would you move your parent in

sorry here's the link: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/11913372/Make-space-for-your-grandparents-at-home-Cabinet-ministers-tell-families.html

It's just not practical. My DD and her husband work all hours to be able to afford the mortgage on their 3 bedroom home - which is full of them and 3 children. So where are they supposed to put me????

Well, I managed it somehow.
With three children as well as a job and a DH who worked away.

I must be a saint.

I've just read this too.
It wouldn't work for my DPs - one's blind, the other is barely mobile and can't do stairs and whilst we have a three bedroom house, one room's tiddly.

I certainly wouldn't and couldn't move in with my DCs, no room whatsoever!

How about the many countries all over the world, where people do not have necessarily have a lot of money, and work, but where looking after elderly relatives is part of the culture and social fabric of their society.

Anyone who has any interest in this, should read Atul Gawande's book "Being Mortal - Medicine and What Matters in the End". It is available as a free download if you search for it on Google.

This is what he said in an interview about his grandfather:

My grandfather had an amazing life. He worked the farm right up to the end of his days, helped by his children and grandchildren. He was still the head of the dinner table, revered, people came to him for advice. He had some problems with his memory and his mobility of course, but no one ever thought that the answer might come from a nursing home. In [the west] we tend to never ask people: “What is a good day for you?” Instead we say: “This is what the doctor says you have to do to stay healthy.

My DP was not very mobile and needed help with day to day tasks but was lovely and easy-going

I always say I won't inflict myself on my DC

.. . that should be "and still work ..." in my first paragraph.

We would have my mum to live with us in a heartbeat. If it was my DH's mum we would all have killed each other within 24 hours (his words not just mine )

I never had a good relationship with my mother and the thought of having her live with me makes me shudder. However, she solved that problem by moving to the other side of the world!! We now get on much better with several thousand miles between us.

She lived with my brother for several years and that worked well because she always treated my sister in law with respect, rather than the sneering disapproval she had for me. Unfortunately she had a stroke a few years ago and now lives in a nursing home.

I would think myself lucky if they visited and kep an eye on me.

I think that he is right.

But I havent had to do it.

I don't have any parents now. In the circumstances they died within two and four months of becoming too unwell to manage.
There would be no room at all in DDs house. Unless we bought a joint house with them with a granny annexe. I would not be happy with doing that.
I could get my own back on DDs teenage yrs. Role reversal, I stagger in pissed off my head. She undresses me pours me into bed and sticks the sick bucket by my bedside.
Later on she comes in in the night to poke me to see if I am still conscious.
Mind you DD never seemed to develop the bad hangovers I did.

I would , there is always a way to manage even if difficult

Never. I loved my parents absolutely dearly, and we came to live here near them so we could keep and eye on a daily basis- help with everything- but NOT moving in with them or vice-versa. I've seen it so often- adult children encouraging parents or one parent left to sell their home and invest it in a much larger/better home to move in with said child, spouse and family- and then turning sour, bitter, nasty even- and being totally trapped into that arrangement.

My mother would have totally hated to have me wash her and help her with the toilet- and so would I with my daughters. Mum would have felt she was taking too much of my time and affecting normal family and couple's life, and so would I. Much better to get professionals on work their hours and then can go and relax, play or sleep- and have a bit of detachment- and have children look after the emotional and affection side of things- but not day to day 24/7.

A friend of mine told her daughter she wanted to live with them and didn't mind her wiping her bottom and washing her and doing anything that needed to be done, etc- and daughter was horrified and really concerned.

You are so right about it being a bad idea to sell up to buy a bigger place with children granjura. A friend of DH talked his mother into selling her house and moving to a larger property with him and his wife. Mother and wife were soon at loggerheads, the son then told his mother to leave. Having sold her house and given the money to her son she had nowhere to go and the local authority put her in bed and breakfast until a friend gave her a room. She died a lonely bitter woman cut off from her son and grandchildren.

That's what i worry about granjura - i would not want my children diong those sorts of things for me, but also (and i do feel quite ashamed admitting this) i'm not sure if i could do it for one of my parents. i've never been good at that sort of thing. i suppose in the situation, one just deals with it as best they can.

