Home Care for the elderly - Whose job is it?

Home Care for the elderly at home – whose job is it?

With all the wonderful advances made in medicine over the last 50 years people are living longer. Only 50 to 60 years ago our life

expectancy was only 65 -70 years, now it is expected that many of us will live well into our 80’s and 90’s. Unfortunately this is causing more and more people to become part of what is known as the sandwich generation. These are people who are still raising children at home or trying to put them through college, and are suddenly faced with the prospect of providing care for their elderly parents as well.

So whose responsibility is it to take care of mom, dad or grandma? If your child just got accepted at Harvard and your mother just had a stroke and needs 24 hour care, who gets the needed money if there is only enough for one of them? What I believe is that since our parents sacrificed so much for us that we owe it to them to make sure they are taken care of. So you can guess that it was a shock to me when I sat in on a university class where 90% of the students said that they came before their parents. Their reasoning was that

they had their whole life in front of them and their parent/grandparent had already lived their life.

Legally no one can make you take care of your parents or grandparents. You can let them get to the point where the government steps in and places them in custodial care. But morally, whose job do YOU think it is?