I think we have a duty to care for our parents the way they cared for us, but not to be their servant. I take my mother to all of her doctors appointments, get her groceries, and help around her house. I would do more if only she would let me.
She cared for her mother, but it was a bit of a strain as her mother succumbed to dementia. She cared for my father as he withered away from cancer, until she could no longer physically do it. Then he was admitted to the hospital and then hospice. She was very sad that she was not able to live up to what she saw was her duty, to care for him.
I feel it is my duty to care for my parents, but there is a line for everyone that is reality. There are many factors such as a person's behavior, now or in the past, and the relationship that may not be there. My parents have treated me very well, so it is the least I can do to return this to them. I think we should strive towards that if we can.
As a parent and a child who saw my parents waste all of their youth being a cook/nurse/maid for my paternal grandparents that lived way too long, I feel it is my duty to end myself (I’m sure this is easier said than done), or at least free my kids of the expectation that they need to care for me, so that they can prioritize their life for themselves and their kids’ futures.
Transport to a few doctor appointments and helping out a few hours per week is no big deal, but I don’t want to see my kids organizing their life around supporting me.
This so much. I will never ever want to ruin my kid's life with such an expectation, I moved permanently to society where basic dignity is cca guaranteed if possible, and if it cannot be provided, so be it, death of me is fine and just a question of time. I wish to still being able to end it myself, on my terms, somewhere not bothering anybody, causing as little problems as possible (and settle will well ahead of it).
My useless last years are worthless compared to (remaining) prime age of the most important people in my lives - my children. What kind of piece of shit I would be to expect them to waste it on me.
Now is the time to live your life to see it as well spend, whatever it means to you. Then you can be dying in peace. You really can live off good stuff in life for a long time, and raising kids well is the ultimate achievement for me.
There is one issue with all this - I can't take such care for my own parents due to big distance. I can though easily pay for full support in any way they will ever require, which is still massively better objectively than me risking getting fired constantly and juggling their needs with my & my family. So the transition generation and those just before doesn't have it easiest, but I honestly believe this is the right, non-selfish way.
And if I succumb to dementia (which is never sudden), I will specifically beg all around me repeatedly that I want as little time & energy from them as possible, just a bit to cover their own emotional needs and happiness. Anything above is just a gift that shouldn't be too common.
Secretly, that's what I think too. The biggest problem is the estigma associated with Euthanasia and the potential mental issues related to guilty it could induce in my kids, should I ever need to consider it before becoming a burden to them.
I had to care for my mother for a long part of my adult life, and while I loved her, I must admit that I frequently resented the feeling of having my youth years being stolen. For a few years I even left my family because I didn't want to make my wife and kids share this burden at the worst phase.
I like to imagine following the kids around like a friendly barnacle. Dragging young adults away from their prospects seems avoidable that way, let them drive and follow along.
I feel the same way about my parents, but many people don't have such a good relationship with their own parents. If you (ubiquitous) want your children to take care of you in old age, then you'd better not treat them like crap. I can't say I would blame my best friend if he left his dad to die alone in some hospice or for another friend's mother to fend for herself in some way. Some parents are truly unpleasant or full-blown despicable, and I'm glad there's no cultural duty in America to take care of them despite this.
Those were extreme examples, though. For a lot of people, taking care of their parents is signing up for a never ending stream of criticism. I don't know of many individuals past the age of maybe 40 who have negative personality traits and come to the conclusion that "maybe the problem is with me." I can only think of one in my life. Just about as bad is when one's parents are conservative and cannot get with the times, or they pretend to be with the times only for you to discover that they actually aren't when the rubber meets the road. I don't believe in abandoning one's parents if they have more "benign" personality traits, but the financially intelligent decision of "you can live with us" probably isn't a sound one from an interpersonal level, and hopefully healthy distance can still be had.
Oh, but if parents make no effort to survive retirement, forced or otherwise, then I don't think anyone should be obligated to help them. People have varying amounts of luck, but if one doesn't save anything then they've chosen to be screwed.
