When children become caregivers, who cares for them?
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She cared for her mother, but it was a bit of a strain as her mother succumbed to dementia. She cared for my father as he withered away from cancer, until she could no longer physically do it. Then he was admitted to the hospital and then hospice. She was very sad that she was not able to live up to what she saw was her duty, to care for him.
I feel it is my duty to care for my parents, but there is a line for everyone that is reality. There are many factors such as a person's behavior, now or in the past, and the relationship that may not be there. My parents have treated me very well, so it is the least I can do to return this to them. I think we should strive towards that if we can.
That'd be like adopting a adopting a puppy and expecting it to take care of you later because you cared for it and fed it for a few years.
That said, I'll do anything for my father and step mother, they've always treated me with love and compassion.
But my birth mother? She couldn't get the time of day from me. She donated an egg and a laundry list of ACEs, and still refuses to call my husband anything than "your.... Friend" even though we've been married ten years
As a parent and a child who saw my parents waste all of their youth being a cook/nurse/maid for my paternal grandparents that lived way too long, I feel it is my duty to end myself (I’m sure this is easier said than done), or at least free my kids of the expectation that they need to care for me, so that they can prioritize their life for themselves and their kids’ futures.
Transport to a few doctor appointments and helping out a few hours per week is no big deal, but I don’t want to see my kids organizing their life around supporting me.
My useless last years are worthless compared to (remaining) prime age of the most important people in my lives - my children. What kind of piece of shit I would be to expect them to waste it on me.
Now is the time to live your life to see it as well spend, whatever it means to you. Then you can be dying in peace. You really can live off good stuff in life for a long time, and raising kids well is the ultimate achievement for me.
There is one issue with all this - I can't take such care for my own parents due to big distance. I can though easily pay for full support in any way they will ever require, which is still massively better objectively than me risking getting fired constantly and juggling their needs with my & my family. So the transition generation and those just before doesn't have it easiest, but I honestly believe this is the right, non-selfish way.
And if I succumb to dementia (which is never sudden), I will specifically beg all around me repeatedly that I want as little time & energy from them as possible, just a bit to cover their own emotional needs and happiness. Anything above is just a gift that shouldn't be too common.
I've heard this sentiment over and over again, from older people around me growing up, and then from my peers as I've aged. I think most of them were perfectly sincere when they said it, some said it regularly for years.
In the end though, zero of these people chose suicide in the end. Despite many of them ultimately having severe chronic illnesses and disability. I'm not saying you're wrong to say this, or even to believe it about yourself. But something I've noticed in working with disability work is that disabled people still generally find life worth living, still find the cost worth it. You want to end it "when the time comes" but probably the time will never come.
Also could jump off a building.
And jumping off a building requires being able to access the exterior of a building tall enough for the purpose. Such access is common to residents (balconies), but typically not to visitors. And it requires being able to climb over whatever safety barriers exist. I am aware of *one* spot--and if things were bad enough I doubt I could either reach it or get over the barrier. Without a conveniently-placed vehicle (it's a parking garage) I doubt my wife could get over the barrier even in good health.
The desire is to be able to choose to die peacefully, with as minimal (negative) impact on others as possible.
Another easy one is falling off the boat while fishing, but again, you might leave a body or body part floating around for someone to find. And the boat is left unattended.
The reason I'm bringing up this analogy is suicide has been heavily stigmatized in most cultures so even if people wanted to do it the "but what will people think" factor is powerful, even for those that wouldn't be around for what those people think.
The dementia patient is very poorly equipped to evaluate the evolution of the disease. Most of time he thinks he is ok, when he is clearly no longer ok.
If you can still see your family, if you can still enjoy an afternoon sitting in the sunshine, if you really want watch the next episode of Shogun, you aren't going to be willing to give up that last bit of existence. Not yet.
Look at the countries that permit euthanasia. Inability no longer is relevant and there are parts of the Netherlands where it's 10% of the population that take that route--and note that this is a substantial undercount because by no means everyone is in a position to make the choice. (Sudden events, those whose mind is going.)
