Reply to Mother has decided to “retire” at 58

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]American culture is so strange. Grandparents refuse to help out with grandchildren, adult children refuse to help support aging parents. I was born and raised here, but it's such a strange comparison to other cultures where family members are expected to help each other. 
 [/quote]

It's because of how parents raise children here. I'm an Eastern European (not born here) married to an American. The way my husband was raised, I can only call mild neglect - he was sheltered and fed, but as a baby he was stuck in daycare (my own kids are in daycare, but in his case it was often overnight daycare so his parents could socialize). Starting with elementary school, he was a latchkey kid while parents built careers and lived their best lives. He ate dinner alone most nights unless friends' parents took pity on him. And I'm not talking about people who were working day and night trying to make ends meet, I'm talking about people who left early by choice to go to the gym, and came home late because they stopped for dinner or drinks with friends, leaving their elementary schooler at home alone to heat up frozen processed meals. He was made to move out at 18, worked full time and went to school full time, and got zero help from them - he lived on ketchup on bread at times.

DCUM would say, his parents didn't owe him anything, he was an adult and needed to pay his own way. But now that his parents are old, they expect love and support and a close bond. Where exactly is that bond supposed to come from, magic? [/quote]

There was something very wrong with your husband’s parents. These people sound self centered to an extreme. What you describe here is not normal or typical of US households at all. I am sorry for your husband’s experience with his extremely neglectful parents, but please do not think that this behavior is at all common. 
[/quote]

Not PP, but a child of baby boomers, and I know a lot of people who had a similar experience growing up. I'm one of them. Now looking after my parents a few states away as I raise my Kindergartener. My golden boy older brother who got a lot of special treatment and money from them (as I floundered on my own) is now drinking himself to death just up the street from them can't be bothered to help or even go to their house to visit. (They're in their 60s). 
Lucky me, it has fallen on my plate. I love them and I wouldn't abandon them, but boy I hope they remember how they treated me. I hope every time I hook them up with an amazing specialist they couldn't find on their own, or save them from some shady retirement investment scam, and every time my POS brother drives past their house and doesn't even wave, I hope they remember. [/quote]

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