Personally, if I end up with one option being my children sacrificing their financial independence and youth, and the other signing up for the Smith & Wesson retirement plan, I'll take the latter.
> Personally, if I end up with one option being my children sacrificing their financial independence and youth, and the other signing up for the Smith & Wesson retirement plan, I'll take the latter.
As a serious note from observations, if you do this, make it look like a goddamn accident doing something you enjoyed or your kids will be fucked in the head for decades to come.
Take up mountain climbing or skydiving and have a fatal accident instead of suck-starting a shotgun. Trust me.
This doesn't really work for, lack of a better term, 'at scale'.
My parents for example live far away from my career and career options. I can't afford to move them to live with me. Full remote work helps, but companies want to drag workers back into the office at the cost of their family. If my parents got sick or had issues in order to help them I would need to abandon my job, drain my savings and become a full time caregiver.
Business culture, career advancement, the way jobs are structured are all at odds with taking care of elderly family members. The only people that can afford to do so are those already well off.
Completely agree. We didn't agree to the bargain when we were born.
That'd be like adopting a adopting a puppy and expecting it to take care of you later because you cared for it and fed it for a few years.
That said, I'll do anything for my father and step mother, they've always treated me with love and compassion.
But my birth mother? She couldn't get the time of day from me. She donated an egg and a laundry list of ACEs, and still refuses to call my husband anything than "your.... Friend" even though we've been married ten years
One of the clearest moments I've ever had of not realizing my privilege was a conversation with someone who, once they started earning money, had to give money to their parents to support the household. Embarrassingly this absolutely blew my mind. I grew up with my parents as providers and even today if my life collapsed around me I know I still have them as a safety net if I needed it. I've been able to capitalize on so many opportunities because of that.
I do this, but my parents don’t expect it. I just make 10x their income and would never let them buy their own ticket to come see me, or not help them change the car when needed. But my parents never want it. Never implied I had to. I just do it because l am where I am because of their own sacrifices. Now I have to convince them to have some fun in life because all they know is work.
(For perspective, I’m low income in SF).
I'm not discounting what you do, but having to support a household as a child is materially different to what you do for your parents. It sounds like if you don't chip in - no one will go to bed hungry, and bills will still be paid.
Were they Asian by any chance? I’m Asian American and it’s a cultural norm. We have a saying for the money we give to our parents (“family usage” in direct translation). It’s quite a financial burden for some of my friends. Some parents expect their kids to buy them a house and you can imagine how brutal it is in the current housing market.
>>Some parents expect their kids to buy them a house and you can imagine how brutal it is in the current housing market.
Yes, but you left out that in most Asian-X cultures, first generation immigrant parents typically sacrificed almost everything they had, including in many cases the parental-filial relationship, to provide the children with enough education to claw their way out of their current situation and give them an extra leg up into a higher socioeconomic circumstance.
My parents had this expectation, and my wife and I gladly and willingly obliged on both sides as only children. This expectation/obligation became even more poignant when we had our own kids and realized belatedly just how much our parents had sacrificed for us. Whether driven by cultural norms (or not), we appreciate what our parents did for us so that we can "pass it on" now that we're on better footing than either side ever was.
While not always convenient or logistically possible, multi-generational housing (where one or both sets of parents live together or very close by) can go a long way to addressing astronomical housing costs at least until they need more intensive daily care due to aging.
I don't think it's strictly an Asian thing. A lot of first generation Americans have this expectation. It's very common to see their parents remunerate money back their parents in foreign countries.
That much is complicated. In the SF Bay Area, predominantly South Bay, I knew Asian families (all of them well-to-do, because South Bay), whose parents and extended family helped the new grads buy a house after a few years out of college.
Then those kids were expected to help the next generation, when the time came. It was like a multi-generation, extended-family economic collective of sorts. I didn't know what to make of it. On one hand I admired the effort, on some level. On the other hand, I think it really gimped the kids as far as pursuing entrepreneurship goes.
But hey, at least they can afford the "rent" in South Bay, I guess? I have never wanted to live there, so I can't say I envy the arrangement.
