Lots of dysfunctional families and dysfunctional people on this post. Most siblings and families I know have some bumps here and there, but mostly get along, and at the end of the day, are grateful to be together

Anonymous wrote:My sibling is just a nuisance at this point. Does nothing to help with elderly parents and only causes trouble on the rare occasion we see him. It would be easier to be an only.

My brother in laws x2

My sibling is just a nuisance at this point. Does nothing to help with elderly parents and only causes trouble on the rare occasion we see him. It would be easier to be an only.

How about you don’t worry about things that aren’t happening to you and are just hypothetical problems? This is the weirdest case of borrowing trouble I’ve seen in a while.

Anonymous wrote:Going through elder care issues and I am so thankful of my siblings to help should the burden. I know a number of friends with onlies and tbh I feel bad for their kids. Flame away

Yeah. We feel badly about this all the time. (Older parents of only).

I also have a sibling that doesn’t really help with our parents at all, though they have lots of opinions, time and far greater resources. My husbands family barely speaks to one another and there are 4 of them. He is mom’s primary caretaker- thankfully she’s still living independently as is my own mother.

You never know what you’re going to get.

Anonymous wrote:I'm a paid caregiver and over the decade I've done this work I've seen many families where one child shoulders the vast majority of the burden of eldercare of parents while the other siblings criticize.

Very few families have an ideal dynamic where everyone chips in equitably.

This is my situation. I do ninety percent of the work. Siblings participate just enough to criticize. It would be easier if I didn't have any.

Ew, OP. Just - ew.

I’m an only with parents in their 70s. My parents and in-laws all come from larger families of 4-6 kids. Even if not all of the offspring are married, that’s a lot of adults who should be able to chip in. In every case I observed, it was 1-2 people who provided 90% of the care for each grandparent in their last 3-8 years and if they were lucky 1 or 2 others would throw some money at the problem.

My spouse has siblings, but they both live on the opposite coast and his parents are a 3 hour Amtrak ride away in the massive, older home I doubt they will leave until they are forced to. When the time comes we will likely be spending a lot of time on the train or driving on 95 to take care of them. Thankfully we both work mostly remote.

My parents moved 20 min from me in their 60s to a townhouse they can age in place in for a while. If they have a similar lifespan as their own parents, the peak of their decline will coincide with my first 5 years as an empty nested when I plan to be ramping down my career. If they had me when they were 10 years older and their final years aligned with my peak earning years and kids in middle and high school, that would be harder.

The timing can suck no matter how you plan it - you really never know. I am glad I don’t have to coordinate decisions and finances with siblings. The burden of dealing with this alone - physically, mentally, and financially is a genuine concern that I discussed with my spouse before marriage. I am not saying it will be easy - caring for aging family never is under any circumstances - but being an only child does not automatically make it worse.

No help = you have all the power. If that is the situation, embrace it. Be empowered.
No siblings = your decisions can't be challenged. Be confident.
If you have siblings who are involved, no one gets to dictate "the how". It might be each contributes in a unique way, sometimes not obvious. Sometimes not what is specifically asked for, but still valuable. The relationship, overall, between siblings ... keeping that relationship intact, at least civil and hopefully loving, is likely much more important than specific details re: parent's care.

Sometimes I think there’s so much jealousy of the way that we older parents of onlies got to have our cake and eat it too that people who made different choices feel the need to take us down a peg. DH and I both have adult siblings in their 40s who are not financially self-supporting and know our choice of family size is right for us.

I’ve seen my friend go through some really tough stuff as an only, and I worry about my own only child. That said, this board is filled with threads about people who complain that their siblings are of no help with elder care.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I not only have to care for my parents, which so far isn’t too bad but I also have to care for my older brother who never launched. That is going to harder since my other 2 siblings don’t want to help.

Same and we have a sibling like that on both sides

We have one child in part because we're so busy caring for all the adults who refuse to work or care for themselves that we don't have bandwidth for anyone else. We also don't want our never-launched siblings getting the idea that our kids are going to support them later. We are working to arrange money so everyone has what they need financially but I'll be damned if my DD is going to provide elder care for either of her uncles when she's trying to start her own family.

Sort of similar, in that I have a disabled adult sibling who can't work or live independently. My parents think I won't need to care for him when they're gone because the very part time respite care my mom has set up and actively coordinates with a couple family friends will somehow continue to tick along for the rest of his life, but honestly, I think they're delusional.

My other sibling launched pretty late and still gets a lot of help from my parents. I don't expect ANY help with eldercare, am already bracing myself to let the complaints roll off me, and already have very little patience for sibling expecting others to do stuff for her. She'll have to figure out how to hire her own accountant for taxes, go to the store herself for stuff she forgets, rent a car instead of getting multi-hour rides to visit hometown, etc.

Anonymous wrote:I not only have to care for my parents, which so far isn’t too bad but I also have to care for my older brother who never launched. That is going to harder since my other 2 siblings don’t want to help.

Same and we have a sibling like that on both sides

We have one child in part because we're so busy caring for all the adults who refuse to work or care for themselves that we don't have bandwidth for anyone else. We also don't want our never-launched siblings getting the idea that our kids are going to support them later. We are working to arrange money so everyone has what they need financially but I'll be damned if my DD is going to provide elder care for either of her uncles when she's trying to start her own family.

Ha, well I am not an only, but it was unfair of my brother to go and die first.

I’m an only born to older parents and my husband is too. Neither of us have close extended families. We both cared for our moms in their later years/final illnesses (my father died when I was much younger and was cared for by my mom, my FIL is still around but has extensive medical needs that precluded him caring for his wife). I don’t think the logistics of providing eldercare in this scenario are more difficult than they are for people with siblings (for all the reasons discussed unthread), but I will say I found the emotional aspects of dealing with their declines and deaths very, very lonely. Again, though - that’s a function of being the only of older parents (who lost my parents when most of my peers’ parents were still relatively young and healthy) AND not having a strong family network to fall back on.