 |
|
Intergenerational Families Pose New Challenges, Opportunities
By John Paul Marosy, President
Bringing Elder Care Home LLC
jpmarosy@charter.net
(508) 854-0431
Editor’s
Note: The changing structure of the American family challenges our thinking
and perspective on issues like elder care/work balance – and offers potential
for new modes of communication and sharing. This month we reproduce an
article on this topic by Eric Clay, a community coach at Shared Journeys
of Ithaca, NY. This article originally appeared as a guest column in the
July 26, 2006 edition of the Ithaca Journal www.theithacajournal.com
|
Learn to present the dynamic seminar, Elder Care and Work: Finding
the Balance. -
Rockville, MD on Sept. 15; |
Train-the-Trainer
Conferences At 75, mom never imagined she would spend $500 a month for her daughter's family health insurance. She can afford it, but fears her daughter's family can't secure a good living. By one estimate, adult children in their 30s receive average supplemental cash and gifts valued at $3,000 per year. Many need maintenance money, beyond down payments on homes or help with cars.
At 71, dad helped kids with first-home down payments, but he did not expect to continue helping with camp bills and car purchases. Now his kids and grandkids are planning to move in with him.
Since the mid-1990s, the fastest growing trend in housing has been intergenerational households with three or more generations. Living together saves money.
At 88, mom lives on a small Social Security check and smaller pension. Her daughter couldn't hold a job, so she took her back home. Then the daughter spent her money as if it were her own.
Welcome to the wild new frontier of aging for middle-class American families.
Parents, whose early careers in the 1950s and 1960s were fed on the greatest economic growth this nation has ever seen, entered retirement with substantial resources. Meanwhile, their adult children are often not as financially secure. These financial challenges may push families to rely on each other in new ways and communicate better. That can lead to lives that are rewarding in unexpected ways.
Historically, the extended family and local community formed the basic economic and social unit. Only in the last century, fed on individualism and easy mobility, have we forgotten that fact.
We no longer talk together across generations and diverse needs about how to make choices to spend money. We aren't skilled at discussing deeply personal and communal matters. Who will work for cash income? Who will contribute unpaid labor? How can times of hardship be shared equitably? What choices help everyone thrive?
On this new frontier, we see the same patterns from the old West frontier. Those with the most resources purchase the best homesteads, and then protect their privilege from others. Those with modest resources, but lots of friends and family, can thrive by laboring together to build resources and strengthen relationships. But they must manage the conflicts, and attempts to control others, that arise when people have to work together. Those who are alone or have only distant friends and relatives are always most vulnerable and often live in fear.
Our nation missed an opportunity in those old frontier days. Instead of figuring out how to communicate and share control, we set rules that protected the privileges of some and limited the choices of others, with just a minimal safety net.
How can we move beyond this failure?
In the new frontier, specialized professional services won't make the difference. More general communication skills, ones that help us talk through tough questions and speak honestly and openly about our real needs and resources will be necessary. What is the best use of our money? When should we limit each other's choices? How can we be generous and firm with one another?
Some professional providers are beginning to address effective communication and offering support groups and mediation services that cut across generations. Many of these services are terribly underutilized or not well publicized.
Shared Journeys was founded to strengthen supportive, informal relationships, in part for older adults within the context of family and community. We coach older adults, family, friends and professionals to work through important contentious issues, discovering how to thrive. Professional services are a component, but the key element is garnering support from family and community to live in new ways.
Communication has helped the people in the earlier examples:
- The mother and daughter in the first case have talked about earning and spending money - conversations that are hard to initiate but that fostered greater respect and less judgment.
- The father living with his kids and grandkids discovered the imposition brought unexpected blessings as he became more active and valued in his family's life.
- The daughter's access to her mother's money was limited after Adult Protective Services intervened, and now mother and daughter continue their relationship within some important boundaries.
What do you think? Take a moment now to send us an e-mail
with your opinion to jpmarosy@bringingeldercarehome.com
We will publish your thoughts in the next issue.
John Paul Marosy
Editor and President,
Bringing Elder Care Home, LLC
John Paul Marosy is the author of Elder Care: A Six Step Guide to Balancing Work and Family, available from Bringing Elder Care Home Publishing online at www.bringingeldercarehome.com or by calling 508-854-0431.
Visit www.bringingeldercarehome.com, call or email to learn how your organization can offer this effective resource: (508) 854-0431, jpmarosy@bringingeldercarehome.com
Click here to unsubscribe Click here to subscribe
This newsletter may be reprinted in whole or in part so long as the author,
John Paul Marosy, is credited and the Web site address, www.bringingeldercarehome.com,
is provided.