Is this selfish? (involving caring for an elderly parent)

My parents visited me yesterday. They seemed pleased with my new digs and new neighborhood. Later, my mother and I were talking while my father napped. I asked if she would want to ever live me, if it ever came to her needing to live with someone. She said no. I would have to move down there and care for her because she wasn’t giving up her house and backyard swimming pool and church and friends. When I said I didn’t think this was quite fair (seems to me the caregiver should get to choose where they live), she said I was being selfish.

I have no doubt this is a dilemma faced by many adult children and their parents all the time. On one hand, no one wants to think about leaving frail, elderly parents to their own devices hundreds of miles away. But on the other, no one really wants to put their loved ones in a home–and our society puts a big guilt trip on you if you choose to do so. And yet on ANOTHER hand, no one wants to give up all the things and people they know in life, just because a certain page has turned in their life. Especially if you think you’re quite capable of caring for yourself. My maternal grandmother has been living by herself for centuries, in a little pre-fab house in Gary, IN surrounded by crack dens on both sides. I’m sure my mother worries constantly, but she can’t make the old lady move and the old lady doesn’t want help anyway. So for now, until things become really bad, the status quo is being maintained.

But what is an adult child to do? If they’re really worried, I suppose they WOULD suck it up and move down to take care of their parent. But is it right for the parent to automatically expect this to happen? Would it be selfish if the adult child decided to be just as stubborn as the parent and not move? Or to tell the parent, “The choice is either come up here or you’re moving into a home”?

Hopefully this isn’t a dilemma I have to face anytime soon. But my mother’s expectation that I should gladly give up my life to take care of her has got me thinking.

I don’t think your position is selfish at all. Depending on your current situation, moving to care for parent(s) may involve changing or losing your job, and possibly the same for a spouse, uprooting your kids from school, social activities, etc., selling your home or leasing it to someone else, and so forth. All so that you can do someone else a favor. (And frankly, we’ve already made it clear to both sets of aging parents that we will be glad to provide care for them if they need it, but that it will be on our turf. We even bought our house with that possibility in mind. This came after my in-laws put their lives on hold to care for a mom for almost two decades, and after my mom put her business into someone else’s hands and moved to care for her mother. Love and honor and duty are one thing, but martyrdom doesn’t appeal to us.)

Think of it this way: when you were younger and needed your parents’ care, they were probably glad to do it, but you didn’t set the terms. If your dad got a job transfer, you almost certainly weren’t allowed to say “I’m not moving, so you’ll just have to deal with it.” Right? When the roles are reversed, the primary caregiver is the one who has the final say-so.

I agree with Lacunae Matata. Especially with the economy the way it is, it would be unreasonable to expect the caregiver to give up a job to move. Factoring in the needs of the caregivers children is important, also. Forcing a child to move away from friends, activities and school can result in a child that really resents his/her grandparent for being the cause of it.

However, housing is also an issue. Who has the best setup for adding a family member? Medical providers are also a consideration. Assisted living is an option more seniors I know are considering if they are in the position to afford it. Some of those places are very nice.

Its not selfish. Its just mostly being practical and realistic. Sure if you have a job/career that can easily be transplanted and you don’t particularly care if you live in Florida or Washington State, then yeah, maybe be just a little unselfish and move to make the old folks happy. If that isn’t the case the people in need of help need to be the flexible ones. of course thats major problem in these cases…the old folks are often totally inflexible.

Given your mom’s opinion on the matter and yours, you might want to start getting them used the idea of how its possibly go down in the future. Yeah, they won’t be happy, but they’ll be less unhappy than if they just assumed for years on end that you’d move to take care of them when the time comes and you don’t/won’t/can’t.

Hell no, it’s not selfish. On the contrary - I think it’s selfish for your mother to expect you to give up YOUR life to go care for her.

Heck, I don’t even think it’s particularly selfish to not want them to live with you. If a parent is old/sick enough that they need to live with someone, that’s not to be taken lightly. It will upset your life, and it’s a drain on your entire family. Luckily, most people have a lot of options - my grandmother, for example, stayed in her own apartment up until 3 months or so before she died. My mother helped her out a lot, but she also had paid workers (not nurses, more like elder care aids) come in just about every day. The cost was reasonable.

And honestly, the knee-jerk reaction that all nursing homes are horrible is not always true. I’m sure there are bad ones, depending on where you are, but I can say that once my Grandmother was put in a nursing home after she broke her pelvis, I visited her very often, and it really wasn’t bad. It was clean, the care was good, they had activities and the social aspects were a plus. Were I to get to a point where I needed round-the-clock care, I wouldn’t be opposed to living in a similar facility myself.

This is a subject I’ve been exposed to quite a bit, between both sets of grandparents, and my parents are now both in their mid-70s. Elder care is on my mind a lot lately, and I’ve had a lot of people giving me advice. Most people who have been through it all say the same thing - take care of yourself. Don’t give up your own life to be a caregiver. You can’t make anyone young or healthy again, so don’t kill yourself trying. It’s a huge amount more work to care for an aging relative even if they don’t live with you. So don’t be hard on yourself, do the best you can, and above all, stay in balance.

