Comment by lotsofpulp 3 days ago
My grandparents stuck around too long, so I have the opposite fear of burdening my descendants with having to (if not legally, then via social pressure) spend too much time, money, and energy caring for me.
I had real time feedback from my mom (the daughter in law) while growing up. I would never ask or want my wife to live the quality of life my mom did for her parents’ in law.
And I don’t want that for my kids, or even from the rest of society.
There’s a solution to this you can start on right now: structure your life and experiences such that you become an awesome grandparent with hilarious stories, humility and appeal to your grandchildren.
I probably won’t ever meet my grandchildren if there are any, because I am over fifty and single; I probably will never be a parent. So I will have to go a lot sooner if I am not to be a burden on society. But if you think you are going to be a grandparent, you can work on being an irreplaceable and useful one.
I am referring to being so old that you are dependent on others everyday such that the caregivers cannot go on vacation. One set of my grandparents both lived to 100, and they had a 15 year age gap, so that was the first 30 years of my life that my parents sacrificed time with their kids, professional life, and personal life.
Very few people are independent after age 80, and a miniscule amount after 90.
I think it would be valuable to get your parents opinion on whether the burden was worth it or not. Or, unfortunately, to see if your opinion changes if you have to bear the burden of your parents in the future. It's easy to assume the burden isn't worth it when we have a bit more distance (e.g. grandparents) but I think people are more open to it than we realise - even if it comes with immense amounts of stress. Saying that I think it varies person to person. Often in families you have people who are willing to carry the burden and others who aren't and that brings even more stress and disagreement to the situation.