Who will take care of you when you are old? Part 123,456

Selfish - or unflinchingly honest? One tortured son describes the anguish of telling his frail father: 'Sorry Dad, my children come first'

Ever since my mother died a month ago, I have been solely responsible for my 89-year-old father, writes GRANT FELLER.
It has left me leading a split life: that of a loving husband, provider and father to my two children, who are 15 and 17, and also
carer to my increasingly frail and grieving father. Except my role as carer has, all too often, come first. It's taken a hell of a toll
on all of us and left me feeling trapped, claustrophic and, most of all, guilty.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3280174/Selfish-unflinchingly-honest-One-tortured-son-describes-anguish-telling-frail-father-Sorry-children-come-first.html


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So, the sunny boy has been taking care of his father for a whole month *gasp*
What a sacrifice!
He now wants to bail out on him because his little helpless chyldren - 15 and 17 yo -
desperately need him.
ROFL
When you are too stupid to invent some proper excuses, try to use Google.
Or maybe try to say the truth - I don't care about my father.
Easy, right?

Well, caring for people who require nursing care is in fact tough. Very. It's physically, mentally and emotionally draining, and it can easily take up an ever-increasing amount of time that doesn't usually go down again before the elderly person dies. Very often, these situations drag on beyond a point you previously even imagined possible.

Taking on the care for elderly relatives really shouldn't be a requirement for anyone who can't do it or doesn't want to do it for any reason at all. Having a good or acceptable relationship with one's parents shouldn't oblige you to care for them in their old age, either. That is one of the things that long-term care insurance and high social security contributions are supposed to make a moot point, among other things. And, these things will have been around for a good part of the elderly father's productive years, which means he should be able to take something out if needed. At present, the LTC systems still operate where they exist, however suboptimally. They won't much longer, but they do now.

The kiddie argument is smoke and mirrors. It's irrelevant to the situation, and I agree with your anti-breeder sentiment in that I think it's inanely populist to even bring it up.

I've read your post, not the article, but I don't agree that not caring about one's parents is a sad truth, if it applies. It's not sad, it just is, and all too often it's richly deserved. It's also generally not a good idea for anyone involved to take on the care for someone they don't care about.

But there really are more facets to the issue than equating taking on the care for one's parents in their old age with liking or even loving them, and not taking on their care with disliking them, or even thinking that it is morally reprehensible not to take on their care.

Generally, I don't agree with the social contract line of thought that considers adult children directly responsible for their parents - regardless of how these parents did as parents. Parents produce children typically because they want to have children. The principle can't be reversed. I am not responsible for my parents' existence. Therefore I cannot agree that my time, energy, mental capacity and funds should be drained for their benefit. If, indirectly, some of my taxes and social security contributions are used for nursing care and elderly services, that's fine by me - more than that, actually: I welcome it. But there should not be any legally or morally enforced siphoning of resources from an adult child/adult children to their specific set of parents.

I just hate the fact that he's using his teenaged sprogs as an excuse. Parunts always use their brats as some kind of cop-out.

My moo is in a nursing home with dementia. I couldn't imagine caring for her myself, and I am a CF person. She needs professional care in a proper place with 24 hour nursing staff. I still visit her, bring her things and care for her in the ways that I can, even though she was a dick of a moo to me.

Whether a person has sprogs or not, caring for elderly people, especially those with dementia or other serious end-of-life illnesses can be too much for most people to handle. Sprogs has nothing to do with it.

Nobody owes their parunts end of life care, but this guy should at least make sure that his father is in a good place where he will be properly cared for. That's what we did for my moo.

You both have very good points.

His father is physically impared.
"Nowadays, he’s still largely compos mentis, yet increasingly frail.
He can’t cook. If I wasn’t there, he’d exist on cheese on toast and baked beans.
He might occasionally manage to prise open a packet of smoked salmon and slip it onto bread. But that would be on a good day.
He has trouble walking around. Making his bed is an insurmountable physical challenge. The other day, I couldn’t work out why he was wearing slip-on sandals in October, until my wife, stunned by my stupidity, whispered that he was obviously having trouble putting his shoes on.
He can’t clean, do the washing or sort out the day-to-day necessities of life."

