all means, please live out your moral imperative and take care of your elders as they age. But I'm guessing that by doing so, you'll end up empathizing with the article rather than writing it off.
(My point #6 is most certainly NOT meant as a "things would be easier if women were still stuck in the home", rather I'm pointing out a major difference between how things used to be, and how they are today. Progress would be reforming the labor/financial markets so that "full time work" for a two person household is defined as either person working ~40 hours, or both people each working ~20 hours. Women entering the workforce was a good thing, but it was also an opportunity for the economic slavedrivers to reverse decades of labor progress)
What's new is people typically living beyond 70, and the myriad of failure modes that exposes. Many illnesses such as dementia will completely consume the lives of multiple caregivers.
Maybe, but the percent of US population that is 80+ has grown quite a bit. For example, between 1950 and 2020 the percent of those 80-84 more than doubled. In the same period those 85+ went up five-fold (source: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/2015/10/09/t2_age_...). IMO this is the result of modern medicine extending lives well beyond where they would have gone before. Based on my parent’s experience, once you’re kept alive by machines and medicine, your quality of life sucks.
The percentage in the population went up, because there are fewer young people (their percentage went proportionately down with a huge drop in the under 18 category). I'm not claiming the modern medicine doesn't help, but it's not evident from your linked table.
It isn't a bad take to the extent that society doesn't accept this.
I had to care for two relatives from my mid-20s, almost every employer and prospective employer has had a massive issue with this. I worked somewhere where employees would knock off throughout the day for their kids, the boss would disappear every Friday afternoon, I took no holidays, no days off, my mother had a stroke and I had to take her to the hospital, I did this in my lunch hour, came back an hour late...lost my job.
I agree with you completely, it is going to be a bigger and bigger issue because parents will start dying more slowly than my relatives but in the West there is a massive stigma against caring for your parents (this is most bizarre because the govt expects you to look after your parents...my relatives didn't get care until a few years ago because I was expected to do things, my employer had a very different interpretation of my responsibilities).
It is unfortunate being forced to pick, I am in my early-30s now, career has gone. I don't regret one second of it, strong family ties are a tremendous comfort even if you are only giving care. But it is frustrating because you get a pass for kids, and not for parents. I understand I can't have a high-flying career but it is just a wasted opportunity. The reality is that the article reflects a viewpoint that already exists (there are structural reasons too, it isn't possible to have high labour mobility and people with multiple caring responsibilities...it doesn't work).
Taking care of your parents (and children, and children's children) is your life.
The relatively brief period where america corporatized and privatized extended families in the form of retirement communities, nursing homes, day-care and so on is coming to an end. Setting aside if that system was a net good, it turns out that it's simply too expensive: it only worked when the US was the worlds factory (first for goods, then for dollars)
Further, with the elderly population quickly growing, it’ll become even more expensive as inflation grows, services become more expensive, and worst of all, supply for these services goes down (nurses, at home care workers, etc)
If a family has the means and the funds, I believe the money would be better spent building a small “guest house” on the adults properties for their parents to live in, than to a nursing home. Or perhaps have a nurse visit every so often for certain services.
Much of Asian culture never grew far from this notion of parents living at home in old age
+1. To add, vast majority of senior care requires trained, skilled, and empathetic human human labor. This can't be automated and so this challenge is only going to increase (and supply going down as you have rightly pointed) as demographics shift.
> Taking care of your parents (and children, and children's children) is your life.
Easy to say if you're a software engineer earning 200k.
Not so easy to say if you earn a more normal wage of 60k (not my case btw, I earn quite a bit more) and have to choose between, say, saving for a downpayment on a house or giving your parents money to help them avoid homelessness, possibly for the rest of their lives.
> Taking care of your parents (and children, and children's children) is your life
My life has, imo, been ruined by caring responsibilities and I wouldn't change it. It is unfortunate that so many people do not understand the joy that comes from caring for your family. I agree, there is nothing else in life, no self-interested joy can compare. This also seems to be connected to resenting your parents...I have had massive issues with the people I care for, but that doesn't change what my responsibility is...just like your parents didn't walk away when you had a tantrum as a child. Unfortunate.
I can’t imagine anything more depressing than sitting around dying in slow motion knowing that I’m financially draining my kid. And grandkid for that matter. It is, best case, an undo button for anything you did to try and prepare them for success in the future.