I had to care for my mother for a long part of my adult life, and while I loved her, I must admit that I frequently resented the feeling of having my youth years being stolen. For a few years I even left my family because I didn't want to make my wife and kids share this burden at the worst phase.
Those were extreme examples, though. For a lot of people, taking care of their parents is signing up for a never ending stream of criticism. I don't know of many individuals past the age of maybe 40 who have negative personality traits and come to the conclusion that "maybe the problem is with me." I can only think of one in my life. Just about as bad is when one's parents are conservative and cannot get with the times, or they pretend to be with the times only for you to discover that they actually aren't when the rubber meets the road. I don't believe in abandoning one's parents if they have more "benign" personality traits, but the financially intelligent decision of "you can live with us" probably isn't a sound one from an interpersonal level, and hopefully healthy distance can still be had.
Oh, but if parents make no effort to survive retirement, forced or otherwise, then I don't think anyone should be obligated to help them. People have varying amounts of luck, but if one doesn't save anything then they've chosen to be screwed.
Personally, if I end up with one option being my children sacrificing their financial independence and youth, and the other signing up for the Smith & Wesson retirement plan, I'll take the latter.
As a serious note from observations, if you do this, make it look like a goddamn accident doing something you enjoyed or your kids will be fucked in the head for decades to come.
Take up mountain climbing or skydiving and have a fatal accident instead of suck-starting a shotgun. Trust me.
My parents for example live far away from my career and career options. I can't afford to move them to live with me. Full remote work helps, but companies want to drag workers back into the office at the cost of their family. If my parents got sick or had issues in order to help them I would need to abandon my job, drain my savings and become a full time caregiver.
Business culture, career advancement, the way jobs are structured are all at odds with taking care of elderly family members. The only people that can afford to do so are those already well off.
Yes, but you left out that in most Asian-X cultures, first generation immigrant parents typically sacrificed almost everything they had, including in many cases the parental-filial relationship, to provide the children with enough education to claw their way out of their current situation and give them an extra leg up into a higher socioeconomic circumstance.
My parents had this expectation, and my wife and I gladly and willingly obliged on both sides as only children. This expectation/obligation became even more poignant when we had our own kids and realized belatedly just how much our parents had sacrificed for us. Whether driven by cultural norms (or not), we appreciate what our parents did for us so that we can "pass it on" now that we're on better footing than either side ever was.
While not always convenient or logistically possible, multi-generational housing (where one or both sets of parents live together or very close by) can go a long way to addressing astronomical housing costs at least until they need more intensive daily care due to aging.
But I don't think this is a fair expectation from the parents' side, at all. As a child, you did not ask to be burdened with this. If this is a contract, it was signed not by you, but by your parents unilaterally.
Or what about "Sorry, kid, I technically provided you with food, water, and shelter. You can walk to soccer practice, as I have no legal obligations in this matter"
Which fits into your world view better?
For some people, the answer may rest on whether the child is younger or older than 18.
That said, I don't think people from collectivist and individualist cultures can ever agree on what the obligations a child has - if any - to their parents and extended family.
My own view is that it's at least a responsibility and at most a privilege to take care of my parents in any way that i can.
But something changed somewhere. I now see my parents in a whole new light.
There is a book "Factfulness", in which the author lists a matrix for four income levels. My parents started at level 2. I still remember their parents houses: the makeshift kitchen with dim lighting, the four walls and the hole they named a bathroom, the leaky faucets at the ends of pipes ran across the house and exterior to the uneven, unpainted walls.
The sacrifices they must have took to change their socioeconomic standing and subsequently my own can never be requited. I now fit somewhere along the fourth level. I can't help but feel immense gratitude when I see them now. I now try to give them all that I can so they enjoy the time they have left. And I wish I had the foresight in my earlier years to tell them how I appreciate their efforts but then again, those stubborn bastards loved to argue then.
I don't know what I wanted to communicate saying all this so excuse me while I text my mother.
I can definitely relate to your story. Child of first generation immigrants. We had to move back to Hong Kong when I was 9 because my dad died and it was too difficult for a single mom in a new country to support us. When I was 18, I took advantage of my citizenship and moved back.