I could move my mum in with me-I have the space and if she ever reaches the stage where she needs more care I may do it. But she now lives quite close to me in a sheltered housing flat. She enjoys her independence, has friends and a social life in the building. She chooses what to eat and makes her own meals. My sons and I do her shopping, take her out and clean her flat. If she was entirely dependant on me I don't think her lifestyle would be as good as it is. I think when too much is done for them people age more quickly. She is 93. I also think it is wrong to assume we will all finish up in care homes and the only alternative to that is to live with family. Family support is important, but it is best given whilst maintaining a degree of independence. Providing a variety of suitable housing is what matters. Also just because we handle things differently to other cultures doesn't make us wrong. I am sure that for every family caring devotedly for an older parent there is another where the parent is unhappy and less valued.

I really regret that my mother didn't stay with us in her latter years when she was widowed. We have a 3 storey house and the living room and bedrooms are on the 2nd and 3rd floors and as my mother had osteoporosis in the last ten years of her life she really couldn't get up the stairs very well. I regretted buying a house with a lot of stairs when that became apparent. It was a problem for my father in law too, who outlived my mother in law by about 10 years or so, he also had problems with the stairs due to his knees. We therefore visited our respective parents in their own homes. My mother had all her faculties apart from this physical disability, she was very easy to be with. I enjoyed going down to her home and cooking for her and just doing things for her generally, she was always a great mother to me. I could have imagined her living with us she got on very well with my husband too, but it would have to have been in a different house, preferably where she had a degree of independence, somewhere with an annexe. My father in law wouldn't have contemplated living with us, he considered anywhere outside of Essex a foreign country I'm not sure I'd ever wanted my father living with me, we didn't have a particularly good relationship and I think that would be absolutely pivotal.

I don't know whether either sets of parents would have coped very well with all the comings and goings of our children, their partners and friends who often stayed round. This sort of thing didn't really happen in either of our growing up years when we lived at home!

I never had the opportunity to take either of my parents into my home. Both died in their 70s. I have overtaken my mother and next year I will overtake my father - probably.

I didn't and I wouldn't. My DC both told me if my Mother moved in,they would move out and they meant it,I think DH would have gone with them. Blunt but true.

Another Cabinet Minister with a great empty space where his brain should be. Does he have any idea just how small the majority of the houses in this country are, whether 19th century or 21st century?

For many people, having a parent (or does he expect us to house all of them) in the house would mean kicking out the children and then shoe horning the elderly parent into the little box room over the hall. This parent, let us refer to her as she because more often than not it is a she, would have to share a not enormous bathroom, where it is highly probable that the only shower is over the bath. The house may not have a downstairs cloakroom and the stair lift will be fighting for space with all the family belongings in the small hall.

Let us start with the indignity of an elderly person, now a bit frail, being moved out of an independent living space, with rooms for their own belongings, their own hobbies and interests, shorn of all their belongings, because there will be little space for them in a small house already occupied by a family, and being expected to live in a small room with barely space for a bed and wardrobe, expected to adapt to communal living and the habits and traditions of another family.

The elderly parent will be fortunate if their child's home is in the same area as those, so they will be moved from a community where they have friends and interests and moved somewhere where they kno no-one and will have little opportunity to develop new social networks.

I think cabinet ministers that make stupid suggestions like this should go and live the life they suggest for six months as lodger in a small house remote from their family, with nothing of their own but a television, unable to get out, unable to move from the house. Then ask them how they enjoyed it and who they would recommend it to.

Considering the s* I gave my Mum as a child I'd do it without batting an eyelid if she needed it.
How would I manage? No idea!
How did she manage? Still no idea but we made it through alright!

sunseeker. I know people who have done the same, and had moved to France! The poor mother found herself homeless- and abroad where she didn't even speak the language- and with no money to come back to UK and buy even the smallest of homes!

We had both mothers living with us at different times. DMiL was quite a lot older than DM. She came to us first and was with us for several months before she died. We also had my Aunt, DM's sister, for over 20 years. My DM was here at the same time for several years, then just her after my aunt died, until she needed 24 hour care. DH and I were both brought up in families with several generations under one roof so it felt quite routine. It was very nice for the DS as well. We didn't have a Granny annexe but the house is big enough for us not to be on top of each other all the time. It wasn't always sweetness and light but the good points definitely outweighed the bad.