Adult kids in old age

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/terminal-cancer-t-afford-heat-154701768.html

I read this article of a widow at home unable to afford to heat the house, freezing with a diagnosis of terminal cancer. It said she has two adult kids who are obviously not taking her in.

It is an answer to the "who will take of you when you are old?" thing people like to say.

The comments are gross, not just a lack of sympathy but they're not even reading the article to see she isn't out of the USA.
It is sad to think if a kid lived with her there would likely be oodles of charities willing to pay her heating bill.
She is in the UK, in the US there is some assistance for heating but I'm not sure who qualifies. I've heard of more than one area that refused to turn off anyone's heat in the dead of winter because they didn't want the residents behind on their bills to die. I used to normalize my utility bills, where I paid an average amount based on the average of the previous year which was very helpful when I needed it.

And for all of the talk about stay-at-home moms it has always been the exception, not the rule. I know of more parents where both of them worked long hours and the kids had no choice but to watch the younger kids, no birth control to control the family size, etc. It isn't the mid-century anymore when there were more stay-at-home mothers than any time in history, in this day and age the person who will take care of you when you're old is either yourself or the ones you pay.

It would be somewhat realistic that a stay-at-home mom may be able to take care of a parent once her kids were older but that assumes she wants to do it, can afford to do it, has room to house the parent and lives close by. I've known stay-at-home moms that were on a very strict budget in order to be able to stay at home and couldn't afford to pay a heating bill for a parent, let alone taking care of a parent.

People who think their kids will take care of them in their old age are making a dangerous gamble. People should not for one moment think that just because they wiped their kids' asses, their kids will wipe their asses when they are no longer capable of doing so.

I mean look in any nursing home or long-term care facility. They are packed to the gills with parents and grandparents who may not get any visitors at all because their kids didn't want to care for them. On the other hand, consider the possibility that there may be a reason the breeder's grown kids aren't taking them in. It could be they were shitty parents and the kids went no contact. Perhaps it's nothing personal and they can't afford to house and feed another person, or don't have time to deal with essentially an adult baby on top of dealing with their own lives.

In the case of this woman, my immediate thought was why does she have two adult kids who don't stay in touch? I have to assume with one of them being on an entirely different continent, communication and visits are limited. The other one, I don't know how close they live to this woman, but they don't talk to her.

I feel like there's more to this that we're not hearing in order to get this woman maximum sympathy. I'd love to hear what those grown kids have to say about their mother because from what I've seen, people who have good relationships with their parents don't haul off and stop speaking to them. Especially not when those parents are not only terminally ill, but too broke to stay warm. If her kids are letting her die alone and cold, something Moo did drove them away and that is her own damn fault.

That is one thing the US does seem to do right, surprisingly. The heat has to stay on in winter so people don't freeze to death due to being unable to afford heat. Unfortunately, the same principle only applies in some places to air conditioning - a landlord may be legally required to keep the heat on even for non-paying renters, but they don't have to fix a broken AC unit to prevent hyperthermia in summer. At least in my state, they don't. But I also live in the Northeast where our summers aren't surface-of-the-sun hot and people will probably be miserable without AC, but they likely won't die.

Presumably there's a reason that neither of her adult children are willing to help. And I agree it's shitty that she can't get help as an adult, but that if there was a child in the house it would be a different story. Not speaking to whether this woman deserves to be cut off from her kids, I wish that adults were as valued as children.

I felt my eyes tear up a bit reading this story...then I read some of the comments. Some of the people in there disgust me.

I feel so sorry for this lady. My family members (my mom and aunt) were both assholes but we were all there for them in their time of need. I don't know how anyone could sleep at night in a warm bed knowing that their dying mother and her dying dog are freezing to death. I couldn't live with myself knowing someone in my family (or a friend) was suffering like that without trying to help in some way.

I get the possibility that she may have been an asshole parent which is why her kids don't contact her much, but she's elderly and dying and freezing to death. It really breaks my heart to think that in 2023 people still have to deal with this without any real help or assistance from her kids or anyone.

