What happens to childless LMC/working class people when they get old?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So are people supposed to have children in the hopes of having someone 'check up' on them when they're 85? It makes more sense to remain childless and use all that money that one saved and put it towards a nursing home or hospice should the time come. Unless you're Asian, expecting your children to be at your beck and call when they're thousands of miles away is naive. It's also unfair to burden adult children with eldercare when they didnt ask to be born.

The problem is that many old people stay put for too long, so when the time comes that they should go to a nursing home, they are not able to handle finding one. Also even if they do get into a nursing home in time, there is no one to advocate for them. You would simply have to hope that you receive attentive care, and I've heard many stories of kids having to really step in on their parents' behalf even when they were staying in facilities that are very expensive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Childless people like my Aunt have siblings and nieces and nephews

But my grandmother's siblings are all dead. And do nieces and nephews really provide the same kind of loving care that a child would?

Is there any guarantee your kids will do this? No.

Do you people have kids just so you hopefully have someone around to wipe your a** in your old age?

There's no guarantee, but I do think most people can feel reasonably confident that their kids will look after them at least to a certain extent. And even if they're wrong and the kids do nothing, they've still be given a few decades of having false comfort about what the end of their lives will be like. I think it would suck to have to worry about this for 40 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have an aunt without kids and all of the nieces and nephews keep a check on her. We'll invite her to take vacations with us and take turns visiting throughout the year. It's not much different than what we do with our parents.

She's a snowbird and lives in FL through the winter. What's interesting is that her friends will always say things like, "I wish my kids visited half as much as your nieces and nephews do!" There are also a LOT of older people, couples and singles, without kids where she lives. They all look out for each other.

The problem with our current society is that very few elderly people will leave near nieces and nephews. I'm not that close with my nieces and nephews because they didn't grow up near me. This is becoming the norm as more and more people move away from their hometowns. How many nieces and nephews are going to look after an elderly Aunt that doesn't live near them and they're not that close too? Especially when they have their own elderly parents they have to contend with?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:If they are lucky they belong to a church or other close knit community. Otherwise, no one.

'The church' didn't notice when my FIL no longer went to church due to dementia.

Perhaps they assumed his obviously devoted DIL was caring for him?

Nope, we were in a different country.
Anything else?
You have a very sarcastic personality, I suspect your friends find you hard to get along with at times (?)

His child was swaning about in another country but you wanted the church to care for him? Wow, just wow!

No, his child was living in another country. "The church" did not notice him missing. What is wrong with you?
No one asked the church to care for him, how ridiculous. "His child" moved back.
You are a very silly person.

PP is immature.

There were multiple PPs. But this is a good time to discuss expectations. If someone is asked why they are skipping church, DCUM says “FFS, ignore the sanctimonious busybodies. Attend church or not. No one has the right to wonder why you aren’t there on any given Sunday.” But DCUM also says if someone doesn’t show up and there’s a bad outcome, the church has failed that person.

Which one is it? Should we mind our own business or be our brother’s keeper?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So are people supposed to have children in the hopes of having someone 'check up' on them when they're 85? It makes more sense to remain childless and use all that money that one saved and put it towards a nursing home or hospice should the time come. Unless you're Asian, expecting your children to be at your beck and call when they're thousands of miles away is naive. It's also unfair to burden adult children with eldercare when they didnt ask to be born.

Yes. Why do you think people had litters of children in the past? For labor and care. Traditionally, the youngest daughter was supposed to stay unmarried and take care of the parents.

[Anonymous]

My parents have lived in the same house in a LMC neighborhood for 40 years. They’ve had a handful of neighbors aging in place, alone. They and the younger families that move in do a lot - food, rides, small repairs, responding to minor injuries, communicating with absent/troubled adult kids.

[Anonymous]

We have an aunt in our family who is a widow and she doesn't have any children. She's in her 80s, frail, virtually penniless and has to rely on her niece for care. She was always very mean, selfish and wasted money like crazy. Never saved for retirement nor did she pay into the SS system. She was an awful person and still is but less so because she's no longer independent. She lives with her niece and another one visits her occasionally.

I believe she would have had a lot more support had she been a nicer person. I would visit her from time-to-time but she recently participated in hate campaign against my family after the death of another close family member so I have no interest in visiting her. It's really sad but people need to realize that they will get old one day and they will need help. How you live your life and how you treat people is important. Her niece is taking care of her; not because she's doing it out of the kindness of her heart. She doing it because she's a spaghetti-spined weakling who's always been afraid of her aunt and she feels like she owes her. My aunt used to always give her and her husband money when they overspent (which was all of the time).

It's a crazy dynamic. I'm doing my best to fund some long-term care options because I do not want my children to stop their lives and take care of me when I'm older. They can visit and check-in but taking care of their parents shouldn't be a long-term strategy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So are people supposed to have children in the hopes of having someone 'check up' on them when they're 85? It makes more sense to remain childless and use all that money that one saved and put it towards a nursing home or hospice should the time come. Unless you're Asian, expecting your children to be at your beck and call when they're thousands of miles away is naive. It's also unfair to burden adult children with eldercare when they didnt ask to be born.

Yes. Why do you think people had litters of children in the past? For labor and care. Traditionally, the youngest daughter was supposed to stay unmarried and take care of the parents.