Sure, of course it is a statistics game. The point is to improve your odds. As someone who cares for two older family members, I can tell you that the more we do to keep our weight down, and maintain agility and strength, and give some priority to cardiac health, the better the odds of maintaining a high quality of life for a longer period of time. Its about creating some health margin so we can better handle the inevitable problems.
Pointing to anecdotes of healthy people who were stricken anyway as a reason to live an unhealthy life will end predictably.
Or it might not since chance goes the other way. My point is not to encourage people to live in an unhealthy way but to challenge the flippant suggestion that anyone who has serious health problems with age deserves it for their unhealthy lifestyle.
Fair enough. I don't think that's what the parent comment was trying to say and I certainly wouldn't want to say that in general. However, some times it is true, but those people still deserve kindness and care. Life is hard. My personal intent is to try and remain as healthy (physically and financially) as I can so that I can minimize the chance of becoming a significant burden.
It is personal for me. My grandfather spent several years spoon feeding his mother who had severe dementia. He didn't resent her. He loved her but it still impacted him. When his own health later degraded to the point where he was going to need more care from the people he loved, he couldn't live with the thought of losing control and being a burden to his children so he ended his life. It was not a spur of the moment decision. He had all the legal and fiscal matters lined up. He even had his tombstone in place. He lived a full life with lots of close family and friends. Was he a coward or a saint? Maybe some of both. Maybe neither. Maybe he was just practical to the end. I haven't figured it out.
The case elucidated in this article notwithstanding, my mom has early-onset Alzheimers (symptoms started in her mid 50s, she's 63 now), and it's a completely different monster. She's still independent with some help, but soon enough none of us will be equipped to handle her care. My wife and I lived with her for a month last year and it was incredibly challenging, especially emotionally, for both of us.
Alzheimer's disease and similar dementias and neuro-degenerative disorders are on the cusp of becoming major epidemics, if they aren't already, and neither individuals nor the state are equipped to handle the amount of care needed. It requires not only a certain kind of expertise to help care for people with dementia, but also a great deal of emotional resilience. I've seen my otherwise stoic uncles break down in their attempts to help my mom, and it's not even the hard part yet.
You got downvoted for this comment, but you have a good point. I'm sure plenty of people would have loved to take care of their parents in their old age rather than have them pass away at a relatively young age.
"Putting your life on hold" is a pretty cold view of things. I'm not sure I'd call the effort to take care of your family "putting your life on hold". It is life itself. Life is more than your career and the money you have in the bank.
Family gets old, family get sick, family die. It's not easy and yeah, you may need to sacrifice some things you want because of it. It's just the human condition.
Yeah I’m sure caring for a parent who no longer even has any idea who you are, at the expense not only of your financial security but time with other people you care about, is an unalloyed joy.
My mom passed away while I was a young adult, she had a mental illness that was going to get worse and I’m the only child. It took over a year to get over her passing, but in hindsight, and as morbid as it is, it was a blessing in some ways because it meant I could focus on my new family and career without putting life on pause to care for her.
I can completely relate to this article. I am 53 and caring for my 78 year old mum with dementia. While financial issues are not a challenge as we don't live in America. The emotional burden is massive and the guilt of not having done enough or to be scared of leaving her alone when we have to step out even for a few hours is palpable. I have full time help at home but guilt is irrational. We hadn't taken a vacation in years until we requested my wife's parents to stay in our home when we went out for 3 days after 4+ years. Amazing support from my wife is what is still giving me the strength to handle this situation.
My family is in a similar boat, and I'm glad for this article because I think people who are shouldering this work don't feel like they have societal licensure to talk about how it is difficult work.
Death, no matter how far we advance medicine or technology or scientific understanding, is ugly. People don't want public conversations about the emotions caregivers wrestle with, I think, because they don't want to acknowledge how much of the labor is fending off the inevitable or how one feels guilty for not literally preventing the impossible. "She could have had one more day if only I" is real guilt. I spoke to a therapist about this, and her advice to me was that that is the first thing in my journey that I needed to come to terms with... But she couldn't hand me an answer because everybody finds their own answer to that issue.
I think Western moral and societal philosophy encourages us to seek our own answer to that issue, but it does a damn poor job of giving us tools to find it or even warning us that it's coming until it's staring us in the face.
I can't kill death so I can't fix it. I can empathize with you and tell you you're not alone in the struggle, for what that is worth.
The person sounds like they are from the UK, so they don't pay anything. I live in the UK, I look after a relative that has help four times a day...I pay nothing, she pays nothing.
