I love my retirement plan!
Why women who kiss the asses of sexist men are being played for fools, Exhibit #1: They are happy with your pleasant squawking, but ultimately see you as an ambulatory uterus. Megan McArdle is here getting scolded by Rod Dreher for committing the ultimate crime of having a uterus in a white woman’s body that is currently not filled. He’s not exactly subtle with his scolding—every white woman refusing to do her duty to the reich society is going to die alone and unloved. As Roy notes, the threats of being alone and unloved are a favorite tactic of culture warriors trying to bully the rest of us into following their paranoid values system. On the alone and unloved front, I have to point out, with as much tact as I can muster, that while Rod Dreher and Phillip Longman, who he quotes extensively, might be in a situation where they have to make people to get anyone to care about them, their dilemma is not shared by the entire nation. Many people are able to get friends and loved ones on a volunteer basis, even. The “no one will love you” threat has been way overplayed on the right, by the way. It’s the favorite to bully teenage girls into remaining virgins, and is easily disproved time and time again. Gay marriage has become such a central issue but all but the most dedicated homophobes will carry on about how “choosing” homosexuality is a surefire ticket to the “no one will love you” zone. I suspect that even though no one would accuse McArdle of being a deep thinker, she’s not going to say, “Oh my god, no one will love me! Off to the sperm bank I go!” Which Dreher would probably disapprove of anyway—it’s not a real baby unless it’s tied to traditional, i.e. male-dominated, marriage.
I’m impressed with the “you’ll die alone” threat. Except for the lucky few who decide to go out in murder-suicides, I do believe we all die alone. (As Roy notes, Longman’s big fear is that the hand wiping his ass in the nursing home might be a darker shade than he’d like. So that’s going on here, too.) The fear of dying alone seems to me to be a way to rationalize what’s basically a fear of dying, which is endemic to the anti-choice movement and probably as big a motivator as patriarchy worship. Longman’s magical hope that having children is something of a hedge against dying is kind of touching.
Another relationship between fertility and aging is less obvious but also important to the future. Within the Baby Boom generation there was a pronounced disparity in birthrates. Those who remained childless or had just one or two children tended to be well educated, liberal, and secular. By contrast, the roughly 30 percent of Boomers who had three or more children tended be conservative, religious, and less well educated. Members of the later group, though only a minority of their own generation, produced more than 50 percent of the next generation.
Already, as I have argued elsewhere, this pattern in Boomer birth rates (which is much more extreme than in previous generations) has led to the country becoming more morally conservative and pro-family. As Dick Cavett once quipped, “If your parents forgot to have children, chances are you will as well.”
It’s often joked that the wealthy are under the incorrect impression that you can take it with you, and I’d like to extend that to your children. You can’t take them with you. Having children ups the chances that you’ll be remembered, but let’s be frank—you won’t give two shits, as you won’t have a functioning brain to care about it with. As I’ve said before to the natalists with this odd genocidal fantasy of a world where the hated liberals just die out from our own unwillingness to cripple our households with more children than we can care for, political persuasion is not heritable. Yes, your parents’ beliefs have a huge influence on your own, but there’s also other factors that are completely ignored. For one, the Republicans’ tendency to fuck up things very badly, which turns entire generations to the left. Another major factor is the urbanization of the country, since cities lean left—a trend that’s probably going to continue as our population and gas prices rise.
Longman threatens us with images of being shut-in seniors:
Boomers who have had the experience of seeing their own parents age and die will know what a big deal family is to the elderly. What do you suppose happens to nursing home patients who never receive visitors? What happens to shut-ins? A preview of the future came in 2003, when in rapidly aging France a heat wave caused thousands of shut-in seniors to die alone. This is the scariest part of the age wave for me: thousands of seniors found dead in their homes and apartments every day only after the stink, or a wailing pet dog, alerts society. It’s going to be a phenomenon of American life. The best hope, for those who can afford it, is for new forms of communal assisted living.
I suspect that most shut-in seniors have children, though, so clearly having children is no guarantee that you’ll get the daily attention necessary to keep from dying and leaving a corpse that’s not discovered for days. The communal assisted living solution he touches on and then quickly dismisses sounds like a better plan to me. Perhaps instead of the every-senior-for-herself strategy, we as a society could look to provide that communal living for more people? Growing old isn’t a universal experience, but it’s close enough that we could probably use self-interest to fuel that kind of program. Better idea than the strategy of straining the environment and resources by making more and more children that’s being suggested here.
63 Responses to “Bargaining with death still not working”
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better yet, there is the threat that even the “investment” of two children is not enough!
but honestly, if you’ve managed to raise two kids who don’t give a shit about you in your old age, what’s to say the third is going to leap in to pick up the slack?