The constant pressure to find a way to take care of my mom has always been difficult for me, especially because it sometimes feels at odds with pursuing personal truths. I can go work for the bank, make sure mom is taken care of, but lose my own life. In my twenties, I spent some time living an “alt” lifestyle, working as a musician, and hanging out with B-listers in Beverley Hills. But I could never really enjoy it, not just because it was vapid, but because finding a way to truly secure a future for my mom was always in my mind. It was like wrestling with two sides of the American Dream. And no one around me could relate.
As I’ve gotten older the balance between “serving the parents” versus myself has become fuzzier. It’s obvious now that making sure my mom can enjoy the rest of the time she has is the right thing to do. But in turn, her expectations of me have relaxed. She understands that she’s raised a free, independent adult, and in the culture we live in, that’s a virtue.
It’s all so complicated, as I’m sure anyone who has had a similar upbringing would know, and the details are so specific to each person. But it’s good to know that it’s a common human experience.
Then those kids were expected to help the next generation, when the time came. It was like a multi-generation, extended-family economic collective of sorts. I didn't know what to make of it. On one hand I admired the effort, on some level. On the other hand, I think it really gimped the kids as far as pursuing entrepreneurship goes.
But hey, at least they can afford the "rent" in South Bay, I guess? I have never wanted to live there, so I can't say I envy the arrangement.
This was a ubiquitous practice in the circles I grew up in - Once a child was old enough to work they were expected to get a job and help the family with the bills. Coworkers would talk about it at every job I worked at as a teenager and my parents talked about having to help their parents out with the bills as a teenager.
It was so common I felt pretty lucky that I got to keep all the money I made.
The second, if done well, can be incredibly powerful, however. If the family is strong enough and trusted enough, you can get outsized economic benefits from it.
That is also how you cultivate nepotism. It feels powerful if your family does it and others don't, but once everyone starts doing it, it's a caste system and everyone's worse off.
Now the west so rich and govt support for old/retired folks is very-very decent it does look totally out of way to support parent's household expenses.
A significant section of my grad school class sends around ~$1000/ month back home.
Also, the upper-middle rung of Indian society (top 5 - top 15%) is still pretty poor by western standards.
There’s an unwritten expectation for the kids to reciprocate.
I would say a good 80% of Indian immigrants I know send money back to their parents every month.
A lot of Indians (and I am sure it's true for other nationalities) owe a lot to the Tech industry for absolutely transforming their standard of living in the last 1-2 generations. Tech was also remarkably egalitarian since anyone with the inclination could learn it with a relatively modest investment in a computer or even unimpeded access to a computer at school.
I wonder if future generations will see the same lifestyle transformative effect. Or perhaps the new bar is access to an H100 GPU.
This is so true for me as well. I started and ran my own business for a number of years, and I've resigned from jobs multiple times before I had something else lined up. Being able to take those risks has absolutely helped me in my career, and there's no way I could have taken them if I didn't have an implicit safety net beneath me.
The solution to this issue is good governance, which translates to good economies and better social and welfare systems, but that’s kinda a pipe dream for African nations at this point.
While I am not suggesting eliminating financial/logistic independence between generations within a family, but it is an interesting side effect.
Edit: to respond to vkou’s comment below, I don’t see any empirical evidence for this to be true. For one, the work involved in supporting old, disabled people is highly undesirable (meaning high prices for labor). And second, I do not see automation advancing quickly enough to change all those bedpans.
Also, the more resources a country spends on healthcare and defined benefit pensions (far and away the most expensive part of caring for old people), the less resources a country has to spend on other stuff (that benefits younger people).
This is evident in the fact that nursing facilities cost $10k to $20k per month for round the clock care, and the common adage is you don’t want to be stuck in a $10k per month facility.
There is, of course, truth to some of the productivity surplus being eaten by rentiers, but from what I can tell, nowhere near enough to make up for the economic boost that fertility rates of 4+ give.
The demographic implosion narrative is just a nativist distraction from the investment class eating all the productive surplus.