You've concluded that paying nothing is a result of living in the UK, but the UK applies a means test and a purpose test to that help: free is only for people with savings below some threshold or for some medical situations.
Even if we grant that that’s the biggest problem here, what exactly does it imply that anyone in this situation should do? The woman whose story opens the article has let her father live with her family and trimmed back her fledgling business. What more is the knowledge that in the past people lived differently supposed to let her know that she should do?
Right, so if you don't plan to sacrifice your lifestyle to raise a kid, don't be surprised when that kid doesn't sacrifice their lifestyle to take care of you.
Having children and not taking care of them is in very poor taste. We see it all the time where people become parents, yet continue to focus on themselves rather than sacrificing their wants to focus on the needs of their child. It's easier to see how people would be less willing to sacrifice their time to take care of a parent that did not sacrifice time to raise them.
Sure, maybe too much of a drive by comment for this esteemed body of learned readers (ha!), but I'm just pointing out a possible source/cause of the cycle.
I lay awake at night worrying how I'll handle this when the time comes. I have a bad relationship with my parents, and live across the country from them. But I also don't want to just abandon them when they need help in the future. Or just leave my siblings take care of them alone. But there's so much internal anger at them still (I'm in therapy already, no need to suggest that).
My help might need to be monetary only, although elder care can be so expensive I don't know how much I'll be able to help.
I can't tell you what to do, nor would I. But were it me, having watched friends go through similar struggles with difficult parents (and finding myself in the middle of my own):
You may be better able to help the situation by caring for the caretakers than caring for the parents. If your relationship with your siblings is strong and the relationship with your parents is damaged, perhaps there are opportunities to be there for your siblings. Sometimes having someone to talk to or even nip into town every so often to get a coffee with or babysit the children (even if it's not a visit that involves seeing your parents) can help. I have a sibling who's life pulled her to the other side of the country before the parents got old, and she comes in once a year to visit, and when she does, God bless her, she's utterly useless for helping with the care but we still look forward to her coming into town because I get to spend time with my nieces and it's still nice to be able to talk to her and acknowledge that, yes, this is crazy, the world is crazy, and our feelings of being burdened and overburdened are valid. That mental reset really helps and really helps frame why we bother to care that "family," as a concept, is still something we invest in.
I'm not, personally, a believer in the idea that we owe much to people who are right s** to us our whole lives, even if they gave birth to us. But I respect and honor that other people feel differently and their moral code is every bit as valid as mine.
Thank you! This was actually a really helpful comment for me. I haven't been home to visit in over a year because it just hurts too bad still, but I really like the way you framed it.
People acting as though this is nothing new are ignoring how the system and numbers have changed over time.
- There used to be more children per family, so the burden was shared. The parents in question had fewer children, and now a single person is often responsible for both parents.
- There are fewer and fewer middle class families. The younger generation is more and more barely able to foot their own bills, let alone take on additional for additional care for another dependent.
- The expected life span has risen, so parents are spending additional years alive, often long past when they simply would have passed previously.
- Rates of dementia and Alzheimer's continue to rise, and require an entirely different level of care than someone who simply can't drive or get around and needs check ins once a day. Round the clock caregiving is an entirely different animal.
Taken together, the burden on children taking care of their parents has never been higher. Either the support system will grow, or we're going to see a rise in mental breakdowns among the current caregiving population, imo, because they are being put in increasingly hopeless situations.
Regardless of whether you morally want to take care of your parents, the bottom line is people can only do so much and be so strong. It's really difficult.
I have exactly the same dilemma. Both my parents are in their 70s and have difficulty moving anywhere except very short distances. Fortunately for me the country they live in provides decent health care and support for them - someone comes in to wash them and do household chores, and they order groceries online.
My relationship with my parents has eroded through the years, but they still really want me to come back and live with them so that I can help them out. My sister does some things (like driving them to the hospital when they need it) but she is developing her own mental issues due to the burden of caring for them. I don't live in the same country as them, and moving back would be effectively abandoning my wife and putting my entire life on hold for an indetermine amount of time. It's not something I want to do, but I feel very guilty about it if I don't, and I don't know if that's right. I don't know what the right answer is here.
There is no right answer. Even if you could move your wife and family (and job etc) to where your parents live, that could separate her from her parents.