>One of the clearest moments I've ever had of not realizing my privilege was a conversation with someone who, once they started earning money, had to give money to their parents to support the household.
This was a ubiquitous practice in the circles I grew up in - Once a child was old enough to work they were expected to get a job and help the family with the bills. Coworkers would talk about it at every job I worked at as a teenager and my parents talked about having to help their parents out with the bills as a teenager.
It was so common I felt pretty lucky that I got to keep all the money I made.
There's a substantial difference between "once you're making money we treat you somewhat like a boarder" while you're living at home and "you remit a tithe to your family every month for your life".
The second, if done well, can be incredibly powerful, however. If the family is strong enough and trusted enough, you can get outsized economic benefits from it.
For what it's worth, I do this, and don't particularly see it as being a handicap. By contrast, it's a sign of a healthy family where everyone chips in for the common good.
As a man I feel that my first duty is to provide stability for myself and my family, both upwards and downwards.
The real handicap is when family members are degenerates, i.e. absent parents, feuding, self destructive behaviour, etc. That's harder to climb out of because even if you escape, you now need to build a new structure by yourself.
no most indians that come to US are from middle upper strata of indian society. They don't "have" to send money to parents for sustenance, maybe for luxuries.
If you come from Africa, this is just the reality. Makes it hard to get ahead, or take risks, but it is what it is. Most of my generation's goal is to end it, and not have to pass that burden to our kids.
And it’s because poor countries provide virtually no safety net for retirees and pensioners, so parents have little choice but to depend on kids for survival.
The solution to this issue is good governance, which translates to good economies and better social and welfare systems, but that’s kinda a pipe dream for African nations at this point.
> I've been able to capitalize on so many opportunities because of that.
This is so true for me as well. I started and ran my own business for a number of years, and I've resigned from jobs multiple times before I had something else lined up. Being able to take those risks has absolutely helped me in my career, and there's no way I could have taken them if I didn't have an implicit safety net beneath me.
Talking about one's own privilege is a form of self-defeating nonsense that serves no purpose. It only harms your future potential. There's no reason morally to frown on having more potential from your starting point versus someone else.
At best it's a form of "humble brag" that just makes you look silly.
I mean it'd be reasonable thing to do even outside parent-children relationship. If someone helped you, you may want to pay it back in same proportion when you have a chance and means to do so.
Now the west so rich and govt support for old/retired folks is very-very decent it does look totally out of way to support parent's household expenses.
Yeah, I had to drop out of school and work fulltime from 15 to support my family.
It's an absolutely devastating burden. I am currently in the top 1% of my socioeconomic cohort but I'd trade all that hard work, effort and application of intelligence over 20 years to have started in a slightly better cohort.
I've mostly untangled myself from that period of life but it's taken far more work, self discipline, sacrifice and willingness to live in degradation and homelessness just to sidle up to an easy peasy upper middle class peer group.
As a parent of a disabled child I sometimes feel alone and overwhelmed even with a loving spouse and a well paid tech job. I can't imagine the experience as a teenaged solo carer with no options.
Without quibbling with this basic directional correctness, the numbers in the article are bunk.
> "In the United Kingdom, about a million young people under 18 years old spend more than 50 hours a week caring for family members"
There are 14 million people under 18 in the UK [1]. If 1 million under-18s spend 50+ hours caring for family members, and only a few thousand tragic cases are under 9 (as the article claims) then the claim is that something like 1 in 3.5 children aged 9 to 18 spends 50+ hours caring for family members?
Not immediately clear if "caring for family members" includes older children caring for younger children, but that would certainly bring up the numbers.
It is possible that the "50+ hours" is not accurately counted.
Note that the 15-20% of people who are "disabled" are not defined as needing around-the-clock caregivers. Disability is a spectrum.
I would indeed dismiss that particular statistic about the number of kids spending 50+ hours looking after family members, because it is likely wrong by an order of magnitude.
>Surprising, but you can't just dismiss statistics on the basis that they're surprising to you.