We didn't want to have children just so that in the last parts of our life there was someone who might take care of us.

I don't have an answer about what we will do if and when we get old enough that we need help. I hope we will be part of a community where we all help each other. Or maybe we'll be f*cked like so many other Americans.

I think I'd have really enjoyed having adult children - and having grandchildren - but I do not think I would have been a good parent of young children or teens. So, we'll figure it out, I guess.

[Anonymous]

There is no guarantee even with kids. I have one of 4 and i am the only one helping our parents and it is hell. I know one of 7 who not only is the one who helps, but the rest are estranged. I know quite a few cases where the parents had 2-4 kids and are not on speaking terms with any of them.

Quite a few elderly people become angry and abusive with dementia. Everyone tells you never to put up with abuse. Even on boards here you get little sympathy for venting. It's an ordeal getting them on meds to tone it down.

We have a huge problem in society that people want to ignore and place on one person. Dealing with my parents has been doing in my health. I refuse to turn into a monster to my children when I age. I will track things. I will refuse treatment for cancer and get palliative. I plan to do assisted suicide in another country if I have dementia and it progresses. It will do this so my kids can take care of their own families without guilt, illness and burden. I will make it clear it is about me and my wishes and I will write them many letters letting them know how much I love them.

I will not turn into an abusive, angry person who saves on my anger for the child who actually wants to help.

[Anonymous]

I will need to work until the day I die. And my plan is to kill myself when my health significantly declines.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So are people supposed to have children in the hopes of having someone 'check up' on them when they're 85? It makes more sense to remain childless and use all that money that one saved and put it towards a nursing home or hospice should the time come. Unless you're Asian, expecting your children to be at your beck and call when they're thousands of miles away is naive. It's also unfair to burden adult children with eldercare when they didnt ask to be born.

Yes. Why do you think people had litters of children in the past? For labor and care. Traditionally, the youngest daughter was supposed to stay unmarried and take care of the parents.

We didn't want to have children just so that in the last parts of our life there was someone who might take care of us.

I don't have an answer about what we will do if and when we get old enough that we need help. I hope we will be part of a community where we all help each other. Or maybe we'll be f*cked like so many other Americans.

I think I'd have really enjoyed having adult children - and having grandchildren - but I do not think I would have been a good parent of young children or teens. So, we'll figure it out, I guess.

People had “litters” because they didn’t have reliable BC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So are people supposed to have children in the hopes of having someone 'check up' on them when they're 85? It makes more sense to remain childless and use all that money that one saved and put it towards a nursing home or hospice should the time come. Unless you're Asian, expecting your children to be at your beck and call when they're thousands of miles away is naive. It's also unfair to burden adult children with eldercare when they didnt ask to be born.

Having some stranger care for your needs is not the same as having family checking up on you. From a purely physical needs perspective, sure, a paid care giver can do that. But there you would not have anyone who really cares about you without family. And for those who say, "I have nieces/nephews".. imagine if we all decided not to have any kids thinking my sibling's child will care about me, but then no one ended up having kids.

My DH and I both live far away from our parents, but when they need some help -- surgery, serious illness, one of us flies out. We both also have more than one sibling to share the burden.

This was one of the reasons I wanted a second -- I didn't want an only child to bear the entire burden of having to deal with aging parents and all the stress that comes with it and feeling alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have an aunt without kids and all of the nieces and nephews keep a check on her. We'll invite her to take vacations with us and take turns visiting throughout the year. It's not much different than what we do with our parents.

She's a snowbird and lives in FL through the winter. What's interesting is that her friends will always say things like, "I wish my kids visited half as much as your nieces and nephews do!" There are also a LOT of older people, couples and singles, without kids where she lives. They all look out for each other.

The problem with our current society is that very few elderly people will leave near nieces and nephews. I'm not that close with my nieces and nephews because they didn't grow up near me. This is becoming the norm as more and more people move away from their hometowns. How many nieces and nephews are going to look after an elderly Aunt that doesn't live near them and they're not that close too? Especially when they have their own elderly parents they have to contend with?

Elderly relatives most likely can't afford to do all the frequent moving that would be required to be near family members. Not to mention young people move to high cost of living places to get jobs, whereas older people want to move somewhere low COL so their retirement money goes farther.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The same thing that happens to wealthy childless people, OP.

Nope. Rich old people can at least pay for live in care or a nice facility. Everyone else will get stuck in a hell hole medicade facility. I have seen both up close. My father in law is lucky enough to have a nice place.

[Anonymous]

And this is the crisis American politicians need to be taking about. The failure to have adequate savings, healthcare for the aging population is going to sink this country. This is bigger than the student loan crisis, Wall Street fall out or housing crash. Long term care policies are no longer fianancially viable or even being sold. My FIL has an amazing policy that the insurers no longer even offers cause its a money loser. His “independent care” facility is $8200/month. Yes a month. After months of appeals his care policy kicked in and will cover $6k a month. Azherimer cade can run 11-15k month. The millineals can’t afford to buy homes much less care for aging parents. We also don’t have enough replacement babies or you g workers to support social security. Managers of nursing homes all know this shit is going to totally blow up. Even with Medicaid there just aren’t enough places to take in folks.