Don’t you want somebody to love
Don’t you need somebody to love
Wouldn’t you love somebody to love
You better find somebody to love
The meme wherein liberals get bred out of existence is pretty clever… even if it falls apart when stated more clearly. “Unless you turn into patriarchal fascists who want women to be wombs-on-wheels, you’ll never defeat the patriarchal fascists who want women to be wombs-on-wheels!”
“The communal assisted living solution he touches on and then quickly dismisses sounds like a better plan to me. Perhaps instead of the every-senior-for-herself strategy, we as a society could look to provide that communal living for more people?”
My god Amanda! You can’t go 5-minutes without trying to find a new way to drag us into LiberalCommunoFascism!
Communes for old people? I suppose you support Montessori schools, the minimum wage, union membership,
nationalsocialized healthcare, and talking to the terrists too.Let’s all hold hands, sing Kumbaya, and have an abortion party…
Why do you hate America?
(BTW, in case it wasn’t obvious, here’s the [/snark] tag…)
Dang! Now Grace Slick is echoing in my head!
It’s not intrinsically bad, but….. it’s like ‘mental peanut butter’. Or toffee.
I should also add that the desire to extend the hermetically sealed Christ-O-Bubble beyond childhood (bible colleges, think tanks, Christian media of all sorts) and the constant, gnawing fear that liberals are going to sink their teeth into The Children and turn them into gay environmentalists say far, far more about any future demographic shifts than Dreher’s concern trolling does.
Heck, you’d have to have a dozen kids and raise them in an authoritarian bubble to compete with that.
I know a woman who was saddled with all sorts of end-of-life care issues for both of her parents, who were much older than those of other people she knew.
They were older because she was #13 of 13. Despite being #11 of 11 surviving adults, ahe was saddled with their issues because “we cannnt do that we cannn’t help we cannnt expect our bloated 13 year old to come mow gramma’s lawn we cannnnt because we are too busyyy with our keeeeds” was the constant refrain of her siblings who just didn’t want to be bothered. They used THEIR families as an excuse to not be available or do crap for their parents. After all, the youngest wasn’t married yet or anything so it should just ALL be up to her (despite her 50 hour a week job, I might add …). (I had one of these lovely sibs get steamed at me because I suggested that her 14 year old son could easily pick up some of the yard work. Silly me!)
I can only hope that these people spend their years in nursing homes, at the whim of the kids they never taught to care. Maybe their kids will be sooo devoted to their own families as to not have any time to care for them. Meanwhile, my friend and her partner are doing just fine, thanks. Seems mom and dad left her the house …
Dear Rod: Don’t worry. By the time you stink, you won’t care any more. It’ll be someone else’s problem.
Mrs Nice Guy
I think I saw some study showing that fundies “lose” their kids (don’t successfully transfer a lifestyle) more than any other subculture in the U.S.
Can I put in a shameless plug for PACE, the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly? (website: http://www.ccano.org/pace.htm)
Live at home, holistic approach, Medicare funded. It’s beautiful, and they should have one in every community.
Oh Noes! I’ll be a senior shut in!
With internet.
With XBox.
What’s the problem again?
Let’s go back to this Seniors Commune idea for a minute.
I don’t know about other thirtysomething CF folks, but if I could move into a commune with the likes of MAJeff, Amanda, MikeEss, Mnemosyne and Ms Kate when I got to be old and decrepit, I’d be all over it.
The whole idea of living a socially isolated suburban lifestyle with single-family homes and no public transportation is what’s screwing up the U.S.’s percentage of world population/percentage of world resource consumption anyway.
I really don’t see what would be so bad about a compound of old folks who have each other for company and intellectual stimulation, living out the end of their years together.
Oh wait. I see the problem now: without being under the supervision of the medical-industrial complex and doped up on Thorazine ™, the pharma corporations can’t bleed all value from seniors’ assets, thereby preventing them from leaving their estates to charities or groups who organize for social change. And we definitely can’t have that. Oh noes. Gotta make sure the people at Merck and Pfizer maximize dividends for their stockholders, whether old people really need their products or not. How stupid of me. I should have known better.
Mrs. Kate:
Ive long since retired, my sons moved away.
I called him up just the other day.
Id like to see you, if you don’t mind.
He said, I’d love to, dad, if I could find the time.
You see my new jobs a hassle and the kids have the flu,
But it’s sure nice talkin to you, dad.
Its been sure nice talkin to you.
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me,
Hed grown up just like me.
My boy was just like me.