We would need radical changes to our expectations or to the efficiency of our governments
As a man I feel that my first duty is to provide stability for myself and my family, both upwards and downwards.
The real handicap is when family members are degenerates, i.e. absent parents, feuding, self destructive behaviour, etc. That's harder to climb out of because even if you escape, you now need to build a new structure by yourself.
It's an absolutely devastating burden. I am currently in the top 1% of my socioeconomic cohort but I'd trade all that hard work, effort and application of intelligence over 20 years to have started in a slightly better cohort.
I've mostly untangled myself from that period of life but it's taken far more work, self discipline, sacrifice and willingness to live in degradation and homelessness just to sidle up to an easy peasy upper middle class peer group.
At best it's a form of "humble brag" that just makes you look silly.
Without quibbling with this basic directional correctness, the numbers in the article are bunk.
> "In the United Kingdom, about a million young people under 18 years old spend more than 50 hours a week caring for family members"
There are 14 million people under 18 in the UK [1]. If 1 million under-18s spend 50+ hours caring for family members, and only a few thousand tragic cases are under 9 (as the article claims) then the claim is that something like 1 in 3.5 children aged 9 to 18 spends 50+ hours caring for family members?
[1] https://data.unicef.org/how-many/how-many-children-under-18-...
Surprising, but you can't just dismiss statistics on the basis that they're surprising to you. A lot of people lead very different lives, invisibly.
15-20% of people are disabled: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
Not immediately clear if "caring for family members" includes older children caring for younger children, but that would certainly bring up the numbers.
It is possible that the "50+ hours" is not accurately counted.
I would indeed dismiss that particular statistic about the number of kids spending 50+ hours looking after family members, because it is likely wrong by an order of magnitude.
Somewhere an "up to 50 hours" has become "over 50 hours". If written as "up to 50 hours" it would be much less surprising.
Or
It should read "Over 5 hours". A million spending 5+ hours a week would also be much less surprising.
A million spending over 50 hours would imply perhaps another million spending say, 20-50 hours, still a huge burden.
But 1 in 3.5... idk, if you assume households with kids have a couple of kids, that's getting pretty close to saying the median UK household with a 9 to 18 year old has a 50+ hour caring situation. I don't see that being invisible.
> Not immediately clear if "caring for family members" includes older children caring for younger children, but that would certainly bring up the numbers.
Suspect this is basically right as well.
Or we do not understand the definition of care. Perhaps "care" covers all those times where the child has custody or otherwise is the only person watching over a disabled person. That could therefore include nights when perhaps the kid is the only carer in the household even though all are asleep. Then 50+hours doesn't seem so huge.
Why not? While there are many falacies that people are surprised by that are mathematically true, when someone presents numbers, the more surprising the claim, the more evidence they need to present to back it. Science isn't perfect, there is the possibility of error, fraud, and the whole messy bit of scientific reporting having an abysmal record of accurately reporting what scientists say. For a surprising enough claim, without multiple verifications from independent sources, it is fine to dismiss it.
Are we talking strictly changing sheets, assisting with a bed-pan, medication administration? Or 'softer' tasks like enrichment/entertainment and quality family time.
Do those hours also include emotional toll it takes on a person to constantly straddle the line between family member and caregiver? It's like secondary school coursework: for every hour spent draining catheter bags, suctioning tracheotomy tubes, or administering nutrients through a feeding tube (Jevity Plus smells like death, ask me how I know), there thrice that many hours spent toiling and dealing with the emotional fallout of "protecting your protector".
All that to say, as meaningful as it is to try and collect this data, I would posit that there is no true way to quantify the full breadth of the reality that many people live day in and day out. I, for one, have been forever impacted by my upbringing that included immense amount of caregiving.
https://carers.org/news-and-media/news/post/361-carers-trust...
Carers’ Trust seem to identify groups they call ‘young carers’ (18 and under) and ‘young adult carers’ (18-25) in various of their reports. This is an example of their own writing on the subject: https://carers.org/news-and-media/news/post/361-carers-trust...