The big difference between this and the past when elderly care as a familial obligation was the norm, it seems to me, are medical advances, particularly of the type that makes returns to investment diminish less. 200 years ago, the protagonist's father would have long died, everyone involved would have grieved and moved on; and more generally, if $1000 (in 2023 dollars) didn't keep him alive, then neither would $10000 or $100000. Now, instead, we have the situation that people in his position can be kept (barely) alive for decades - if you are willing to pay the price in time and/or money. Our moral framework, not having yet adapted to this reality, makes it impossible to callously say no to this offer, to sacrifice your whole life and wealth so as to not let your father die, which in the past would not have been available.
Overlapping the pandemic, I took care of my partially-disabled mom for about 2 years when her (ex)husband abandoned her without warning and moved out half of their home without any agreement. He was later on the run from the law for stealing a large sum of money from his dying nonagenarian mother.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] threadSystematically, we can cushion the blow a bit by setting up and supporting the processes to spread the labor around. But if we do nothing, the default is going to be "gosh, I guess you're just unlucky that your parents lived so long and didn't plan for their twilight years," and that's going to result in a lot of misery, either for a younger generation or an older generation (and probably both), and possibly some changes to the aggregate moral code of the United States (what happens if an entire demographic just decides to walk out on responsibility for their parents?).
For most of human history -- and until just a few generations ago -- taking care of one's parents was every adult's duty. And adults had children, among other reasons, for their own support in their old age.
Old habits die hard. With infant mortality down in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, "have a lot of children so that at least some survive to take care of you in the future" made for explosive population growth.
Fast forward to 1970-present, and TFR has collapsed in every industrial country. The cause can't be put down to any one thing in particular, but two big reasons are (1) the modern welfare state, and (2) the fact that adults are expected to live lives wholly independent of their parents. (And so often seem to begrudge their parents.)
Strong family ties are a good thing. If not in every case, children should take care of their parents as a general rule. The collapse of this notion, /w woe-is-me bellyaching and snide commentary from the NYT, is leading modern societies to a very dark place.
For a lot of people, now, life is effectively rented. Adding care of a parent with debilitating medical issues is crippling.
Solving this issue by declaring, for example "Honor Your Mother and Your Father is an edict from god, and if you don't comply you're sinful and should be shunned/cast into hell" just puts a friendly face on the issue without changing the issue (and it's not even a particularly friendly face, since the consequence of bucking the system is eternal divine retribution).
I don't fault people for thinking that simply a raw deal and rejecting it.
And the ones that try it want unacceptable levels of control over over your life and faith. See Hobby Lobby.
When its so difficulty just take care of your self, adding more people to the equation is impossible.
The other thing to add is that the boomers took all the economic gains and left. They left the following generations with a bleak outlook from an economy drained of any prospect of prosperity.
If you want this sort of society, you need to fix the economy and make people feel safe, secure, and comfortable. When people are no longer drained from being on the edge of poverty, then more responsibility can be taken.
Some like thorns and thistle. Some prefer song and dance. Some peace and harmony. Some dignity and purity. All paths lead to very same destination. The q was pithily asked by Dirty Harry: “Do you feel lucky, punk?”
Do you?
Can you show empirically that this is an actual solution? I have read studies which show that wealth concentration leads to massive social problems, partially like the ones we are now experiencing. Why should I follow your solution instead of the ones suggested by the studies?
We've known for half a century the inversion in population density was coming. The cultural norms of the past don't support it.
https://eig.org/remote-work-family-formation/
I'm hopeful we can return to stronger family values.
Good families find a good way of handling this topic.
Everyone else might just not have good parents.
And therefore he is not 100% correct.
It's not the duty of a child to take care of parents. They didn't ask me if I wanted to be born....
Social security was created in the era of the ostensibly closely-knit, God-fearing America that people imagine was the ideal of the past. It was created because the people then observed that even with the closing at families and all of that reliance on God, the elderly died poor and ugly deaths.
You are not born without responsibilities into the world. Even if you are an adult without parents or dependents, you are not free of responsibilities as long as you live in a society.
I'm even allowed to kill myself instead of caring for old people (for underlining my point).
We force you to take care vs. you care out of your inner duty
But the phrase "They didn't ask me if I wanted to be born" is meaningless and adds nothing of a value.
Not in our society. We optimized it by having people who are better in taking care than I can.
With medical knowledge and more experience.
I personally also don't want to live anymore if I become so unself sufficient.