Why not? While there are many falacies that people are surprised by that are mathematically true, when someone presents numbers, the more surprising the claim, the more evidence they need to present to back it. Science isn't perfect, there is the possibility of error, fraud, and the whole messy bit of scientific reporting having an abysmal record of accurately reporting what scientists say. For a surprising enough claim, without multiple verifications from independent sources, it is fine to dismiss it.
>> It is possible that the "50+ hours" is not accurately counted.
Or we do not understand the definition of care. Perhaps "care" covers all those times where the child has custody or otherwise is the only person watching over a disabled person. That could therefore include nights when perhaps the kid is the only carer in the household even though all are asleep. Then 50+hours doesn't seem so huge.
That's my thought, also. If you count older siblings keeping an eye on younger ones I don't see it's that hard to rack up 50 hours/wk. I get the feeling we are seeing the all-to-common pattern of taking a real problem and presenting statistics about it to create a deception that it's bigger than it really is.
I'm sure you're right that bad things tend to be invisible to me, the article even has an example of children trying to keep their shopping a secret.
But 1 in 3.5... idk, if you assume households with kids have a couple of kids, that's getting pretty close to saying the median UK household with a 9 to 18 year old has a 50+ hour caring situation. I don't see that being invisible.
> Not immediately clear if "caring for family members" includes older children caring for younger children, but that would certainly bring up the numbers.
"It is possible that the "50+ hours" is not accurately counted." Furthermore, what do those hours entail and how is 'care' quantified? It could drastically change how those hours are tallied.
Are we talking strictly changing sheets, assisting with a bed-pan, medication administration? Or 'softer' tasks like enrichment/entertainment and quality family time.
Do those hours also include emotional toll it takes on a person to constantly straddle the line between family member and caregiver? It's like secondary school coursework: for every hour spent draining catheter bags, suctioning tracheotomy tubes, or administering nutrients through a feeding tube (Jevity Plus smells like death, ask me how I know), there thrice that many hours spent toiling and dealing with the emotional fallout of "protecting your protector".
All that to say, as meaningful as it is to try and collect this data, I would posit that there is no true way to quantify the full breadth of the reality that many people live day in and day out. I, for one, have been forever impacted by my upbringing that included immense amount of caregiving.
I think you’re correct, this recent press release from the cited source (Carers Trust) says it’s 1 million total caregivers under 18, of whom 50,000 spend 50 hours/week caring for others.
Did a little digging and while I can’t find the raw data from Carers’ Trust, this report definitely seems to misrepresent some of the definitions they use.
Carers’ Trust seem to identify groups they call ‘young carers’ (18 and under) and ‘young adult carers’ (18-25) in various of their reports. This is an example of their own writing on the subject: https://carers.org/news-and-media/news/post/361-carers-trust...
They generally claim that there are 1 million ‘young carers’ in the UK, and 600,000 additional ‘young adult carers’
That page gives the more plausible rate of high intensity (50 hours a week+) care as “At least 50,000 children and young people, including 3,000 aged just five to nine, spend 50 hours or more a week looking after ill or disabled family members.”
It’s not clear whether ‘young people’ is synonymous with ‘young carers’ or also includes ‘young adult carers’
It seems to me that there are two main sources for the parent's expectation that their children should take care of them in the old age. I'm just referring to the "regular" cases here, with parents into the 80s and children past their 50s.
1) "Old fashion mentality". Usually framed as "I wiped your butt when you were a kid, now it's your time to change my diapers".
I object to #1 with "It's not the same effort to take care of a 5kg kid as of an 80kg adult". When my father had late-phase Parkinson and could hardly stand, it was almost impossible for two persons (like me and my mum) to lift him up. Doing this every day wrecks your back and physical health as well. Not to mention the mental toll. Changing their parent adult diapers is also not good for children's mental health.
2) Lack of financial resources. In the old days people had to take care of their very old parents themselves because there was noone to do it otherwise for a price they could afford.