I was reading an article in Salon the other day about this topic (another reason why I posted this thread). The writer, an elderly parent herself, said something that really gave me pause, even if I have no idea how common an experience this is: Adults frequently spend more time caring for their parents than they do their own children. These caregivers are often very resentful because they spend most of their life caring for other people and never have any time to be carefree.

Since children have never been part of my future, perhaps my mother doesn’t think I’d have a lot to lose by moving. Maybe in her eyes, I have no life here that’s worth “saving”, at least compared to hers. She has never said asmuch, but I can totally imagine her saying it.

That really sucks, if this is how she sees things, but I guess I can’t argue against it. But the mean part of me thinks she can just take care of herself–paying her mortgage and in-home nursing care and everything else–if that’s how she’s going to be. I wouldn’t want her living with me anyway.

I don’t think this is true anymore. Old folks homes are springing up like weeds around here and each one is nicer than the last. You’ll notice that nobody calls them old folks homes anymore either.

My mother and her sister have that kind of situation; only “that kind” because Grandma is in better health than any 98yo has the right to be in, and because my cousin lives 3 blocks away from her. Both Mom and Aunt are in worse general physical shape than their mother (a lot of Grandma’s ills come from not wanting to make any effort she can avoid - this isn’t a new development, she’s been like that for as long as I can remember). Aunt lives some 100km away (1.5h door to door), Mom 400km (3.5h).

Grandma wants either or both daughters to move in with her, not leave the house except when she orders them to go shopping, do things exactly her way, not have any entertainment except what she feels like having/authorizing (she would berate my mother for “wasting time reading” back when Mom was studying to become a Lit Teacher - and she’s still doing it 55 years later). Neither daughter would be allowed to visit their local friends; if Aunt and Cousin wanted to see each other, it would have to be at Grandma’s.

I’ll leave the exact responses of both daughters to the imagination of the readers; the polite version is “you want my help and you’re not actually bleeding to death? Come to my house, and you’re only allowed to stay until I ship you back”; the overall strategy includes making sure that their mother hears about every single doctor visit, physical therapy session, sugar spike, social engagement, grandchildren fed… in other words “I’m in worse health than you are and I happen to have a life of my own”.

Then again, some elderly, demented and/or frail folks need 24/7 monitoring for their own safety and this is not something that can be done by the average person unless you can afford in-home help on a daily ongoing basis. Been there done that with my grandmother, and I know a couple of people who are expending a LOT of energy on caring for elderly parents, right now.

Which is the right thing to do, if possible. But certainly not easy.

monstro, it sounds like your mother has the means to hire help so she can stay in her home as long as possible and this is probably what would make her happy as long as she can do it? I also have elderly parents (thankfully still very healthy) and they have no wish for any of their children to drop everything and care for them if need be. They’ve made this very clear.

I don’t think it’s fair at all for a parent to expect a grown child to drop everything to care for him or her, especially if the parent has means to pay for their own care.

We agonized about this after my mother had a stroke (Mom and I were very close, by the way).

My moving down there: not feasible. I would have to give up my job–my career–and live somehow with no income, insurance or medial benefits while looking after Mom. In addition to the trauma of giving up my apt., all my belongings and my cats.

Moving Mom up here: not feasible. She’d have to give up her cats and belongings, and that would remove her from her friends, her doctors, the neighborhood she loved. And I would still have to hold down a job while looking after her.

“A home” was indeed the best solution. My sister and looked and looked and found a good one–thank goodness Mom was filthy rich at the time, though that money is all long-gone–and I was able to call her twice a day, visit her every month.

Sure, I feel guilty (bad, selfish, neglectful daughter!) but intellectually I realize we did all we could.

I don’t think she can, but she’s a little too narcissistic (not to degrade my mother too much :)) to see this.

My grandmother, for all her stubbornness, at least owns her little house outright and is able to live sustainably on her SS benefits.

My mother and father are both retired but are trying to get jobs so that they can keep their heads above water. If my father died, my mother would have some cushion with his life insurance, but not enough to keep living in that house AND hire help. And she would need it. Her arthritis makes walking just half a block down the street a major chore. And from watching her food choices this weekend, she is not staying on top of her diabetes.

It makes me sad and angry, too.

It’s not selfish.

At the same time, the reality is that your mother will probably be extremely depressed if she decides to move in with you, away from her social support network. Just be prepared for that, and the difficulty it can bring.

It’s good you’re having these conversations now- hopefully you can infuse a little reality into her decision-making process.

I’m on the other end of the spectrum - I’m 85, and my husband is 92. We are both in fairly good health, active, and hope to stay in our home as long as possible.

I do not want to live with our son, ever!!! Yet I love him, and wish him well.

