Reply #69: There is a larger story in this screwed up mess

[cap]

Kind of like the Andrea what's her name who had way too many kids and went off the deep end and killed them all.

Not trying to drum up pity for people doing the wrong thing, but there are way too many caregivers at the end of their ropes. This country's social net is being glued together by middle aged women. We don't have a working system for elder care. Elder care revolves around event driven crises. Their needs often times can not be planned for. Their health conditions are complex and interrelated which means you need someone around who understands every nuance of a change.

Middle aged women are forced into taking the slow track for work so that they can have the flexibility to take care of their loved one. If they were to just drop off their elder like this woman did, their loved one would be in a pickle. With the economy in the toilet, no one has the extra money to pay for housecleaning, meal prep, transportation (doctor's appointments are a major time suck), respite care, etc. Senior services are being cut across the board. Just try to use the county's senior transport. You can't book it within a week. Never mind, women are getting scared about losing their jobs because they have to take time off to deal with their elder's issues. On top of that, this also leads to a decrease in that woman's ability to save for her own retirement. Inflation will kick in soon and families will need the extra income from a woman's salary to make ends meet. (I wont even get into the burden placed on middle aged women when their single parent offspring move back in with them).

The old system could work with the women sharing the duties and taking the slow track because women's retirement was funded by their husband's pension and the sale of their home. Remove the pension and/or remove the husband and women are setting themselves up for a disaster in their own future.

The elderly used to only live a few years in retirement before their death; now, they live decades. None of us are really prepared for this. I have calculated that my 89 year old mother in law with a pension of 3K/month has received well over 700K in income from her retirement alone. She also had a chunk of savings of about 200K and a house. I don't know anyone in my current generation who is depending on a 401K that will have 900K in assets in addition to their house. Most people have less than 100K. We can't all work until we drop. I dont know what my elderly mother in law could do for a living. She just doesn't have the stamina. I don't think the elderly woman in the story could work or should for that matter.

On the other hand, who, in their right minds, would want to abandon their elderly relative? Our elders are vulnerable. Left to the mercy of strained social services, they will die a slow, lingering, painful death in squalor. They can be dependent on unkind children and end their lives in suffering and misery. We are all trying very hard not to end up in this situation. I think the caregiver just had had enough (rightly or wrongly) and blew her stack in a completely irresponsible manner. There's no back up these days except if a family functions cohesively. Social services is just too much of a patchwork to manage the complex set of conditions facing the elderly. Even managing social services is a major time suck.

I don't know the answer to this mess. I know no one knows the details of what is going on with their elder like a family member and no one's heart breaks more than to see their family member in a bad situation. But the current way we have of doing business just doesn't work. We will see more stories like this as the economy worsens.