(Last verse, Cats in the Cradle, Harry Chapin)
“it’s like ‘mental peanut butter’. Or toffee”
Ack, now all my lobes are stuck together . . .
Seeing these guys reach in these really desperate ways makes me sort of cheerful. Even they have to be seeing how thin their arguments are!
As for me, while I’ve never personally squeezed out a baby, my siblings have been excessively fertile. When I’m old and decrepit, I’ll expect my nephews to take up the slack in appreciation for my giving them all the cool gifts when they were little snots.
Exactly mezosub. I’m agreeing completely
What makes them think adult children are always attentive to their elderly parents? Do they think all the neglected nursing home patients are childless? Yeah, OK. That, or their six kids are all too busy/selfish to give a damn.
My dad is one of four; he and one of his sisters are the only ones who do a thing for my grandparents (who are both in assisted living). The other siblings act like they don’t even have living parents.
Soooo, the moral of the story is: children are not guaranteed care-takers. And that’s a pretty short-sighted and stupid reason to have kids anyway.
Speaking of dying alone, has anyone seen the director’s cut of Donnie Darko? Been wondering if it’s worth getting.
This guy thinks the country has gotten MORE “morally conservative” since the Boomer generation? That’s like something you could tell a robot to make its head blow up.
Actually, if you want someone to take care of you in your old age, you specifically need daughters. In the US, women do almost all the work of caring for elderly parents (meaning, as opposed to men caring for elderly parents, not as opposed to nursing homes.) So the couple who have 5 sons are less likely to be cared for by one of their own children than the couple that have 1 daughter. They may end up cared for by a daughter-in-law, but most of the time, a daughter-in-law will conserve her resources for her *own* mother if both of you get sick at the same time.
Also, gay children, both male and female, are more likely to care for elderly parents than straights because they are less likely to be burdened with children of their own.
So if the goal is to have kids who will take care of you in your old age, the stereotype of the manly football playing son is totally wrong. You should have a daughter, preferably a gay daughter or a childfree daughter, and if you can’t manage that a gay son would be better than a straight son. If you’re a Fundie, of course, you have scared off and alienated all your gay children and probably any childfree children you have.
Also, having 13 kids is totally counterproductive. Girls who are the oldest in large families tend to prefer themselves to be childfree *and* are totally burnt out on caretaking, because they get used by their mothers for so much free babysitting.
A much better strategy would be to have a small number of children, preferably mostly girls, and then give them lots of love, personalized attention, and respect. Being an authoritarian figure will only hurt when you’re old and can’t maintain Your Authoritah anymore; kids who are used to you running their lives for them and telling you what to do won’t be able to wrap their head around the idea that you’re a person like them, with weaknesses, and you have needs. Be a person to your children from the beginning –something you can’t do if you have too many or raise them from an authoritarian mindset.
But even that might not work. So consider a retirement community full of old people like yourself and other old people who are younger than yourself.
Gee,
My post at rod’s is being held for review, do you think this will get through?
The Undeniable Truth About Motherhood
http://web.archive.org/web/19990127123001/bitch.shutdown.com/childfree.html
Parents are Stupid
http://web.archive.org/web/19990203080740/bitch.shutdown.com/parentsarestupid.html
I don’t think the “who will take care of you if you don’t have kids” line is actually one that persuades a lot of real world parents. its just way too much fun and too much investment for the payoff. I think its one of these bizarre, second order, rationalizations that someone on the right pays someone in a think tank to assert. There’s no person in the real world–left, right, or fundy lunatic–who has any experience at all of dysfunctional families, real families, debt, disease and death who thinks that children do you much good at all in end of life situations.
In fact I think if you looked at what people’s actual experiences are–if you went to church groups, religious communities, AA, other addict groups, hell even weight watchers, you’d find people with children or who were part of large families are under no illusion that their children are some kind of retirement scheme. People have always had children, and always will, as the triumph of hope over experience *regardless of the fact* that most of the people having large and small families these days themselves come from large, complex, blended, dysfunctional families if the divorce rate of the last fifty years tells you anything.
The whole “dark people will wipe your bottom” argument that Dreher pushes is actually fairly explicitly an accusation that other people aren’t producing enough of the right *race* of people to be Dreher’s future servants. Why doesn’t he write “dark people will build your houses, clean your houses, and be your doctors and teachers” as you get older. Its also true. Its also nothing that producing your own (white) children even in excess is really going to fix. All of us are going to be dependent on lots of other kinds of people for lots of things during the course of our lives. That’s a good thing. What if I had ten children and none of them were doctors? Should I refuse to go to the doctor because I didn’t breed one myself?
aimai
Not to mention the fact that by not having children, you stand a good chance of actually saving enough money to buy very good retirement living and (later) end-of-life care. And I say this as someone who hopes to have at least one or two kids someday. But lord, if there’s anything children AREN’T, it’s a guarantee against poverty or unhappiness.
