A writer in a recent Atlantic article was discussing Covid and ventilators. It surmised society is biased against the elderly, which is why hospitals given the choice of ventilating two patients would choose the younger one. It referenced some other well-known studies, then said the only cultures which really value old people are African or Indigenous.
Hospitals often have to ration care in Canada. Age is one criterion, but so are many other things including comorbid diseases, chance of improvement or survival, etc. So I found the article a bit simplistic.
But the Chinese society for years espoused Confucian duties of respecting the father (i.e. The Mandate of Heaven). Elders presumably still run Korean chaebols and boss around Italian and Indian (with varying compliance) households where generations live together, at least until sonny marries or housing prices return to sanity.
Is the article true? Are contemporary Asian, Mediterranean, Latino cultures now unrespectful of their elders?
I understand sweeping generalizations are out of fashion, but the article confused me. I have often heard Chinese or South Asian friends say they would never put a parent in a home. Now, with Covid, this makes even more sense.
I have only anecdata to offer, not real scientific stuff, but I’ve read that the culture of valuing the elderly is rapidly deteriorating in Asia. One news article reported about how an elderly mother wept when her adult daughter told her flatly she was moving out of the house with her partner “because we don’t want to be around old people.” (Not that adult offspring moving out is abnormal, but the bluntness of the attitude is remarkable.)
Another friend at church told of a Chinese woman who, when told by her elderly mother that the house would be hers to inherit once the mother died, then promptly asked, “When are you going to die?”
This deterioration is also exacerbated sometimes by political divides, where the elderly are conservative and the young are liberal. There was a story in Taiwan about a young man who put his father in a chokehold because of a political disagreement.
There is a difference between respecting or venerating one’s own elder relatives, for example, and a country making decisions about (say) limited health care resources.
There is also a difference between respecting/venerating elders in general, and thinking that they are actually useful for anything. You can be quite respectful, at least in a sense, while assuming that elders are doddering fools. This is how young people often behave even in Confucianism-influenced cultures.
As for this country (the US) just look at the frequent rants against boomers and the loudly expressed wish that they should all die already. Not only are boomers useless gits but they are hoarding all the good stuff that should be raining down and benefitting their offspring and others of that age group (not younger people, though, they have to wait their turn).
The general culture in India is to value aged parents and provide for them in their old age. A couple of generations ago, “joint families” were the norm. Multiple generations would live under the same roof, usually administered by a patriarch. (Daughters would marry and go to live with their husbands, but the sons with their wives would continue in the undivided family.) In such a setup, great emphasis was placed on the care of the elderly. There used to be orphanages for the elderly, but as a rule elders were firmly entrenched at home, well provided for.
That started to change about 40 years ago in India. Nuclear families started becoming the norm rather than the exception. Both sons and daughters would marry and move away, leaving the parents to visit but not stay in a joint setup. Aged parents are still largely provided and cared for, though not in the intimate setting of a joint household. Of late even this system is straining. Admissions of the elderly to institutions is increasing rapidly in India - at least prior to Covid it was rapidly rising. I have financially contributed to such institutions where there are elders with harrowing tales of abuse and neglect.
So yes, I would unfortunately largely agree that in contemporary India elders are becoming less valuable and are being seen as more burdensome than ever before. India is still socially more cohesive than the West, so it will take time for elders to reach Western levels of loneliness, but we are getting there.
This is a bizarre assumption. Prioritizing treatment based on expected number of years of life saved has nothing to do with disrespecting the elderly. If you treat a person aged 80, you might expect to save just a few years of life. If you treat a child you might expect to save almost an entire lifetime, including the later years when that child will be an old and respected person.
If an old person really expects to get treatment priority over a younger person when limited resoures are available (and other factors are equal), I think that’s an incredibly entitled and unreasonable attitude.
The problem is deeper. It’s not just a question of years saved (QALY), it is a question of whether you could save it at all. There are many factors other than age. But age independently affects survival rates, but also cornorbidities. You need to survive to enjoy the years left.
There’s also the aspect that younger people are, in general, much more likely to survive and recover when they reach the point of needing a ventilator. Say you have two people who are both almost certain to die without a ventilator; one’s 40 and one’s 80. Based on previous patient outcomes, 60% of 40 year olds survive with treatment, while only 20% of 80 year olds do (figures rectally derived), if you only have one ventilator and you need to pick which one of the two gets it, it’s realistically going to be the 40 year old unless there’s some compelling reason why not.
That’s true, of course, but if you want a “pure” question about who you choose to treat, I think you should assume that you have factored that in. So assume a slightly healthier older person, so that you have two people whose expectation of immediate survival from the acute condition, taking everything into account, is exactly the same. But they are different ages.
Doesnt this all depend on the relationship between the kids and their elders? I mean one could have had an abusive relationship growing up so they feel no reason to help later on.
Also what is the elderly persons personality like? Do they help out alot or do they expect to be waited on?
I have a SE Asian neighbor whos elderly parents moved here a few years ago and they are really awesome people who I see always doing things like working in the yard.
I was very surprised at the differences in the treatment of elders when my wife and I became close with a Native American couple. When they have a multi-family get together the teenagers do all the cooking while the adults and grandparents sit around and talk. Then the teens serve the grandparents first, parents next, and so on descending in age. When it came time for clean up, the teens came and got our plates and went to work. Yes, our jaws were on the floor for most of that first night.
so it seems like this is specifically referring to American subcultures, not globally. I wonder if the phrase “positive views” also factors in heavily here - in my anecdotal experience, people with Asian backgrounds (both east-Asian and south-Asian) have an immensely higher sense of duty to their elders compared to “white” Canadians/Americans, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they view their elders positively (as @Roderick_Femm indicated). This doesn’t mean that Asian cultures don’t value the elderly - as an analogy, people can value a job that they work because it pays well, even if they don’t love doing it.
The article also had this to say about the a “trolley problem” experiment where people were asked to choose between saving a group of young people vs. old people:
So at least globally, it seems like Asian countries might be more likely to prioritize the health of the elderly, as opposed to Western countries.
That is the Atlantic article I am referring to. I read the article well before writing my note. Although I may have unintentionally overgeneralized what the article stated, I was also unsure which other cultures were investigated - begging the OP. My experience, which is limited, in looking after nursing home patients is that certain cultures seem more reluctant to place elders in alternative care.
I’m sure that’s true to some extent - but I’m not sure how much that has to do with valuing the old people vs. being a cultural expectation that women are to take care of the old people. Even if they would actually get better care in a nursing home.
I’m living in China; looking after and respecting the elderly members of one’s own family is a very important part of the culture here.
Furthermore, the elderly are much more visible eg you will see many groups of elderly people dancing or exercising together, playing mahjong or cards etc. If you ever get the feeling the street “belongs” to any group, it’s the retirees.
I can also believe the anecdotes upthread about some young people being jerks to their relatives though. There is a trend, particularly in wealthy families, of excruciatingly spoiled kids.
Since the age of 75, I’ve traveled to 30 countries in all continents, and I was never made to feel undervalued on account of my age. Except in the USA, where I simply felt invisible.