‘Okay Boomer’ We have all heard this expression from the millennial generation. How do you feel about about millennials as our caregivers?
I do not want my millennial children to care for me in my old age. I have already told my daughters that I don’t expect them to do so.
I am curious though. Do you think the millennial generation will feel about us, the boomers as we did about the GI (WW11) generation?
How do you think their opinions will differ from ours to our parents? Please also express how differently boomers feel about any expectations of caregiving from their millennial children?
I do feel that each generation has different approaches to life with their own unique personality.
I think past generations were very traditional in many areas. This attitude is changing. I don’t feel like millennials are going to follow traditional routes in a lot of areas.
Any thoughts? Happy or sad about the changes that you see in a younger generation?
I am now at the age where my doctor looks like a kid to me! LOL She has long blonde hair and treating me, a 64 year old with a silver pixie cut! Yes! I love having short hair. Easy peasy. I had long hair when I was younger and loved it. Now, no way. Not for me anymore.
How many of you see much younger doctors? I like my doctor a lot. She is well educated and current. I actually like her better than my doctor that retired last year. He was knowledgeable but had a different bedside manner and not as current on certain issues.
I think most of us have regrets in life. I have a few. Wishing you all the peace and joy you desire in your life.
Uugghh....what can I say? Can I get a do over?
He started doing that fifteen years ago - I sort of assume he's joking, but I can't say he didn't warn me.
Son says robots will look after us.
I am lucky that my oldest has worked in NH/rehab facilities. So she is very aware of the elderly's needs. If not for her, I think both my parents would have passed before they did. My youngest was very good with her Grandmother so hope she is as good with me. Both my girls are compassionate people. But both are single at this point. Both have to work. I plan on being independent as long as I can be. Doing what I can to make their lives easier. We have investments just hope this Virus hasn't effected them.
I have started some downsizing. When the house gets too much, we will sell and move to an apartment. An AL when needed, etc. With my Mom, her house became an Albatross for me. A weight was lifted when I finally sold it. Don't want my girls going thru what I did.
Oh my gosh, yes!
Indeed all situations are different. I hope all goes well for you and your family.
I hope I get a roommate like you if I go to a senior facility. I definitely don’t want to burden my children. It changes a relationship. Even in good relationships, it’s just hard.
I would rather die than live as long as your mom and my mom! It’s okay if a person still has relatively good health but otherwise, please let me die with dignity!
I'm currently caring for my grandfather who has dementia, and despite all of the usual caregiving difficulties, he's happy I'm around.
I suppose it depends on the relationship you have with your kids! Please exercise careful thought before making broad generalizations about others.
I hear you! I am a city girl. Leave the countryside for weekends away every now and then. I think rural life is a completely different lifestyle. I bet they find urban life hard to deal with. It’s the fish out of water story.
I totally agree about google maps!
But yes, I think farming families probably do spend less time fretting over first world problems than many of us in the West.
Yes, isn’t that lovely to see? You mentioned they are living on a farm. I don’t know rural life. I grew up in the city but I would think that living in that atmosphere creates a different attitude in families. It’s refreshing to hear of people working together.
There are two girls still at home, about sixteen and eighteen? (it's so hard to tell nowadays!) Very nice, very helpful, and very busy because they've got cows in calf (one had twins, a heifer and a bull calf - I didn't know that happened to cows) and the ewes are in for lambing, too.
Just the perfect time for your mother to break her hip, now I come to think of it. But at least in that family everyone is definitely pulling her (and his) weight.
Every generation has problems, worries, etc. I see my kids raising their kids and they fret over all the same things I fretted over. Am I raising decent people? Kind people? Are they compassionate and kind? Yes, they ALL spend waaaay too much time on their phones and not enough 'eye to eye' time---but all in all, people don't really change much.
I personally see more tolerance and genuine kindness in my 'neighborhood' and for that, I am glad. The world is getting better/worse as it always does. All we can do is be the best person we can be where we stand.
Imagine when we would have been just about dubious about trains and the electric telegraph.
Ahhh, we can hope. It’s certainly needed. I just wonder what improvements will be available.
Thanks for your response.
Very interesting posting! I love your answer. I suppose we do want to believe in progression but as I read your post I can see how much has indeed stayed the same. Thanks for this perspective.
Look at King Lear. Look at the Canterbury Tales. Look at the Bible!
Mark Twain mused on how when he, Mark, was a very young man his father drove him crazy with his blind, bigoted idiocy, but ten or so years later, he was amazed at how far the old boy had come on.
Here is a satirical description of a young man's lifestyle aspirations: "... exchanges dazzling epigrams until luncheon with others of his own age and brilliance, all about the Hollowness of Life, the Folly of the Old, the Comicality of the War, the Ideas of the Young, the Brilliance of the Young, the novels of D. H. Lawrence, the Intelligence of the Young, the Superiority of Modern Photography over Velazquez, and the Futility of People of Forty." The book in which this appears was published in 1933, but the paragraph popped into my head just before Christmas when I was waiting in a store behind two young men and shamelessly eavesdropping on their conversation about how cruelly difficult they found it to show tolerance towards their older relatives. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing.
And the evolution of traditions - remember how Laura gets bored to tears one Sunday, because it's the Sabbath and Pa can't play his violin, and she's not allowed to work on her doll's clothes, and she can't stand it and starts misbehaving? And after she's been duly reprimanded, Pa tells her about *his* father and uncles and their adventure with Sabbath-breaking when they wanted to finish the sled they were making, and it ended with how *their* father - once the Sabbath was over - "took them into the woodshed, one by one, and he tanned their jackets." Laura asks whether it was as bad for little girls, and Ma explains that it was much worse for little girls in those days because they had to be good and quiet all the time, not just on Sundays.
I have a favourite photograph of my grandmother's family - her two sisters, one brother, the brother's friend, and my great granny and great grandpa. They're at the seaside, in Brighton (that hasn't changed, either!). Great Granny and Grandpa are sitting on a bench, one sister and the friend sitting either side, and my great aunt and great uncle (aged about 18-22) are clowning around behind. Change the clothes and it could have been my parents, or us, or my kids...
And when the prodigal son was wasting his inheritance among the fleshpots, what exactly do you think he was up to? And what do you think he thought of his father's warnings then?
You'd suppose we'd got past the days when it was just assumed that the most suitable daughter of a family (unmarried, or past childcare years) would shoulder all elder care as a matter of course. Yes? Well. There's a lady in a tough spot, and my sympathies to her, who posted yesterday and in passing mentions that she feels her sister-in-law should be the one to step up, not her, because it's her husband's mother who needs the care. She doesn't actually rule out her husband's two brothers, but she definitely thinks it's their sister's job. March 10th 2020, she said that.
Nothing changes.