And yet it’s one of the first lines that get whipped out — even by lefty types — as an argument against being childfree. Funny, that.
My mom is starting to interview retirement homes, and the ones she has been to are so nice I want to move in. She can well afford it on her hard earned pension, and she will be much better off than she would be with me, because I’m gone 12-15 hours per day! She could have not had me at all, and as long has she stuck with her career, would be well assured of a VERY comfortable retirement, and these places have someone who comes in to polish your silver for you. And my mom was a teacher, not a fortune 500 executive.
One of those “English style” apartment courts with some sort of communal/community arrangement would be ideal for elderly Americans– the privacy we crave with the community we’ve been pretty systematically denied all our lives.
I may not have resentful adult children to wipe my bottom when I’m old, but I’ll have a few extra decades of selfish fun, and much more money to spend on an experienced caretaker who WILL wipe my bottom.
Wait, I thought having kids was supposed to be the selfless course?
Actually, does anyone else find the notion of being dependent on family members completely unappealing? If I have kids, I would rather pay someone to care for me rather than burden my children or feel like a burden to them. Not to mention the fact that family members can be extremely brutal to dependent relatives (see Jane Austen). I have observed situations in which children have made it crystal clear to their elderly relatives that they caring for them is a pain in the butt and a huge inconvenience.
People act as though being cared for people you pay is really horrible, but I would be more comfortable paying for my care than simply depending on the good will of others, even close relatives.
Or what Sarah MC said more succinctly.
Wait, you mean a Bushist Health Savings Account won’t be taking care of me in my old age?
The director’s cut of Donnie Darko is significantly worse than the theatrical cut and Richard Kelly’s commentary will make you want to kill him, although it doesn’t matter, because he killed himself with Southland Tales.
even having kids who are loving and attentive isn’t a guarantee that you won’t die alone because death isn’t usually something you plan (and when it is, the fundies hate that). my grandmother died alone in spite of having 5 daughters, 4 of whom lived relatively near, all of whom were in close contact with her. they just didn’t happen to be visiting the night she had the massive heart attack.
on the other hand, she lived in a house her eldest daughter bought for her, with a garden my mom planted, and talked to all her kids regularly. so, yeah, there’s something to the theory of treating your kids decently if you want to be a happy senior.
I am a childless daughter, and I was ALL STOKED to take care of my Mom during her elderly years, and she up and DIED ON ME!!!!! Man.
If you don’t want to linger or burden your children with your care, well, smoke a pack a day. (I’m just being bitter. This is NOT real advice.)
More to the point: I second the observation/statistical fact that your GAY CHILD is the one who will actually give a shit about you/talk to you/take care of you when you are old and need help. Often, even IN SPITE OF the fact that you disowned them/threw them out/haven’t spoken for decades.
THe very best you can do is have a gay child, if that is your goal. My mother and most adults (70’s I mean) I know DREAD being any sort of burden and do everything they can to make sure they will not be a burden.
(FWIW, I think having children SHOULD be a selfish act., You should have them because you WANT them around. Because you likfe children and because you think being a parent would be fun)
I feel sorry for anyone who has to rationalize their choice to have kids because they’re afraid to die alone. In fact, anyone who has children because they have an expectation of love and care should have their gonads donated to the Rocky Mountain Shellfish Society. I can just imagine the conversations they would have with their progeny:
“Mom, can I have that Bumblebee toy?”
“Only if you promise, forty years from now, to let me move into the guest room so that I don’t have to move into a home.”
“Dad? Can I have my curfew moved to one o’clock?”
“You know, there’s another ticking clock you should be worried about… the ticking clock of your dad’s life! I’m not going to be young and mobile forever, you know, so while you’re out screwing around with your friend until all hours of the night those are precious moments of my life that are draining away! And what are you doing to help me? NOTHING! You’re just playing videogames and thinking about boys! Your lack of responsibility sickens me! In fact, I think it’s time to go knock up your mother because clearly I can’t trust you for shit!”
It’s completely selfish (and foolish) to plan on your elder care being taken care of simply by having children. Your kids will have their own lives, families, and dropping everything to move across the country to go wipe mom’s ass isn’t typically an option. The retirement community my grandma is in is amazing. There are different levels of care for differently abled people, the food is really good, and there are tons of old people around and plenty of activities. My grandparents were very happy there (when both were living and not senile) and chose to move in. It’s not a place to stick old people you don’t want to look at, it’s a recognition of the fact that when you’re old you can’t do as much stuff any more. But from my family experiences, the fact of the matter is that you’ve got to do more planning than having a couple kids.