I re-iterate, mainly there's the problem of physical strain, literally impossible to lift a full grown adult without special equipment or at least three persons without risking back injury. The rich can hire full time personnel (lifting needs to be done at night too, several times possibly), otherwise the solution is to share this hired personnel in a hospice. One can visit every day or even commit their parents only intermittently but a severely disabled adult is no baby and it's unfair ask for "duty to kill yourself" as a child taking care of one.
Remember also that who you are (or even just the fact that you are) is in a very large part due to them.
You are also fully allowed to feel an unconditional gratitude (dare I say, love) towards them for simply existing, while accepting them as they are, as individuals, without owing each other anything, and regardless of what they have done or not done. It also takes some people way too long to realize this, and it can be a liberating feeling.
Not everyone is thrilled about existing, and they didn't get a say in that. I could never imagine having children and I never understood why people wanted them, and then I realized that these people must have actually enjoyed their childhood; a concept that was obviously foreign to me. I don't harbor any ill will towards my parents, but nothing for me is unconditional.
You should probably add a clause in there that this refers to people with happy (or at least average) childhoods.
The internet is fairly unfiltered (and uncensored) so you hear a lot about people with horribly childhoods. It's probably a good thing for humanity as a whole but man, does it bum you out sometimes... let alone living through said horrible childhoods.
My existence is difficult because my parents were abusive and negligent to a disabled child. My right to exist was questioned by the very people who created me.
Is there a viable path toward realizing that I am 'allowed' to feel unconditional gratitude towards my parents for existing?
> Remember also that who you are (or even just the fact that you are) is in a very large part due to them.
I’ve got a PTSD when it comes to being in a relationship and struggling to make my own family because my parents cheated on one another, and I’m in huge debt and living in friend’s house because I allowed them to move into my house after they lost their incomes due to covid.
I'm aware of some places where you might be financially obligated to support parents (Pennsylvania, for example has a filial support law). Is there any place where you literally have to care for them?
That's certainly the easiest route. Depending on circumstances, you might have to live with that for the rest of your life. Also, if you have kids, you'll be teaching them through example of how they should take care of you as well.
Taking care of elderly parents is one of the toughest things in life that nobody talks about.
As a parent, I say this to other parents: putting your kids in this situation due to failure to buy long term care/disability insurance for yourself, or having some contingent plan for other adult relatives to care for you daily in the event of a catastrophic but non fatal event is a disgrace. You failed to protect your children.
In the USA if you cannot afford long term care insurance (and it can be expensive depending on how much it is, etc) your best bet is to work out how to be "Medicaid bankrupt" when the time comes.
Does anyone know of any tools that can help caregivers organize effectively? Caregivers generally have to organize a lot of information, re: scheduling, important health info + various other information. I haven't found any effective or good solutions in this space, which is shocking. Especially it's difficult to find a solution that incorporates a useable calendar that enables everyone in the orbit of a caregiver (and the person they're caregiving for) to be able to schedule and plan within a community, shared calendars, etc.
Has anyone seen any tools like this? Would be much appreciated, else I'm building it myself. Thanks.
That's why China have almost committed suicide with the one-child policy. That's why all who can try push automation at maximum... That's also why some neo-malthussian think we should drop to around 3G humans, not saying directly but evidently meaning mass killing an enormous amount of people, not counting the fact that good ideas tend to emerge rarely, so to have many we need a large population.
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She cared for her mother, but it was a bit of a strain as her mother succumbed to dementia. She cared for my father as he withered away from cancer, until she could no longer physically do it. Then he was admitted to the hospital and then hospice. She was very sad that she was not able to live up to what she saw was her duty, to care for him.
I feel it is my duty to care for my parents, but there is a line for everyone that is reality. There are many factors such as a person's behavior, now or in the past, and the relationship that may not be there. My parents have treated me very well, so it is the least I can do to return this to them. I think we should strive towards that if we can.
As a parent and a child who saw my parents waste all of their youth being a cook/nurse/maid for my paternal grandparents that lived way too long, I feel it is my duty to end myself (I’m sure this is easier said than done), or at least free my kids of the expectation that they need to care for me, so that they can prioritize their life for themselves and their kids’ futures.
