from her old friends and neighbors, which put Lisa front and center as the only support person in her mother’s life.
Although she knew her mother was safe in assisted living, Lisa continued to spend most weekends in Palm Springs, taking Alice out for meals, supplying her with her favorite snacks, picking up medications, buying her clothing and shoes, and talking to her about things she was still able to remember from the past.
After five years, the round-trip journey became too hard, both emotionally and physically. Lisa finally made the decision to move her mother once more, this time to an assisted living facility nearer to her own home.
Today, Lisa is sixty-five and Alice is eighty-eight. After fourteen years with the disease, Alice no longer recognizes Lisa, but that hasn’t stopped Lisa from visiting, staying in touch with her doctors, and checking with the staff in the memory care unit to find out what her mother needs. Lisa has had her own health challenges to deal with, which have limited her ability to visit her mother as often as she used to, but she continues to act as her mother’s support system, staying in touch with the staff, and visiting as often as she is able.
Lisa’s and Mary’s stories are being repeated all over the developed world, with boomers as the caregivers for their aging parents. The current cohort of aging parents—those living in their own homes as well as those occupying beds in nursing homes and apartments in assisted living communities—are composed of the two generations preceding the baby boomers. Will there be a different picture in 2040, when boomers are the ones in their eighties and nineties? One in five of them will not have adult children to provide the kind of emotional, physical, and logistical support that Lisa and hundreds of thousands of others are doing today.
Intergenerational relationships are something people with children take for granted. This is less often the case for those without children, who may never have gotten close to anyone outside their own age group unless they come from large, tight-knit families.
In order to fully understand what child-free people will need later in life, consider the variety of roles adult children play in their aging parents’ lives:
Emotional Support
No matter where parents reside, the adult children and grandchildren are usually the ones who visit, discuss family issues, share pictures, take the parent for an outing, and generally stay in close contact with parents as they age. They do this on a regular basis, in person, on the phone, via video conferencing, and in letters and emails, with the women in the family typically taking the lead.
When an older parent has maintained ties to a strong social network (e.g., friends, a place of worship, a senior center, a health club, a bridge group, etc.), additional support may be available when they need help with transportation, a task, or simply need some companionship. This can ease the burden on the adult children, especially if they do not live close by.
Residential Decisions, Real Estate Transactions, and Help with Moving
Very few childless adults reside in assisted living and continuous care communities today. Why? There were no adult children to convince them to make the move. Here is a typical scenario: The adult child or children become convinced mom and/or dad, typically in their late seventies or eighties, should no longer be driving or navigating the stairs in their multi-story home, and the time has come for them to live in a safer place. The adult children then help them “shop” for a new community—often closer to where they and the grandchildren live. Once the new home has been identified, the adult children assist in the difficult and emotional task of downsizing, which usually involves sorting through a lifetime of accumulated “stuff.” Once the cherished possessions and memorabilia have been given to family members, sold, or thrown away, adult children help their aging parents move what remains into the new, smaller space. Following the transition, the adult children often handle the real estate transaction to sell or rent the home in which the parents resided. Evelyn had to do all of these things for her mother:
For five years, Evelyn had tried to convince her widowed mother, Jean, then eighty-seven, to move out of her multi-story home. Evelyn had been raised in the large, multi-story house near downtown Buffalo, New York, and her mother had been living there for fifty-six years. Jean was adamant about not moving until one night she became dizzy and disoriented, lost her balance and took a fall in the bathroom. She hit her head on the edge of the sink, passed out for a couple of hours and woke up in a pool of her own blood. She managed to make her way to a phone and call Evelyn, who lived several hours away. Evelyn called for an ambulance to take her mother to the nearest hospital, then quickly dressed and started the three-hour drive to the hospital. When she arrived in Buffalo, she found Jean in the emergency room where she had required nine stitches in her forehead and an elaborate bandage for a badly bruised knee and foot. Fortunately, she had no broken bones.
After the accident, Jean reconsidered her position on staying in her own home. Waking up in pain and alone had scared her, and she didn’t want to risk another fall. A week later, Evelyn again talked to Jean about moving to a safer place, closer to the town where Evelyn and her husband lived. This time Jean agreed to look at a few possibilities.
Evelyn began spending her weekends researching and visiting assisted living facilities in her area. When she found two she thought her mother might like, she brought Jean down for a weekend and they visited them both. Jean didn’t like either one. She thought they were too institutional feeling and she didn’t want to eat in a dining room with “a bunch of old codgers and biddies.”
Evelyn kept looking, this time with the help of a senior care manager (SCM) who was more familiar with all the options for senior living in her area. The SCM introduced Evelyn to an alternative she had not been aware of: a spacious, one-level, suburban residence that had been converted into a board and care home. The man and woman who owned and ran it were both licensed practical nurses and they seemed dedicated to their calling. They also had several part-time aides who came in to assist in the cooking, cleaning, and care of the three residents they could accommodate. The house had a homey and comfortable feel. Evelyn met the two current residents, who seemed happy and well cared for. She also contacted their families, who told her they were very impressed with the kindness and attention their older loved ones were receiving. Like Jean, the other residents needed supervision, but otherwise were relatively independent, still mobile, and required no intense care. They were happy to be living in a comfortable home with no responsibilities for cooking, cleaning, or household upkeep of any kind. Everyone had their own bedroom and bath, and could have privacy or companionship, as they chose.
To Evelyn’s delight, Jean agreed to “give it a try.” Together they spent the next six months getting Jean packed and moved. She was reluctant to get rid of anything, but in the end agreed to give most of her prized possessions to her grandchildren and give the rest to charity. She moved into the board and care home with her own bedroom furniture, sheets, towels, and her many family pictures, which were re-installed on the walls of her new bedroom.
There were a few setbacks in her adjustment to the new life, but after two years, Jean finally agreed to let her daughter and son-in-law sell the old family home—a major milestone. Jean, now in her mid-nineties, is happy and well cared for. She gets frequent visits from Evelyn and her two nearby grandkids, one with a new baby—her first great-grandchild.
Where there are no adult children to push the issue, most older people simply stay where they are and cope as best they can. In fact, even when there are adult children in the picture, many, like Mary in our earlier story, are not able to convince the parent to move to a safer location. For many elders, the challenge of learning to navigate a new home (even a much smaller space), meet new people, give up familiar surroundings, and relinquish their treasured independence seems loathsome, insurmountable, or both.
Investments and Other Financial Decisions
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