This is the scariest part of the age wave for me: thousands of seniors found dead in their homes and apartments every day only after the stink, or a wailing pet dog, alerts society.
Well, that was a swipe at Dr. Laura from out of nowhere…
It’s painfully obvious The Rod doesn’t know what he’s talking about. My friend’s wife has a mother in assisted living, and she is the only one of her five siblings who is remotely interested in visiting regularly, checking their mom’s medication or taking her for blood tests. She even took her mom into her own home–while raising a 1-year-old–for several months beforehand.
Her siblings have rewarded her selflessness with a mix of verbal abuse and indifference. Apparently, as the youngest, she was *expected* to stay home and care for their mother so that no one else in the family had to give a shit, and they won’t forgive her for getting married and/or getting a life and a family of her own. Even her mother berates her on a regular basis, because…I’m not even sure why. If it weren’t for the youngest in the family, Mom would be SOL.
Having kids is no guarantee that you’ll be cared for in old age, nor is it an excuse to pack your children in a cruel little box of guilt-laden servitude.
I think I saw some study showing that fundies “lose” their kids (don’t successfully transfer a lifestyle) more than any other subculture in the U.S.
Why do you think there’s such a push for home-schooling and “christian” colleges? Gotta keep fighting those devilish temptations–like critical thinking and reason.
One of those “English style” apartment courts with some sort of communal/community arrangement would be ideal for elderly Americans– the privacy we crave with the community we’ve been pretty systematically denied all our lives.
My great-aunt lived in an old hotel in the Chicago suburbs that gave people as much independence as they were capable of. She cooked on the little stove in there until her arthritis made it impossible, and then they started bringing her meals.
She was an Italian immigrant from a large family who had a large family, so she seemed to really relish the fact that other people were cooking for her, instead of the other way around. She lived to 100, so it seems to have worked out for her.
My grandmother was able to stay in her condo with the help of a full-time aide, who was absolutely wonderful to her. She treated her like her own grandmother. Oh, but Rod wouldn’t have liked her since she was Filipina and clearly having a white person wipe your ass is much more important than having a caring person do it.
Even if you DO your duty to the Reich, chances are you’ll die alone and unloved because he took a trophy wife and refused to pay child support.
This whole “have kids to take care of you” stupidity also neglects the fact that the next US generation is not automatically going to be better-off than their parents (as the current one may well not be better off than theirs). So what if you have kids and all they do is siphon off your retirement account to pay off their college loans and medical bills? I would have made a really really shitty caretaker for either of my parents had matters come to that…
if you’ve managed to raise two kids who don’t give a shit about you in your old age, what’s to say the third is going to leap in to pick up the slack?
http://www.enotes.com/kl-text/
What makes them think adult children are always attentive to their elderly parents? Do they think all the neglected nursing home patients are childless?
Right.
In my current job (related to the UK benefits system) I not only come across a lot of childed adults who are stranded without help because their children can’t be arsed to look after them, but old and disabled people whose families are actively ripping them off (claiming care allowance money from the state and providing no care whatsoever) or abusing them in some fashion - verbally, physically or financially.
Oh, and every last one of the people I’ve known over the years who have stepped up to care for an eldery parent or relative, sometime having to give up their jobs to do so? Childless females. The ones with their own kids are inclined to treat their own kids as the priority, not their ageing parents, or at least try to use them as an excuse to get someone else to do the dirty work. You’d be surprised how the definition of ‘my family’ shrinks to include only someone’s own progeny/spouse when push comes to shove.
I have to say, as an only child who was in a caregiver position from ages 18-28 (and obviously, I’ll end up doing it again), I’m glad to not have siblings so I won’t mistakenly think they’ll step up to the plate. I spent years in caregiver support groups and there was one guy in it for awhile…who was married. I would be willing to bet he wasn’t doing 100% of the care of his parents. I remember many women in group complaining that their siblings wouldn’t lift a finger for their parents unless they had a chance of getting money out of them. I saw my aunts not do a damn thing except visit once in a while, while my mother took care of every single sick person in the family starting, well, around the age that I started at. I was secretly gloating that one of my aunts was FORCED to step up to the plate to take care of her parents because her only sibling, my dad, was too sick to do it and my mother had her hands full taking care of him, so they couldn’t force it on her. Not that they’ve done a whole lot compared to my mom- more like the bare minimum.