They generally claim that there are 1 million ‘young carers’ in the UK, and 600,000 additional ‘young adult carers’
That page gives the more plausible rate of high intensity (50 hours a week+) care as “At least 50,000 children and young people, including 3,000 aged just five to nine, spend 50 hours or more a week looking after ill or disabled family members.”
It’s not clear whether ‘young people’ is synonymous with ‘young carers’ or also includes ‘young adult carers’
Half of 1/14 is 1/28 since 2(1/28) == 1/14.
1) "Old fashion mentality". Usually framed as "I wiped your butt when you were a kid, now it's your time to change my diapers".
I object to #1 with "It's not the same effort to take care of a 5kg kid as of an 80kg adult". When my father had late-phase Parkinson and could hardly stand, it was almost impossible for two persons (like me and my mum) to lift him up. Doing this every day wrecks your back and physical health as well. Not to mention the mental toll. Changing their parent adult diapers is also not good for children's mental health.
2) Lack of financial resources. In the old days people had to take care of their very old parents themselves because there was noone to do it otherwise for a price they could afford.
I re-iterate, mainly there's the problem of physical strain, literally impossible to lift a full grown adult without special equipment or at least three persons without risking back injury. The rich can hire full time personnel (lifting needs to be done at night too, several times possibly), otherwise the solution is to share this hired personnel in a hospice. One can visit every day or even commit their parents only intermittently but a severely disabled adult is no baby and it's unfair ask for "duty to kill yourself" as a child taking care of one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws
I get that “no free country” can have many meanings, but these laws certainly exist in countries people call free.
So my educated guess would be you never have to actually care for your parents, but I'd be curious if any other countries actually will order children to nurse their parents.
You are also fully allowed to feel an unconditional gratitude (dare I say, love) towards them for simply existing, while accepting them as they are, as individuals, without owing each other anything, and regardless of what they have done or not done. It also takes some people way too long to realize this, and it can be a liberating feeling.
Remember that you didn't ask for that though.
It's easy to resent someone who means well if what they're trying to do is make you miserable because they can't see how you could be happy. That's my parents. They can't fathom how I can enjoy my life and and have done everything in their power to keep me from living the way I want to live. They are willfully ignoring that I'm not them. They may have good intentions but I had a happy childhood in spite of them, not because of them. If adults in the world didn't take an interest in and see me, I could have been a miserable person. So in that sense, I do resent them. Good intentions don't mean anything when you refuse to acknowledge people as they are instead of who they are.
Was the last part meant to be: “Who you want them to be?”
I mean, that’s kinda hard as a parent, since you bring children into the world to raise them as you think they should be. If they then ignore all of that and go their own way, while perfectly acceptable, I can see how that’d suck for them.
I guess that’s my biggest worry as a parent anyway. I want them to be happy, but I also want them to be what I consider to be ‘good’.
I had a great childhood and still questioned if it was irresponsible to bring a child into a world of inherent suffering. Ultimately, planned parenting is a selfish act.
I agree, but with the exception that parenting adopted children is not selfish
My existence is difficult because my parents were abusive and negligent to a disabled child. My right to exist was questioned by the very people who created me.
Is there a viable path toward realizing that I am 'allowed' to feel unconditional gratitude towards my parents for existing?
In many cases, perhaps more than most people are comfortable with, children are raised by malicious parents.
It’s a miracle most kids turn out ok despite that, but I’m fairly certain it’s evolved to be that way.
Some people are genuinely having children for completely malicious reasons, like using a child as a tool to trap a domestic abuse victim, for which no gratitude is warranted or reasonable. And I daresay telling those children "you are who you are because of them" is horrifying and cruel.
As it stands now:
GP responded to someone with presumably bad parents by reminding them that their parents contributed to their existence. This sets the stage for their followup advice.
Their followup statement about unconditional gratitude is either directed at this person or uses a universal 'you'. This advice cannot be applied universally, especially in cases of abuse.
The final sentence also implies that GP has found something universal: "It also takes some people way too long to realize this".
---
A lot of people say to themselves - "Of course there are exceptions!" A person's understanding of what counts as an exception is based entirely on their personal experience. Humans also tend to presume that other humans are "normal" unless given evidence otherwise: evidence also based on their personal experience.