Transport to a few doctor appointments and helping out a few hours per week is no big deal, but I don’t want to see my kids organizing their life around supporting me.
My useless last years are worthless compared to (remaining) prime age of the most important people in my lives - my children. What kind of piece of shit I would be to expect them to waste it on me.
Now is the time to live your life to see it as well spend, whatever it means to you. Then you can be dying in peace. You really can live off good stuff in life for a long time, and raising kids well is the ultimate achievement for me.
There is one issue with all this - I can't take such care for my own parents due to big distance. I can though easily pay for full support in any way they will ever require, which is still massively better objectively than me risking getting fired constantly and juggling their needs with my & my family. So the transition generation and those just before doesn't have it easiest, but I honestly believe this is the right, non-selfish way.
And if I succumb to dementia (which is never sudden), I will specifically beg all around me repeatedly that I want as little time & energy from them as possible, just a bit to cover their own emotional needs and happiness. Anything above is just a gift that shouldn't be too common.
I had to care for my mother for a long part of my adult life, and while I loved her, I must admit that I frequently resented the feeling of having my youth years being stolen. For a few years I even left my family because I didn't want to make my wife and kids share this burden at the worst phase.
Those were extreme examples, though. For a lot of people, taking care of their parents is signing up for a never ending stream of criticism. I don't know of many individuals past the age of maybe 40 who have negative personality traits and come to the conclusion that "maybe the problem is with me." I can only think of one in my life. Just about as bad is when one's parents are conservative and cannot get with the times, or they pretend to be with the times only for you to discover that they actually aren't when the rubber meets the road. I don't believe in abandoning one's parents if they have more "benign" personality traits, but the financially intelligent decision of "you can live with us" probably isn't a sound one from an interpersonal level, and hopefully healthy distance can still be had.
Oh, but if parents make no effort to survive retirement, forced or otherwise, then I don't think anyone should be obligated to help them. People have varying amounts of luck, but if one doesn't save anything then they've chosen to be screwed.
Personally, if I end up with one option being my children sacrificing their financial independence and youth, and the other signing up for the Smith & Wesson retirement plan, I'll take the latter.
As a serious note from observations, if you do this, make it look like a goddamn accident doing something you enjoyed or your kids will be fucked in the head for decades to come.
Take up mountain climbing or skydiving and have a fatal accident instead of suck-starting a shotgun. Trust me.
My parents for example live far away from my career and career options. I can't afford to move them to live with me. Full remote work helps, but companies want to drag workers back into the office at the cost of their family. If my parents got sick or had issues in order to help them I would need to abandon my job, drain my savings and become a full time caregiver.
Business culture, career advancement, the way jobs are structured are all at odds with taking care of elderly family members. The only people that can afford to do so are those already well off.
That'd be like adopting a adopting a puppy and expecting it to take care of you later because you cared for it and fed it for a few years.
That said, I'll do anything for my father and step mother, they've always treated me with love and compassion.
But my birth mother? She couldn't get the time of day from me. She donated an egg and a laundry list of ACEs, and still refuses to call my husband anything than "your.... Friend" even though we've been married ten years
Dead Comment
Yes, but you left out that in most Asian-X cultures, first generation immigrant parents typically sacrificed almost everything they had, including in many cases the parental-filial relationship, to provide the children with enough education to claw their way out of their current situation and give them an extra leg up into a higher socioeconomic circumstance.
My parents had this expectation, and my wife and I gladly and willingly obliged on both sides as only children. This expectation/obligation became even more poignant when we had our own kids and realized belatedly just how much our parents had sacrificed for us. Whether driven by cultural norms (or not), we appreciate what our parents did for us so that we can "pass it on" now that we're on better footing than either side ever was.
While not always convenient or logistically possible, multi-generational housing (where one or both sets of parents live together or very close by) can go a long way to addressing astronomical housing costs at least until they need more intensive daily care due to aging.
Then those kids were expected to help the next generation, when the time came. It was like a multi-generation, extended-family economic collective of sorts. I didn't know what to make of it. On one hand I admired the effort, on some level. On the other hand, I think it really gimped the kids as far as pursuing entrepreneurship goes.