Whatever adult steps up to the plate is the one who gets stuck with the hot potato, forever. Sad but true.
I hate to pop poor dear Mr. Longman’s bubble, but having children is absolutely no gaurantee at all that you won’t end up a lonely, wizened old crone dying unloved in a nursing home. I used to work in one, and believe me, a large majority of the people who never got visitors HAD kids–quite a lot of them even lived in the same town. And when you’re as hateful and ignorant as Mr. Longman, chances are your kids will grow up to hate and resent you, and wash their hands of you the red-hot second they turn 18.
And there’s a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can’t be with the one you love
Love the one you’re with
Maybe THAT’S why my childless aunt told me and my mom years ago that when Auntie gets old, it’s up to Louise to take care of her!
Like hell!
Someone - I think it was Elizabeth Cady Stanton - gave, as one reason for the necessity of feminism, the fact that we all die alone. Even if you are surrounded by friends and family, you are, in the end, alone, and if you have been in a dependent position your whole life, how will you be accountable for yourself and to yourself in that existential moment? Or something like that.
And she had seven kids.
Amanda, and many commentors, have covered the obnoxious racist and fundie angle to the “But who will caaaaare for you when you get ooooolllld?” bleating.
However, there’s one more little thing: What if you outlive your child? I can’t remember the source, but I read that somthing like one-third of “oldest old” women (over 80) have outlived at least one child. Sadly, it’s more common than one might think for an elderly person who makes it past 80 or so to outlive a middle-aged child. Kiddo gets cancer or a heart attack and suddenly, Mom is standing over her child’s adult-sized coffin.
I’m a breast-cancer survivor. The odds are extremely good that I’ll be a crazy old cat lady one day, shaking my sparkly pink cane at those goddamn kids on my lawn. BUT…if the worst happens, my mom might outlive me. I’m her only child. She has money and other people who care about her, so she’ll be cared for even if I wind up playing “Is There A God?” in my forties or fifties. But my point is what everyone else said: you can’t bank on your kids as guaranteed old-age care. And not because they don’t want to. Death or severe disability might leave them incapable of caring for anyone.
All these stories of kids not caring for their parents are really depressing me, I have to say. I thought it was just my mom’s brothers who were like that. Three more useless siblings you never saw when my mom’s parents were sick and dying. Haven’t seen them in years and don’t want to.
There’s four of us; right now, I think that at least three of us will do our best to take care of Mom when she needs it (judging by how we’ve been in smaller crises). I know for a fact that my (Baptist preacher!) oldest brother won’t do a damn thing. He’s never done anything for anyone else in the family, and when she needs care, I doubt he will change his ways.
emjaybee, that’s just so damned sad. When my grandmother died of cancer, my mom moved right in with her for the last 6 months and took beautiful care of her. My dad, who adored his MIL, was extremely supportive and moved in for the lat 48 hours, because Gram needed meds every hour on the hour and mom was afraid to go to sleep.
One uncle who lives nearby also helped Mom every day and was there for the last 48 hours as well- the other 2 siblings live on the other coast and were so supportive of every decision the 2 at home made! A cousin and I took the info from Mom and my uncle on a daily basis and forwarded to all relatives out-of-state. Many distant family came by to visit and help in any way they could, or just to give Mom some respite.
When Gram died, one of the other coast kids had just flown home and 3 cousins (including me) travelled 100-300 miles to be with the family and got there within the hour. Grammie took such good care of Gramp a decade before and was always terrified she would die alone- instead, she died with 3 of her 4 children and most of her grandkids there, peacefully and lovingly cared for. Even after she passed, someone stayed with her non-stop until it was time for her to be taken to the funeral home.
Gram has one wonderful sister left who never had children- she is almost 90 and is like an extra grandmother. Someone in the family checks on her every day and when it is time, she will be cared for as well.
When my mother had a heart attack, and it was uncertain whether or not she’d make it, my siblings and I had a meeting to consider long-term care options.
Interestingly, those care options all seemed to involve either me dropping everything and moving in with Mom (which would mean either quitting my job or commuting over an hour each way, and how that would help her I’m not sure) or my sister, who had two young children, taking her in. Granted, my sister was married to a Marine at the time and Mom could have become a dependent, meaning that they’d get an allowance for her and she could be put on the military plan.
But you know? I have four brothers. And not one of them — even the three of them who were married or engaged and who lived in houses with extra bedrooms — even suggested taking care of her.
As it turned out, she passed away, but I am still resentful of the fact that they all “volunteered” me to uproot my life and take care of her just because I’m female, single and childless.