- people are living much longer. There’s a considerable difference between caring for someone for 3 years versus 20
- people have fewer siblings and so the burden cannot be split up. Caring for an entire person by yourself is a colossal task, such that at market rates it can cost tens of thousands per year.
- economic precariousness means the consequences of dropping out of the workforce are more dire
None of this is addressed by snooty commandments to find God or family values. Remote work might indeed help, but even that just further proves my point— that came about because the pandemic forced it on us and any effects on the family are a happy externality, not because people made individual decisions about family values.
Since we won't and shouldn't solve this problem by going back to the traditional patriarchal family structure, we must look to other alternatives. And one such alternative would be finding a way to recouple labor to employee earnings such that a married couple with one working spouse can support a family of four.
We can debate gender equality and whatever but the loss of real wages is a problem even if we reverse it
I'd be willing to bet that if family units became stronger and more well knit, it would go a long way to reduce the amount of mental health problems and resulting problems that are reportedly reaching epidemic levels.
Living separately provides some much needed space and helps maintain some healthy boundaries.
And when my kids are adults I'd rather they visit me than have to care for me. Or even that I die before developing total dependence on others, especially if it means dementia.
That’s my outlook on it, and I don’t push family values on others. So take it with as many grains of salt as necessary
Interestingly enough, this is even acknowledged in a lot of folksy wisdom (e.g. "you are what you eat", or the very common idea of parents that children shouldn't hang out "with bad crowds", although the definition of what this is differs between parents).
IME, indoctrination happens in the home more than anywhere else. Having attended public school I think the outside perspectives and opinions are the only reason I (eventually) escaped the believe-without-seeing cult, yet it took more than 15 years of being out of that house.
Nobody is forcing you/them. Not everybody is born to a happy family. But why would you be against a general rule or norm for tighter family connections? Isn't this is something worth striving to achieve. I think there is positive correlation between children's success and multiple generations working together, just as children from stable marriages are better off as the ones from broken families.
It a weird argument anyway. Almost anything good can be used for a bad purpose. We strive to write code that is performant, extendable and bug free, but sometimes we can't, because practical reasons trump the 'ideal'. If we were compelled to do so always, that would be disastrous for our livelihoods. By your logic we shouldn't even strive for it, because of the negative possibility.
It should also be allowed to complain about the toll it is to care for someone else, without being told you're a "woe-me-complainer". What if caring for your parent means you have to neglect your own kid? Or who takes care of the care-taker?
Taking care of 1/6 of one's parents (families had 5 kids or more, and sharing of responsibility. This also worked the other way around, parents subsidize their kids' houses and passed on inheritance early.
Our age is so much different. People living so much longer (and aging so much longer), fewer kids than parents, housing prices making it impossible for kids to host their parents etc etc.
Strong family ties are not always a good thing when societies don't adapt to their needs but fall for traditionalism. Southern europe is an example of traditional values, population collapse and an even increasing burden of aging that is weighing down on social and economic prospects
Sure, if your parents weren’t good to you, and you have other constraints then don’t look after your parents.
But the general case should be based on looking after them as you say.
And to add to that, I am a single child. Knowledge that I'll be never able to leave my country or even my city because I'll have to take care of my parents isn't really uplifting.
I saw most of my siblings leave and settle in different countries far from home, all of them had the stereotypical expat experience, they're considered foreigners in their new country and they don't feel like they belong, and when they visit home they don't feel like they belong here either. They don't have a strong social support system and our parents also suffer because their children left, they can never see them and they can't get any help when any problem arises.
Meanwhile looking at one of my sisters who stayed, she bought her house much faster than any of us, she has a long term partner, children, she lives close to our parents and her in-laws meaning she can get help from great array of people for childcare as well as any issues she encounters. She also has a rich social life that comes with all this.
I used to feel the same way you do about having to stay close to my parents, and I really wanted to go back out there but I've come to think living abroad might be a mirage, the call of exoticism rather than something that will improve your life in any way.
Your mileage may vary.
I grew up in one of the least affordable places in the UK and if I had stayed near my parents then I'm not sure we'd have had kids at all, and I know the kind of housing we'd have and owning that sooner doesn't appeal.
Divorce rates used to be lower. Was that because people were genuinely happier with each other, or was the divorce just not a viable option for many people? In the same way - yes, people used to live around their multigenerational families more, but was it really their choice?
