Anna O Law: It's curiously an area where people lack imaginative empathy. Many friends would lchange the subject on me if I spoke of it. None of the kind of knowing empathy of caring for children. It was maddening and demoralizing. At least a few friends didn't completely blow me off. I'm grateful for them. 2/2

Eldercare, something I spent a LOT of time on in the last 13 years as an only child & the subject no one wants to talk about. Until it hits them. So many friends reaching out to me now b/c they saw what I went thru, and they're only now realizing how hard it is. 🎁 shorturl.at/npCyS 1/

It's curiously an area where people lack imaginative empathy. Many friends would lchange the subject on me if I spoke of it. None of the kind of knowing empathy of caring for children. It was maddening and demoralizing. At least a few friends didn't completely blow me off. I'm grateful for them. 2/2

I'm going to be generous and attribute their lack of interest or concern to their own anxiety about their and their parents' mortality.

Yes. This.

I also experienced this. It was almost like it didn't exist

It is very isolating in a way I don't think raising children is.

It is. And if you have to do some of these tasks earlier than anticipated (sick parents in their early 70s) there’s even less empathy. People don’t realize how tricky this is to navigate

I was one of the first in my peer group to have to manage so few friends had a frame of reference. Now, however…

Also, somehow most of my peers’ parents are better off/have more resources. I’m an only child, father’s dead, and mom has nothing but a very paltry social security. That does not buy assisted living near me.

Even with resources, elder care is hard. I’ve been a companion for a dementia patient. Family had ample resources for high end care facilities. Even with that, it took an extra body (me) to stay on top of things and push care levels up.

I am just mystified by how people haven't picked up at least a little from their parents' experience with grandparents.

So I think it depends quite a bit on age. I’m GenX. So two grandparents dropped from heart attacks fairly young (mid 60s). One died from cancer, and I was 3. The last one was in another state and in a nursing home with local cousins doing most of the lifting.

Yeah. (As I navigate parent who needs me living there but isn’t at the point where they can acknowledge it)

No question. Raising kids tends to come with parenting groups. I haven't had to arrange play dates for my parents. (And I'm very lucky to have three siblings who are extraordinarily good at this stuff. Alone must be terrible).

I experienced lots of this too. Now that I have kids, I think the reason it’s easier to have empathy for that situation is that it’s easier to turn the suffering that comes with kids into a joke. With aging parents, there is less humor, and the joy is something one needs to search for

I am proud of caring for my father as he died. It was also an awful experience, and incredibly isolating

I think part of it is also the lack of control about it. If you hear “having kids is awful” you can think “ok, I just won’t do that” but elder care can seem like a looming event that you can’t choose to avoid.

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