Gosh. If the question is “who will care for you in old age?”, you’d be better off taking all that money you would have spent on your children and invested it wisely, and used the proceeds to secure a comfy old age.
zuzu, that’s terribly unfair! My sympathies…
I was going to answer the “what if the child dies first?” question above by saying that since my younger sister died a year ago, I’m the only child- but since Mom and Dad have so many nephews that they are close to, I don’t worry.
Then I realized…yeah, my male cousins would help to some degree, but the actual physical WORK will still fall to either me (100 miles away and with 2 kids, one disabled) or their WIVES.
Fuck…
What mattered has always been about quality, rather than quantity.
Having too many or too few of people/children does not always materially affect whether the parent or the environment is cared for.
What matters is an ethos of caring empathy, and an understanding that we all have places and duties and joys…
I notice that none of the oh-so-conservative commentators mention another aspect of the “alone in old age” problem– that our American economy and society uproots all of us from our hometowns and communities and directs us towards unwalkable, isolated subdivisions.
My grandfather retired to his home country thousands of miles from his children and grandchildren. Even though he would spend many months of every year in the US and although many of us passed through over the summer to see him, what really ensured that he and my grandmother were not alone in their old age was that they moved back to their small hometown and spent time socializing with the friends, neighbors, and relatives that they had all grown up with and were all within walking distance.
How come these defenders of good social values aren’t agitating to make our communities more conducive to being places where people grow up and settle and retire in.
I am the 3rd of 4 kids, and although I don’t think any of us would abandon our parents, everyone has acknowledged that I’ll probably be the one to take care of them. I only live 20 minutes away by car (vs 2 hours for my sis, and 10 hours for either brother), and I’m single, childfree, so it’s pretty logical. I don’t mind, for the most part, cause I love my parents.
All three of my sibs have made made some hopeful remarks about getting Mom and Dad to move closer, but my parents live in the country, with no close neighbors, and their choices would be Cleveland, Long Island, or Washington DC. They’re really not interested in any of those choices, so it comes back to me again. Still, it’s good to have talked about these things before they become necessary.
When I was helping my mother and sibs doing -in-house hospice care for my step-dad a few years ago, I did at one point have an urge to have more kids (I have 2).
Not for myself, but because it was so HARD emotionally and physically accompanying him through his last 2 weeks that I don’t know how all of us (5 sisters, mom, brother, and me) would have coped with it without the comfort and help each other. Giving meds, changing sheets, doing the 24/7 bedside vigil. Holding each other when we broke-down weeping…
I was thinking - wow this would be so much harder if it were just me and mom and one sister.
But, of course after the immediate trauma, I realized that we would have coped (somehow) and that there’s no guarantee that any of my kids will be changing my sheets and sharing nursing shifts - or maybe I’ll have a *quick* death.
So, although it’s a dumb idea (have more kids so you can have people at your death-bed) - it’s not completely crazy.
BTW - The hospice nurse who was with us the last 4 hours was an amazingly wonderful woman. Kind of like a midwife of death, helping him and us all through a really rough physical and emotional time.
I am the youngest daughter, and I have no children. Mother died in December after months of illness. So this is all very familiar to me.
Yes, I did more support than the other children, including the one that lives only a mile away, who at least twice threatened not to help her any more, ever, if she didn’t “do what she was told.”
Anyway.
Agencies get a lot of the money that goes into home health care. The people who do the actual work aren’t paid or treated spectacularly well and this means dedicated and sharp individuals often burn out, and find other work that pays better. So they end up with some good people, some average people, and some you wouldn’t want giving your dog a bowl of water for fear they’d drown it.
More expensive home health workers aren’t always good, either. I suspect they’re just more likely to be White, which obviously isn’t any real advantage.
When you are old, or very ill, it’s especially hard to assert yourself about poor care without being ignored or feeling you are putting yourself in danger of reprisal.
I know that children aren’t magically better at home care than paid providers, but a dedicated and loving child can do a whole lot to make that home care better both directly and by advocating for the parent.
Just as a good Mom or Dad is a huge positive factor in a child’s upbringing, a good son or daughter can have the same positive effect on a parent’s illness and death.
While you do die alone, if it happens when you’re surrounded by friends or family, or in the arms of a family member or friend, I think that probably is better than lying in your own excrement in a room pressing the call button and getting no response. That’s no argument for having children, but it is one for having people around you who care about you personally.
I’m a little taken aback by the notion that offspring, any offspring, should be the ones to take care of parents when they become infirm. I don’t think spouses should be forced into this role either, because the work and the emotional burdens (and the physical burdens and the skills that have to be learned) can be thoroughly unbearable. That’s the kind of thing a good social and medical safety net is for. And paid, qualified caregivers who can go home after their shift is done.
