Most people want to be independent and to have their children and grandchildren to visit as guests, not full-time caregivers. We are very blessed that we're in the position to be able to easily pop from state to state helping and can work wherever we happen to be, but at the same time, they want to live their lives independently, too.
Also, think about where caregivers might have to relocate and how they might alter their futures by spending it caretaking. I have family members who sacrificed a very significant amount of their adult lives taking care of their parents and missed out on their own lives and wrecked their own health doing it (it's hard mental and physical work, and in some cases can be very thankless).
I also know people who gave up everything to take care of their parents and ended up homeless after their deaths.
I’ve structured my career (work from home, not management, no on call) and my finances (in my 30s) so when my father needs care (my mother has already passed), we’ll move him in with us and if I need to take time off to care for him, I can. This is an implicit generational contract IMHO. My parents raised and cared for me for a third of their life, it would be unreasonable to not do the same in return.
Why would we expect others to do this work? Or that it would scale to do so?
Have you also structured your finances so that you can take care of aunts and uncles and in-laws and grandparents? What about older relatives without help that live in different states? I think you're making a lot of assumptions about others here, and it (and all of the edits you're making to your comment) seems kind of silly and unnecessary. Have a nice night.
Yes, I am willing and able to take in any family necessary, regardless of relation. If they’re unwilling to relocate, we are (I work from home, and we live light).
I’m not saying it’s easy, by any means. I’m saying it’s necessary, unless you’re financially wealthy enough to outsource all of the support services elder care requires, which most people cannot (I am not at that wealth level, but I can take time off to provide care).
My intent is not to poke at you specifically by any means, but to point out these are systemic problems the country will face as an older generation ages and the wealth doesn’t exist to provide them white glove service until death. The solution is not startups, it’s community and family (along with having enough savings, FMLA, and vacation time).
> the wealth doesn’t exist to provide them white glove service until death. The solution is not startups, it’s community and family (along with having enough savings, FMLA, and vacation time).
The linked article seems to suggest that adult day cares actually work best when resources are limited, because they allow older people to be independent for longer (which is good regardless of the resources available):
> When they both retired in 2004, they tried staying at home, but found it hard to manage on their own due to Beatriz’s bad knees, Guillermo’s health woes, including quintuple bypass surgery, and their youngest son Ray’s schizophrenia and depression.
> ...
> The prevalence of adult day cares in the Valley, which is 90 percent Hispanic, is part cultural, part economic. Hispanic seniors are more likely than Anglos to live at home with their children or other family members. The Valley also has a persistently high poverty rate and a percentage of seniors with diabetes, heart disease, depression and dementia that is alarmingly higher than the national average.
> ...
> Adult day cares like those in the Valley can offer a kind of middle way between round-the-clock care by family caregivers — who frequently burn out and experience physical and mental problems themselves — and expensive, sometimes impersonal nursing home care.
Well if you casually observed the last two generations of my Hispanic family, you would say we made it work too. But that is because the culture pushes the youngest daughters to not get married and have no children. So now we have multiple women in our family who are bitter, boring, poor, and have destroyed their careers prospects because "it works" for the rest of the family.
Would those career prospects be substantially different if those women chose to have children? Or if they chose to postpone their careers to care for aging parents when the time came? Maybe their career goes well but to remain in it becomes a financial hardship so care can be paid for while they still work. Hard to say, lots of variables.
That framing comes across like "Women are losers with no lives anyway, amirite?! So, fuck em!"
Ideally, a healthy social contract benefits all involved parties and doesn't sacrifice some particular subgroup so that everyone else can be happy, but they're screwed no matter what they do because all options open to them are horrible.
We don’t have a healthy social contact. My impression was that’s what this thread was about, and what my comment you’re responding to observes (I don’t call women “losers”, nor do I believe that they are or that they have no lives).
Most options are poor options, through little fault of the individual. You’re doing the best you can with the hand you’ve been dealt.
I was a homemaker for a lot of years. It's a thing I've thought a lot about.
When 1+1=3 and you divide the pie such that everyone gets more than they would have on their own, no, it's not all downside and it's not unhealthy.
It's all downside when 1+1=3, but one party consistently gets less than what they would have on their own. Then, why should they go along with this?
That's where you get bitter people.
Edit: For the record, you've done a lot of editing of both of your comments here, which potentially changes how my replies look. I did my best to not personally accuse you of anything and to only state that the way the comment was written was not coming across well.
Also, think about where caregivers might have to relocate and how they might alter their futures by spending it caretaking. I have family members who sacrificed a very significant amount of their adult lives taking care of their parents and missed out on their own lives and wrecked their own health doing it (it's hard mental and physical work, and in some cases can be very thankless).
I also know people who gave up everything to take care of their parents and ended up homeless after their deaths.