I think that assisted living is a wonderful invention, and will avail myself of that option if needed. I also live near a nice nursing home, and really have no aversion to living there if the situation warrants.

I grew up on a home with a sickly grandmother living with us. It is not a lifestyle I am willing to repeat.

This is such a case-by-case situation, and each situation is different. But I strongly feel that the caregiver has the right to keep his/her own life as uninterrupted as possible.

Your mother is living with an anachronistic view point that one of her children MUST take care of Her and Your Father because it is what is done and she probably did the bulk of care for her parents, I’m guessing.

Guilt and shame are two of the greatest family values that are handed down from generation to generation.
I told my mom when I was a teen that I would not care for her like she cared for her parents ( a very co-dependent life, and I didn’t know what co-dependency was until I was in my 30’s, but I had a front row seat in how parents give their parents free rent in their head. She is still fucked up and they’ve been dead for 25 years. It is very sad. She only listens to Male Advice because Men are always right.
My mom is 85. I am the only one left out of 5 kids and I took her to Leisure Acres near by. she liked it, it is clean and all she has too to is pick out her clothes and a few pieces of furniture and my Sainted Husband and I will do the rest.

She’s had two months to just do what I asked and she hasn’t done that. It’s too hard for her. I understand that, but her wishy washiness is maddening and getting worse. She worries about her fucking goddamn crystal. You can take your goddamn crystal, but you have to pick out your clothes because 85 years of clothing in 5 closets will not fit in the two closets you are moving into. I cannot talk to her for five minutes without wanting to shout and she doesn’t listen to me and never has.

She’s missed two units and a chance to move in before Thanksgiving and she doesn’t want to move in the winter. Jesus Christ, it isn’t like she is going to be carrying anything but her purse. Ideally, if we could ship her somewhere for two weeks while offloading her house and possessions and when she comes back she in her new place, it would be perfect. Oh and I’ve had plenty of offers for help with the move, but no one knows how to help with getting her to 'that point ’ of the move. She is that much of a pain in the ass in such a nice old lady way.

What I fear is once she moves into Leisure Acres is she will live forever and outlive her very pathetic income.

I’ve given explicit instructions to my children to blow my fucking head off.
Getting old sucks.

monstro there are programs structured to keep the elderly in their own homes while providing medical and social care. It’s called PACE - Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly – and the programs are covered by Medicare/Medicaid.

A list of providers is here:
https://www.cms.gov/pace/lppo/list.asp

Speaking as someone with past experience in this issue, what I can say is that people can change vastly when confronted with pain, infirmity and lack of mobility. The weather doesn’t mean much if you can’t go outside anyway. The environment around your bed becomes more important. The pragmatic patient will allow great leeway to accommodate potential caregivers. If your relative feels that strongly about remaining in her present area, perhaps she would be happier being cared for in a facility there. Cutting loose from past attachment is very hard to do. Almost everyone will need to do it sooner or later. My guess and hope for you is that your mother will change as time and circumstance change. I don’t think it’s selfish of you to want to avoid the complete servitude your mother is suggesting. All these decisions don’t have to be made ahead of time. You now have a heads-up as to her thinking if it even comes to that place in time. No need to force the point now.

My mother lived in her own house by herself for 20 years. Worked part time, snow blowed, did everything herself.She was VERY stubborn, and loved being by herself, and living in her house. She developed cancer 3 years ago, and things took a drastic turn for the worst.Like Al said, circumstances change, and the3 months she stayed with me before she passed away, she loved it! Being alone in her house again was such a non-reality to her, coupled with the fact that she was with her loving daughter, gave her much comfort, I am sure!! To the OP, just wait and see what the future brings!!!

I think it comes down to who cares the most, and therefore who gives in. If she is fine (like my mom was) living in a sketchy situation, but it bothers you too much, you will move. If she needs help more than you are bothered by her situation, she will move. Unfortunately, I think most elderly people are perfectly happy to live in precarious situations as long as they get to stay where they want.

For us, I wanted to move back to my home town about the time she started really needing help, so it worked out okay. She lived alone for far too long though, and by the time we finally convinced her to go to assisted living, she had fallen several times, had a few ER trips, etc.

My great aunt, who just celebrated her 90th birthday, is happily settled in Assisted Living a half hour drive from where she used to live.

Her sons are both about a twelve hour drive away.

To suggest that any of the three move, so that someone could be convenient to provide care as needed was not feasible. (I’m pretty sure that moving my great aunt was discussed–I’d be surprised if either son seriously thought about moving. Although one might relocate somewhere now that he’s retired, I think the locations of the grandchildren will be more influential than the location of the parent).

Of course, in their situation, they’ve got a substitute daughter-in-law who lives nearby, who is willing to drop in frequently. (She’s married to the brother of one of the wives of the sons).

Another one here who doesn’t think that you’re in the least bit being selfish.

As to your mum though…