I know from my own family that taking care of someone is difficult.
My mother took care of grandma who had dementia while working a full-time job.
She also had us (two chyldren) and the household. DuH never helped with anything.

I think that both ways are acceptable:
either you should become the carer to your parents or you should make sure that they are in a good place
where they will be cared for.

I just cannot get over his cheap excuse "mhy chyldren neeeeeed meeeee"

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I think that both ways are acceptable:
either you should become the carer to your parents or you should make sure that they are in a good place
where they will be cared for.

Or the fucking breeders, can, you know, nix the irresponsibility, be a mature adult, & arrange their own damned elder care plan for themselves, rather than being entitlement poisoned & selfishly & hypocritically dumping the burden onto their kids or grandkids who have their own lives to stress over.

Yea, teenagers. Dude, get a grip. They're TEENAGERS. They WANT you to be gone a lot. It's what teenagers DO!

Of course, kiddums, no matter the age, are a Get Out Of Jail Free card for all things.

DH called me yesterday from work saying he didn't feel well. He's type-2 diabetic (very well managed, but still) so there's that. Anyway, the poor thing couldn't make it to a stall in time at his job, and puked all over the toilet seat and himself. Needless to say, they sent him home. I stayed at work.

I came home to find his jeans in the tub with vomit on them, and him in bed under mounds of covers and a 100 plus fever.
As if I could say at work, "I need to go home and keep an eye on my spouse so he doesn't go into diabetic shock (who knows?)". Yea, that'd fly, I'm sure.

Next time the breeders throw out that worn out, old bingo, "but who will care for you when you're old?" or, "my kids will take care of me when I'm frail," send them this article.

No, your kids WON'T take care of you when you're old and frail. They will dump you, because you've become an inconvenience to them.

I don't understand why this guy doesn't get some in home nursing help. He can also get his teenage sprog to spend a few hours a week doing crap like cleaning gutters, mowing the law, doing a load of laundry.

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evilchildlessbitch
I don't understand why this guy doesn't get some in home nursing help. He can also get his teenage sprog to spend a few hours a week doing crap like cleaning gutters, mowing the law, doing a load of laundry.

Yeah, good idea, but that would require duh to fork over some of his money, & we all know how greedy & selfish breeders are, even when someone helped them with some type of work.

If a 15 & 17 yo can't take care of themselves by know, they never will.

At 15 I could cook, clean use the washing machine, get from A to B via C on my own. All without mobile phone or the internet.

I dispair for Millennials.

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bookworm
If a 15 & 17 yo can't take care of themselves by know, they never will.

At 15 I could cook, clean use the washing machine, get from A to B via C on my own. All without mobile phone or the internet.

I dispair for Millennials.

I'm a Millennial (26) & I WALK nearly everywhere. I don't drive for personal reasons that have fuck all to do with entitlement poisoning & laziness. I'm between jobs, but I'm working on getting out of that. I may not be running myself into the ground to do so, but I'm doing something, & I sure as hell don't want to be in that situation forever. I scrape together my own money when I can & my folks do not mind giving me a hand until I get things figured out. I cook my own, clean up after myself, & the laundry is usually not done by me, but I take my dirty clothes in the washroom. When I do wash my own, its usually of my own volition, not when everyone else is washing, & yes, I can operate the washing machine & dryer.

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evilchildlessbitch
I don't understand why this guy doesn't get some in home nursing help. He can also get his teenage sprog to spend a few hours a week doing crap like cleaning gutters, mowing the law, doing a load of laundry.

I'm seeing a lot of commercials these days for in-home care service. People have noted the need and are making bank on it. Of course, Duhd would probably use the excuse "I have two teens at home. Do you have any idea what it costs me just for the their Smartphone plans?"

Telling the teens to pitch in? They might, at first, but dollars to donuts they'd soon come to resent the time away from their own lives that they are giving to Grandpa and try to whine out of it. They might even turn their resentment on Grandpa.

Family involvement is a sensible suggestion; at one time it was practically a given to happen; but not these days.

Smart people today must think about that future. It gets here a lot faster than anyone ever realizes. I know that Dh and I are letting our retirement savings sit and grow. We are planning on living only on monthly SS and pension income. Our savings will (hopefully) go toward the day when we will check out the active retirement communities that scale payment based on how much help you need in managing your everyday life.