Bog People and Elder Care

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because she was part of the household and not off on her own, she was probably able to help with various tasks that didn't require mobility. Not sure what bog people did specifically but in other cultures elders often spun fiber, shelled peas, watched the meal cook on the fire, taught the kids, etc.

I'm not saying they wouldn't have cared for her even if she was incapacitated. I'm saying we tend to forget all the little things that infirm people can do in a community. And there would have been people around to watch her and talk to her, rather than her daughter driving across town to visit after work.

What the bog people bodies do not show is whether they had bipolar or borderline personality disorder or major depressive disorder.

Did the elder become violent due to Alzheimer’s? Did they fight you? Did they tell you they want to kill you? If they did, how did the family handle that?

Did their borderline personality disorder result in screaming at family members?

It’s easy to look at limited information from long ago and romanticize the situation. But a lot of details are left out.

I can’t imagine either of my parents living on a ledge in my house near the fireplace. My mother would complain all day long and my house would never be clean enough or large enough for her tastes.

Last time she was over, she pooped on my furniture, which I scrubbed out by hand. The seat is still stained if you look closely.

But romanticize away!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People also worked from home or relatively close by, and households had many more members that could take turns watching someone. I totally think modern society has a problem with not intrinsically valuing the elderly the way older cultures did, but so many aspects of our current lives make it much harder to take care of elders without burning out. We should have a law where all office jobs can have a mandatory WFH option.

People on DCUM always think they have the hardest life. Caring for an injured person while living in a bog with no running water, no indoor plumbing, no wheelchair, or smooth surfaces, no pain medicine. That's not hard! Only DCUM life could possibly be hard.

They had medicine. Medicine comes from plants, you know.

A few examples:

Aspirin comes from the willow tree.

Clove has been used to relieve pain in dentistry.

Penicillin comes from mold.

[Anonymous]

The Longitudinal Study of Generations out of California which tracked boomers, their parents and grandparents showed that boomers are the first group that cared for elderly parents and grandparents en masse. It's a myth that generations before did all that.

In the early 1900s they would toss you in the madhouse if you had Alzheimer's. If you were a farm wife with lots of kids and field hands to cook for the good doctor would give the incapacitated aged relative a nice dose of morphine to speed them on their way.

My own elderly neighbours had two living mothers and I never knew they had any relatives as they basically were in some care home not anywhere near where their kids lived. But when my neighbour developed Alzheimer's she expected her daughter living in another country, to move in her house and tend to her - something she never did for her parents.

[Anonymous]

That's interesting about the longitudinal study. I was wondering as when women got married in old times, they essentially left their origin home. Also, when people migrated, including into the Americas, nobody went back to care for the elderly. Nomadic tribes also essentially got rid of their elderly either by killing them or leaving behind to die. And apparently in Japan, still today there is a tradition called "tossing out grandma".