On Aging and Nursing Homes

Tamaryn T. Mina

My point of view

I think the issue of aging and nursing homes is whether it is alright to let your elderly loved ones live away from their family and spend the rest of their senescence in a home for supposed repose. I think it also has to do with a problem in society about people caring for themselves even though they really have a family.

The Beginning of a Family Issue

So what is the issue with grandparents living away from their family anyway?

• It starts with the main earners of the family: the immediate children and of the grandparents and their spouses. They are usually able-bodied enough. I could purport that they were of the Baby Boomer generation, while the grandparent (usually, she is a woman and recently widowed) is of the Silent generation. The Baby Boomer couple start a middle class family. They would decide to have their first child: He or she gets a premium in his family’s budget. He gets to choose which school he would go to.
• The Baby Boomer parents have other children: a second child and also a third child. I am not surprised if there are also other children (four children in all or more).
• The first child, speculating the chance of a big financial setback, figures out that he has no insurance. A family feud may begin between the first child and the second child with both of them wondering who would get the accident insurance.
• The Baby Boomer father may become a widower in time.
• If The Baby Boomer father eventually loses his wife, the clock will start for the first child and the second child to start accessing their parents’ accident insurance.
• Because of sibling rivalry, the grandmother silently intervenes by actually keeping an emergency trust fund for each of her grandchildren.
• Finally, the issue with the grandmother in the nursing home is: whether anyone in the family will ever realize that they are simply a middle-class family and nothing more.
• The grandmother eventually gets sick and feels ignored. She wonders if she will simply pass on without anyone realizing that she has actually prepared a trust fund. She would be simply caring for herself behind the scenes. That is, behind the scenes of the feud between first child and second child.

This is simply the background of the issue of the grandmother in a nursing home.

A grandmother who gets sick with a secret in her heart

I will break down her issues into parts. She simply has the following difficulties:

• Whether anyone will find out about her secret trust fund
• Whether any other couple will take the place of her busy Baby Boomers and would care for her
• Whether she would finally pass on with love for her grandchildren and sadly, none of them realizing that she needs companionship in her old age.

Surprisingly, if the third child would simply step in, she would live a life caring for her grandmother and would try to find surrogate caretakers for her. She would do that instead of placing her in a nursing home.

Conclusion

Issues with aging and nursing homes occur in multigenerational families instead of nuclear families. These issues are complex and are not unrelated to the 2008 Housing Crisis. Having a grandmother in a nursing home isn’t an issue for the average family. It happens in complicated families.