While everything you said is true, I believe the message of the article is not “boy it sucks to have to care for your parents,” it’s “We have a generation of people who are required to do it at a younger age and for longer, preventing them from building wealth at a key age when our current economic system expects that.”
I wonder if the things if not for current pensioners, but those coming will change and we are not ready as society to keep them barely living despite them not being able to carry out most basic tasks like going to bathroom.
And I don't expect anyone to ever have to care for me, to me that's slavery, and instead I'll down a bottle of dog euthanasia solution when I'm ~80 and cannot survive on my own anymore.
Your long drawn out comment doesn’t actually support your core argument, which can be shortened to one sentence, copied above.
In fact, it’s ironic that you’re calling out the author for being self-centered when you, yourself, are presupposing that your subjective family values are best without any rhyme or reason.
My perspective of what compounds the problem:
1. Tiny 1950's ranches intended for a single nuclear family, that don't provide breathing room for multiple generations.
2. The trend of moving far far away for work / lifestyle, which then collapses to provide in-person care.
3. The trend of needing to move into cities for economically lucrative work, which creates an ongoing tension even when you are in the same region.
4. Abjectly terrible healthcare system, that makes it so even professional nurses/therapists have to be managed. (This is a bigger issue that's driving the return to DIY care)
5. As always, the economic treadmill that strips wealth away from the edges, making it so the sheer majority don't have extra cash to hire help. Providing around the clock care is at least two people's worth of full time jobs (it's really at least three, to be sustainable).
6. The expectation of women in the workforce, rather than as homemakers. What supported most historic customs was having one person able to focus on all that informal work required for living, as the other went out and battled to navigate economic society. Now our economic puppetmasters have come to expect two full time workers while the informal tasks get neglected.
By all means, please live out your moral imperative and take care of your elders as they age. But I'm guessing that by doing so, you'll end up empathizing with the article rather than writing it off.
This is a new development.
I had to care for two relatives from my mid-20s, almost every employer and prospective employer has had a massive issue with this. I worked somewhere where employees would knock off throughout the day for their kids, the boss would disappear every Friday afternoon, I took no holidays, no days off, my mother had a stroke and I had to take her to the hospital, I did this in my lunch hour, came back an hour late...lost my job.
I agree with you completely, it is going to be a bigger and bigger issue because parents will start dying more slowly than my relatives but in the West there is a massive stigma against caring for your parents (this is most bizarre because the govt expects you to look after your parents...my relatives didn't get care until a few years ago because I was expected to do things, my employer had a very different interpretation of my responsibilities).
It is unfortunate being forced to pick, I am in my early-30s now, career has gone. I don't regret one second of it, strong family ties are a tremendous comfort even if you are only giving care. But it is frustrating because you get a pass for kids, and not for parents. I understand I can't have a high-flying career but it is just a wasted opportunity. The reality is that the article reflects a viewpoint that already exists (there are structural reasons too, it isn't possible to have high labour mobility and people with multiple caring responsibilities...it doesn't work).
The relatively brief period where america corporatized and privatized extended families in the form of retirement communities, nursing homes, day-care and so on is coming to an end. Setting aside if that system was a net good, it turns out that it's simply too expensive: it only worked when the US was the worlds factory (first for goods, then for dollars)
If a family has the means and the funds, I believe the money would be better spent building a small “guest house” on the adults properties for their parents to live in, than to a nursing home. Or perhaps have a nurse visit every so often for certain services.
Much of Asian culture never grew far from this notion of parents living at home in old age
Easy to say if you're a software engineer earning 200k.
Not so easy to say if you earn a more normal wage of 60k (not my case btw, I earn quite a bit more) and have to choose between, say, saving for a downpayment on a house or giving your parents money to help them avoid homelessness, possibly for the rest of their lives.
My life has, imo, been ruined by caring responsibilities and I wouldn't change it. It is unfortunate that so many people do not understand the joy that comes from caring for your family. I agree, there is nothing else in life, no self-interested joy can compare. This also seems to be connected to resenting your parents...I have had massive issues with the people I care for, but that doesn't change what my responsibility is...just like your parents didn't walk away when you had a tantrum as a child. Unfortunate.
While some may prioritize extending their life, I personally prioritize improving the quality of my life while I am alive.
A balanced diet, engaging in regular physical activity such as walking outdoors, and ensure getting sufficient sleep..
Don’t smoke, don’t drink.
Living healthy to increase my health span is still something I can control and chose to do.