But hey, at least they can afford the "rent" in South Bay, I guess? I have never wanted to live there, so I can't say I envy the arrangement.
This was a ubiquitous practice in the circles I grew up in - Once a child was old enough to work they were expected to get a job and help the family with the bills. Coworkers would talk about it at every job I worked at as a teenager and my parents talked about having to help their parents out with the bills as a teenager.
It was so common I felt pretty lucky that I got to keep all the money I made.
The second, if done well, can be incredibly powerful, however. If the family is strong enough and trusted enough, you can get outsized economic benefits from it.
As a man I feel that my first duty is to provide stability for myself and my family, both upwards and downwards.
The real handicap is when family members are degenerates, i.e. absent parents, feuding, self destructive behaviour, etc. That's harder to climb out of because even if you escape, you now need to build a new structure by yourself.
The solution to this issue is good governance, which translates to good economies and better social and welfare systems, but that’s kinda a pipe dream for African nations at this point.
This is so true for me as well. I started and ran my own business for a number of years, and I've resigned from jobs multiple times before I had something else lined up. Being able to take those risks has absolutely helped me in my career, and there's no way I could have taken them if I didn't have an implicit safety net beneath me.
At best it's a form of "humble brag" that just makes you look silly.
Deleted Comment
Now the west so rich and govt support for old/retired folks is very-very decent it does look totally out of way to support parent's household expenses.
It's an absolutely devastating burden. I am currently in the top 1% of my socioeconomic cohort but I'd trade all that hard work, effort and application of intelligence over 20 years to have started in a slightly better cohort.
I've mostly untangled myself from that period of life but it's taken far more work, self discipline, sacrifice and willingness to live in degradation and homelessness just to sidle up to an easy peasy upper middle class peer group.
Without quibbling with this basic directional correctness, the numbers in the article are bunk.
> "In the United Kingdom, about a million young people under 18 years old spend more than 50 hours a week caring for family members"
There are 14 million people under 18 in the UK [1]. If 1 million under-18s spend 50+ hours caring for family members, and only a few thousand tragic cases are under 9 (as the article claims) then the claim is that something like 1 in 3.5 children aged 9 to 18 spends 50+ hours caring for family members?
[1] https://data.unicef.org/how-many/how-many-children-under-18-...
Surprising, but you can't just dismiss statistics on the basis that they're surprising to you. A lot of people lead very different lives, invisibly.
15-20% of people are disabled: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
Not immediately clear if "caring for family members" includes older children caring for younger children, but that would certainly bring up the numbers.
It is possible that the "50+ hours" is not accurately counted.
I would indeed dismiss that particular statistic about the number of kids spending 50+ hours looking after family members, because it is likely wrong by an order of magnitude.
Why not? While there are many falacies that people are surprised by that are mathematically true, when someone presents numbers, the more surprising the claim, the more evidence they need to present to back it. Science isn't perfect, there is the possibility of error, fraud, and the whole messy bit of scientific reporting having an abysmal record of accurately reporting what scientists say. For a surprising enough claim, without multiple verifications from independent sources, it is fine to dismiss it.
Somewhere an "up to 50 hours" has become "over 50 hours". If written as "up to 50 hours" it would be much less surprising.
Or
It should read "Over 5 hours". A million spending 5+ hours a week would also be much less surprising.
A million spending over 50 hours would imply perhaps another million spending say, 20-50 hours, still a huge burden.
Or we do not understand the definition of care. Perhaps "care" covers all those times where the child has custody or otherwise is the only person watching over a disabled person. That could therefore include nights when perhaps the kid is the only carer in the household even though all are asleep. Then 50+hours doesn't seem so huge.
But 1 in 3.5... idk, if you assume households with kids have a couple of kids, that's getting pretty close to saying the median UK household with a 9 to 18 year old has a 50+ hour caring situation. I don't see that being invisible.
> Not immediately clear if "caring for family members" includes older children caring for younger children, but that would certainly bring up the numbers.
