The Agony of Putting Your Life on Hold to Care for Your Parents
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
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
For a lot of people, now, life is effectively rented. Adding care of a parent with debilitating medical issues is crippling.
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.
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?
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
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.
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).
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.
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?
We've known for half a century the inversion in population density was coming. The cultural norms of the past don't support it.
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.
https://eig.org/remote-work-family-formation/
I'm hopeful we can return to stronger family values.
- 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.
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.
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
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.
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).
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.”
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.
This is a new development.
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
Living healthy to increase my health span is still something I can control and chose to do.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?).
Nyt now shows an annoying amount of the article and what is hidden is hidden until you read the first bit.
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.
"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.
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.