We don't know the history of the majority of the people we meet, nor are we entitled to it. How do you determine who is an exception and who is not? It isn't feasible. GP's final sentence implies that it is.
All of these things underpin GP's comment - it's a common pattern of thinking.
I’ve got a PTSD when it comes to being in a relationship and struggling to make my own family because my parents cheated on one another, and I’m in huge debt and living in friend’s house because I allowed them to move into my house after they lost their incomes due to covid.
Yeah, I remember everything.
The internet is fairly unfiltered (and uncensored) so you hear a lot about people with horribly childhoods. It's probably a good thing for humanity as a whole but man, does it bum you out sometimes... let alone living through said horrible childhoods.
Excuse me? This terrible life was imposed on me against my will be mean and evil people. I will absolutely not be "grateful" for it.
> "Roughly 15,000 of them are children, with 3,000 just 5 to 9 years old.
You can't dump your parents that easilly when you're under 18, and at 5-9 the only other option is being placed into local authority care.
Taking care of elderly parents is one of the toughest things in life that nobody talks about.
https://blog.aarp.org/legal-grounds/more-filial-support-case...
In the US, if you get into that situation Medicaid will first require that you "spend down your assets" before the state steps in and starts paying for certain types of care. And if you do something like give your house to your kids, if the time limits aren't right, the state could come looking for that house.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/01/1159490...
There are various planning options to reduce the impact from this, but you have to know to do it, and you have to execute on the plans well in advance.
(Updated original post, it's Medicaid that can clawback, Medicare does not. So if you die of turbo cancer it's taken care of, but if you die of dementia it's not.)
Has anyone seen any tools like this? Would be much appreciated, else I'm building it myself. Thanks.
Unfortunately, some of the "boomer" generation don't really understand one earning is not enough to support a full extended family these days.
It is not even conscious malice by the other siblings. Stuff like that happens naturally. All siblings would need to live close by, have similar family circumstances (I have a family on my own that I need to prioritize. Betty who is single can take care of dad.) and similar level of skills in caring for the parent for that to work.
Also people underestimate how horrible caring for people with dementia and other disabilities that require a high level of care is for people not trained in it. It is not socially acceptable to talk about the bad stuff.
My wife is the first of seven. Yes, she was the one financially most able to help her parents, both from being here rather than there and because she has a strong work ethic, unlike her siblings. That doesn't mean the load should have fallen virtually 100% on her when the other 6 were in the same city, not on the other side of the world.
Sadly hospices are underfunded and just run wrong - people stay in their rooms to die. Those children could look at own parents part time, some help provided by the state, or to some degree others in same situation.
But in the UK today they are desperately trying to remove the meagre disability payments that people receive so the chances are more will just end up homeless as will their child carers.
Eh. People that don't have much money won't have much of a choice. So it'd work out great for the rich, shitty for the poor. Like much else in life, I suppose.
IMO the world would be better off with much better work flexibility in general, no matter if you have kids or elderly parents. But we sacrifice to much at the altar of productivity for that to ever happen.
Not inevitable. Only when O&M and oversight are reduced by corruption, graft, or ineptitude.
Yeah, having people without any professional training and zero oversight do the caring is the much safer option. Surely there can't be any abuse there?
The only advantage is that at home no one will see the abuse. And I am talking about abuse by both the carer and the one being cared for. Dementia changes a person often causing them to get violent. Plus caring for another being is exhausting but caring for a close family member even more so because you can not build a professional distance to keep you emotionally healthy. It is thankless and soul destroying work. Even the most caring person can grow bitter over time.
Yes, in state institutions abuse does happen because abuse happens everywhere but there are ways to implement oversight and reduce it. Not so much at home.
Plus in the case of underage children, making them care for family members is called parentifications and a form of abuse that can mess them up for the rest of their life.
The asylum system is one excellent example of this.
With that being said, those most in need of what an asylum would provide are now living on the street, so I'm not sure deleting the repo without even a plan for a rewrite in place was the best choice...