Pointing to anecdotes of healthy people who were stricken anyway as a reason to live an unhealthy life will end predictably.
It is personal for me. My grandfather spent several years spoon feeding his mother who had severe dementia. He didn't resent her. He loved her but it still impacted him. When his own health later degraded to the point where he was going to need more care from the people he loved, he couldn't live with the thought of losing control and being a burden to his children so he ended his life. It was not a spur of the moment decision. He had all the legal and fiscal matters lined up. He even had his tombstone in place. He lived a full life with lots of close family and friends. Was he a coward or a saint? Maybe some of both. Maybe neither. Maybe he was just practical to the end. I haven't figured it out.
Alzheimer's disease and similar dementias and neuro-degenerative disorders are on the cusp of becoming major epidemics, if they aren't already, and neither individuals nor the state are equipped to handle the amount of care needed. It requires not only a certain kind of expertise to help care for people with dementia, but also a great deal of emotional resilience. I've seen my otherwise stoic uncles break down in their attempts to help my mom, and it's not even the hard part yet.
"Putting your life on hold" is a pretty cold view of things. I'm not sure I'd call the effort to take care of your family "putting your life on hold". It is life itself. Life is more than your career and the money you have in the bank.
Family gets old, family get sick, family die. It's not easy and yeah, you may need to sacrifice some things you want because of it. It's just the human condition.
Well done.
And an “unalloyed joy”? No, it’s not, but your own personal “joy” sometimes isn't the most important thing in the world.
Death, no matter how far we advance medicine or technology or scientific understanding, is ugly. People don't want public conversations about the emotions caregivers wrestle with, I think, because they don't want to acknowledge how much of the labor is fending off the inevitable or how one feels guilty for not literally preventing the impossible. "She could have had one more day if only I" is real guilt. I spoke to a therapist about this, and her advice to me was that that is the first thing in my journey that I needed to come to terms with... But she couldn't hand me an answer because everybody finds their own answer to that issue.
I think Western moral and societal philosophy encourages us to seek our own answer to that issue, but it does a damn poor job of giving us tools to find it or even warning us that it's coming until it's staring us in the face.
I can't kill death so I can't fix it. I can empathize with you and tell you you're not alone in the struggle, for what that is worth.
This is an odd aside. If you can afford to self fund full time help at home in any country then you are relatively well-off.
However, for the generation that plundered their children and grandchildren, less than care is merited.
They will receive care in proportion to the care they gave.
Sure, maybe too much of a drive by comment for this esteemed body of learned readers (ha!), but I'm just pointing out a possible source/cause of the cycle.
Nyt now shows an annoying amount of the article and what is hidden is hidden until you read the first bit.
My help might need to be monetary only, although elder care can be so expensive I don't know how much I'll be able to help.
You may be better able to help the situation by caring for the caretakers than caring for the parents. If your relationship with your siblings is strong and the relationship with your parents is damaged, perhaps there are opportunities to be there for your siblings. Sometimes having someone to talk to or even nip into town every so often to get a coffee with or babysit the children (even if it's not a visit that involves seeing your parents) can help. I have a sibling who's life pulled her to the other side of the country before the parents got old, and she comes in once a year to visit, and when she does, God bless her, she's utterly useless for helping with the care but we still look forward to her coming into town because I get to spend time with my nieces and it's still nice to be able to talk to her and acknowledge that, yes, this is crazy, the world is crazy, and our feelings of being burdened and overburdened are valid. That mental reset really helps and really helps frame why we bother to care that "family," as a concept, is still something we invest in.
I'm not, personally, a believer in the idea that we owe much to people who are right s** to us our whole lives, even if they gave birth to us. But I respect and honor that other people feel differently and their moral code is every bit as valid as mine.
Does society have sufficient resources to care for all its citizens, whether that is done inside or external to the family.
if not, yeah it's a problem
if so, then it's the just allocation of resources - ie politics
nope
Regardless of whether you morally want to take care of your parents, the bottom line is people can only do so much and be so strong. It's really difficult.
My relationship with my parents has eroded through the years, but they still really want me to come back and live with them so that I can help them out. My sister does some things (like driving them to the hospital when they need it) but she is developing her own mental issues due to the burden of caring for them. I don't live in the same country as them, and moving back would be effectively abandoning my wife and putting my entire life on hold for an indetermine amount of time. It's not something I want to do, but I feel very guilty about it if I don't, and I don't know if that's right. I don't know what the right answer is here.