Should Children Bear the Responsibility of Caring for their Elderly Parents?

Parents are obligated and constituted to take care of their children. The sacrifice: physical, emotional, psychological, and financial toll are unmistakably unfathomable.

Of course, no joy supersedes being a parent. Such natural progression of the laws of promulgation is ineffable. For it is in such an act humanity itself draws its sustenance. But these propagations come at an incalculable financial cost to parents.

Most parents exhaust all their funds and wealth to provide a utopian environment and future for their children. Others only can afford the basics: daycare, clothing, education, food and shelter. Sadly only a few amount to these grandeurs. Most are, frankly speaking, become the populace that grind through the hardships of adulthood and living in a civilized confine regulated by governments and big institutions.

According to U.S. Census Bureau, in 2020 1 in 6 (17%) people were age 65 and older. By 2050 it is projected to be 23%. According to CDC Life expectancy is at its lowest point (74.8yrs for Males, 80.2yrs for Females) compared to the average of other wealthy countries (80yr for Males, 84.4yrs for Females) but it is expected to rebound.

At retirement most parents realize they don’t have enough to carry them through twenty more years of functional living. Not enough savings to accrete into disposable income. And welfare programs continue to shrink to avert the ever-ballooning national debt. Our debt-to-GDP ratio (an economic indicator for debt repayment) on current trajectory is unsustainable and threaten our very sovereignty. So, the question remains whether every generation of government should continue the path of self-assured economic destruction by inflating the debt balloon or turn to fiscal austerity.

Should such generations of government sprout up, more welfare programs will inevitably meet the sharp edge of fiscal consolidation and austerity. We are at the dusk of this inevitability, and currently face an increased aging population who are tasked to figure out how to survive at an older age. Such is the burden of civilization. Children grow up, move on with their lives, grind to survive and live comfortably at the neglect of moral, social and economic obligations to their parents.

Honestly, it’s a big ask. The complexity, sacrifice and financial cost are daunting. For example, if Jack and Jill’s parents are alive, how do Jack and Jill decide whose parents to support? Can Jack and Jill afford an adequate size home to accommodate their parents? And should one parent medically decline and require more physical support who gets to quit their job? Should each child deal with their parents on their own? And can Jack and Jill afford to have their own children?

This is a Brobdingnagian issue that stands at the forefront of our solvency and sovereignty both as a country and of civilization.

Why civilization? Anecdotally, most “third world countries or lower income countries” find the issue of being a caretaker of their parents a moral obligation. Provisions and sacrifices are made not as a single person but as a community. A key element lacking in today’s civilization. Contemporaneously as every civilization propagates into another generation it loses this foundational element, creating an ever-wider chasm between the elderly parents and their children who easily buck their “responsibility”.

Should our children be asked to contribute to the welfare and caretaking of their parents? Any nation with a moral conscience would agree that the status quo will not work. We must be a nation guided by our moral compass. We must recalibrate ourselves, our laws, our economy and our values at each fractal portion of society. We must transition from individualism and destructive narcissism to one of a collective commune. The weight we bear as a country with an ageing population can only be supported by such bold ideas. Maybe the future judges us as heroes not for what we do but for the obstacles we must overcome.