Suspect this is basically right as well.
Are we talking strictly changing sheets, assisting with a bed-pan, medication administration? Or 'softer' tasks like enrichment/entertainment and quality family time.
Do those hours also include emotional toll it takes on a person to constantly straddle the line between family member and caregiver? It's like secondary school coursework: for every hour spent draining catheter bags, suctioning tracheotomy tubes, or administering nutrients through a feeding tube (Jevity Plus smells like death, ask me how I know), there thrice that many hours spent toiling and dealing with the emotional fallout of "protecting your protector".
All that to say, as meaningful as it is to try and collect this data, I would posit that there is no true way to quantify the full breadth of the reality that many people live day in and day out. I, for one, have been forever impacted by my upbringing that included immense amount of caregiving.
https://carers.org/news-and-media/news/post/361-carers-trust...
Carers’ Trust seem to identify groups they call ‘young carers’ (18 and under) and ‘young adult carers’ (18-25) in various of their reports. This is an example of their own writing on the subject: https://carers.org/news-and-media/news/post/361-carers-trust...
They generally claim that there are 1 million ‘young carers’ in the UK, and 600,000 additional ‘young adult carers’
That page gives the more plausible rate of high intensity (50 hours a week+) care as “At least 50,000 children and young people, including 3,000 aged just five to nine, spend 50 hours or more a week looking after ill or disabled family members.”
It’s not clear whether ‘young people’ is synonymous with ‘young carers’ or also includes ‘young adult carers’
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Half of 1/14 is 1/28 since 2(1/28) == 1/14.
1) "Old fashion mentality". Usually framed as "I wiped your butt when you were a kid, now it's your time to change my diapers".
I object to #1 with "It's not the same effort to take care of a 5kg kid as of an 80kg adult". When my father had late-phase Parkinson and could hardly stand, it was almost impossible for two persons (like me and my mum) to lift him up. Doing this every day wrecks your back and physical health as well. Not to mention the mental toll. Changing their parent adult diapers is also not good for children's mental health.
2) Lack of financial resources. In the old days people had to take care of their very old parents themselves because there was noone to do it otherwise for a price they could afford.
I re-iterate, mainly there's the problem of physical strain, literally impossible to lift a full grown adult without special equipment or at least three persons without risking back injury. The rich can hire full time personnel (lifting needs to be done at night too, several times possibly), otherwise the solution is to share this hired personnel in a hospice. One can visit every day or even commit their parents only intermittently but a severely disabled adult is no baby and it's unfair ask for "duty to kill yourself" as a child taking care of one.
You are also fully allowed to feel an unconditional gratitude (dare I say, love) towards them for simply existing, while accepting them as they are, as individuals, without owing each other anything, and regardless of what they have done or not done. It also takes some people way too long to realize this, and it can be a liberating feeling.
The internet is fairly unfiltered (and uncensored) so you hear a lot about people with horribly childhoods. It's probably a good thing for humanity as a whole but man, does it bum you out sometimes... let alone living through said horrible childhoods.
My existence is difficult because my parents were abusive and negligent to a disabled child. My right to exist was questioned by the very people who created me.
Is there a viable path toward realizing that I am 'allowed' to feel unconditional gratitude towards my parents for existing?
Excuse me? This terrible life was imposed on me against my will be mean and evil people. I will absolutely not be "grateful" for it.
Remember that you didn't ask for that though.
I’ve got a PTSD when it comes to being in a relationship and struggling to make my own family because my parents cheated on one another, and I’m in huge debt and living in friend’s house because I allowed them to move into my house after they lost their incomes due to covid.
Yeah, I remember everything.
> "Roughly 15,000 of them are children, with 3,000 just 5 to 9 years old.
You can't dump your parents that easilly when you're under 18, and at 5-9 the only other option is being placed into local authority care.
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https://blog.aarp.org/legal-grounds/more-filial-support-case...
Taking care of elderly parents is one of the toughest things in life that nobody talks about.
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Has anyone seen any tools like this? Would be much appreciated, else I'm building it myself. Thanks.