Dreher isn’t much of a Christian, is he? Part of the package in Christianity is taking care of the widows (and nowadays, the widowers) and orphans.
Dreher also didn’t look around too much during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the US (1981-1996, or thereabouts). The number of gay AIDS service organizations, the number of gay volunteers for those without partners (”AIDS buddies”), the speed with which the gay-initiated non-governmental AIDS care infrastructure was assembled - this crisis is a textbook example of communitarian caring. (caveat - outreach to black men (gay and MSM-non-gay-identified) and rural folk took a while longer.
I think the “my children will take care of me” thing was a valid concept a while ago. Fundies in general cling to the idea of the family-farm method of living: my children will live exactly as I have lived, and we as a family are on our own, and the only thing preventing the collapse of society is very strict codes of conduct, because obviously if people aren’t forced to do the right thing they won’t do it, and so, kid, if you don’t do what I say I won’t give you the resources to survive on, and I’m your only way of getting them. (Of course, even when this was the dominant mode of society, there were lots of slips, but the consequences were great enough to scare off lots of people from disobeying their fathers/religious leaders/political leaders/&c.)
The fact that there was an Industrial Revolution seems to have been missed by rather a lot of people, despite the fact that they are not butchering their own meat and making their own clothes on a regular basis.
When my grandfather’s health was failing 2 years ago and my grandmother’s arthritis suddenly prevented her from caring for him, it was my mother, their EX daughter-in-law, who drove over there every day before and after work to prepare their meals, give my grandfather his medication, and do any housework that needed to be done. My father, their doted-upon only son, couldn’t be bothered. But he was so selfish he didn’t want to put them in a nursing home, even temporarily, because he didn’t want to lose a precious cent of his inheritance. (Bitter? Why, yes I am.) My mother was the one who actually discovered my grandfather had died and coped with much of the cleaning of the house afterward for my grandmother. My father has told my mother and many other people how wonderful Mom was for doing all this, but that stops just before honoring his parents’ wishes that my mother receive an inheritance (a second will was started but never finished before my grandmother also died). If my grandparents hadn’t been lucky enough that their son married a my mother, they would have been alone and uncared for. I was 8 hours drive away, and my brothers “couldn’t handle” seeing them that way.
I expect that when the time comes, I will end up caring for Mom, and possibly my stepfather. I expect no help from my middle brother, and can only hope that the youngest brother will pitch in. The stepbrother is an unknown right now. But when my father starts to decline….well, as folks said above - it’s hard to care for a parent who has caused so much pain and grief.
I may have posted this quote before, on another thread or site, but my mother has burned the homily into my brain: “Your son is your son until he takes a wife, your daughter’s your daughter for all of her life.”
My bro (1 kid + 1 fetus) is in St. Louis, about two hours away from Mom. I’m child-free in NYC. She’s healthy, but there’s no telling what will happen. I fully expect to get stuck holding the bag, as it were.
While we’ve got our family baggage like anyone, what I resent is the assumption that *I* am expected to be dutiful and self-sacrificing, and will be labelled as Ungrateful and Selfish if I don’t deliver. Bro will feel a little bad about it, but not enough, I fear, to step up and be an adult.
My mom’s never been the best parent (maaaad authoritarian style of parenting and proud of it, lots of unresolved psychological issues from the way her similarly-strict parents played her and her sister off each other as part of their own power struggle as well as poor health (non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at college age, for example, as well as hep C from a blood transfusion and no immune system to speak of), bitter over acrimonious divorce, definite alcoholism, probable Hoarding Disorder, plausible Paranoid Schizophrenia, and a tendency to panic all combine into a rather child-unfriendly package).
However, she’s made this promise to me, her only daughter: I will *never* be called on to take care of her. Someone else will care for her, someone else is the trustee and executor of her will. She said the funeral arrangements are entirely up to what I would be most comfortable with.
The reason for this is… that entire package of not-the-best-mental-or-physical-health up there? THAT was called upon/demanded of itself to move in with my grandfather after my grandmother died suddenly and he withered away from lung cancer. I was at boarding school, so mom was able to do this. It made more sense than for my aunt to move, as she was in Missouri rather than California and, while childfree, bred dogs, a lot of them. Plus, apparently mom was grandpa’s favorite. (Messed-the-fuck-up family, I realize more every day.)
So, yeah, she now realizes that the whole thing was a Bad Idea. A Very Bad Idea. And is taking steps to ensure that I don’t have to do the same thing for her.
Phew.