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mumofsixbirds
I get the possibility that she may have been an asshole parent which is why her kids don't contact her much, but she's elderly and dying and freezing to death. It really breaks my heart to think that in 2023 people still have to deal with this without any real help or assistance from her kids or anyone.

That's what I was trying to stumble around and say, but you said it much better. So , especially since we know if there was a kid involved people would be falling over themselves to help.

mum, what I find atrocious is the us throws all kind of assistance at the illegals but won't help an old person freezing to death. screw the 'nation of immigrants' shit argument. yes we are. the old school came through ellis island, each successive nation and culture group all had the hell stories of what they endured. jokes, assaults, everything under the sun. but the coddling that goes on now... whatever government subsidizes, multiplies. the main point is we are not taking care of those who are already here

two cents ¢¢

CERTIFIED HOSEHEAD!!!

people (especially women) do not give ONE DAMN about what they inflict on children and I defy anyone to prove me wrong

Dysfunctional relationships almost always have a child. The more dysfunctional, the more children.

The selfish wants of adults outweigh the needs of the child.

Some mistakes cannot be fixed, but some mistakes can be 'fixed'.

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. Leo J. Burke

Adoption agencies have strict criteria (usually). Breeders, whose combined IQ's would barely hit triple digits, have none.

there is NO NEED to pit "illegal immigrants" against the needs of the neglected elderly. For the most part NO ONE can get all the benes people blab about if they are ILLEGAL! Both groups have intense hardships and are totally different cases. Sorry, I know many of you do not agree. Nuff said

Quote
mumofsixbirds
I felt my eyes tear up a bit reading this story...then I read some of the comments. Some of the people in there disgust me.

I feel so sorry for this lady. My family members (my mom and aunt) were both assholes but we were all there for them in their time of need.

Well you are a better one than me, because if you were an asshole to me, you can turn into a popsicle for all I care.

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"I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all."
~Sigmund Freud

really? pit illegals against elderly? some elderly are elderly ne'er do wells. other elderly are people who just worked minimum wage jobs, paycheck to paycheck, and are now existing on next to nothing. and schmucks just walk across the border, put in hotels, fed food (that they throw out..), cook in their rooms, illegal,
but of course we need the slave labor. that is all they are here for imo.

and the underlying reason for this is their little cousins and uncles and whatever down there WON'T STOP F****NG AND MAKING MORE.

But that is the whole point. The powers that be only are able to exist is because they brainwash everyone into thinking they need to have children.. not only here but just about every nation on this planet.. It is easy to entice people who are desperate with a carrot on a stick to go anywhere and do almost anything... but the only way to achieve this is to make sure they breed.

I am more likely to try and help an elderly person, especially one who worked their whole lives, over some schmuck who just waltzed in over the border. despise me if you want. what is going on now will NOT bring stability to this country. If anything it is designed to destabilize. It take two generations before the offspring assimilate.

But then this is a whole pool for slave labor... it remains to be seen what happens.

btw I live 50 miles from NYC and I see what is going on there and what this bunch is doing. They were housed in a hotel and they threw out the food the taxpayers provided (at least they had been taxed and the food was intended for destitute people) because the fuckers didn't like it. they cooked in their rooms. illegal and we're probably lucky they didn't incinerate themselves. they brawled. drunks, etc. hotel employee took pictures of all of it but that story only was out for a day. didn't please the pro invasion groups.

some elderly were ne'er do wells their whole lives. some worked just paycheck to paycheck.. took all they had to survive, nothing to put away. runs the gamut.

the bottom line is the only reason this goes on is because of FU****NG breeders

two cents ¢¢

CERTIFIED HOSEHEAD!!!

people (especially women) do not give ONE DAMN about what they inflict on children and I defy anyone to prove me wrong

Dysfunctional relationships almost always have a child. The more dysfunctional, the more children.

The selfish wants of adults outweigh the needs of the child.

Some mistakes cannot be fixed, but some mistakes can be 'fixed'.

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. Leo J. Burke

Adoption agencies have strict criteria (usually). Breeders, whose combined IQ's would barely hit triple digits, have none.

South America and Mexico have below replacement fertility.

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Passive Aggressive
Master Of Anti-brat
Excuses!