The Parent Trap
By Gitanjali Prasad
"When we were in Jamshedpur, my parents-in-law had friends, everything was hunky dory. But when we moved to Delhi, which many people regard as a nicer place, it was pretty traumatic for them. It was an alien place, and they found people rude, the environment alien, we were busy trying to settle down ourselves so couldn't devote the time to look after their emotional needs as we would have like to", confides, Lakshmi Murthy, an executive with Tata Steel.
Time was, when parents of high flying executives preferred to live in their ancestral home, while the executive got on with his work, and his often more westernized lifestyle in the company residence in the metropolitan city. Times change. Sometimes, with all the adult children being employed in the big cities or abroad, there is no one in the ancestral home to take care of aging parents.
Sometimes, since the parents themselves were in transferable jobs, there is actually no ancestral home. So, parents have to either decide on an adult offspring they wish to stay with, in our patriarchal society, this is often the son rather than the daughter, or less commonly, opt to divide their time amongst their children. What are the advantages and disadvantages that this living arrangement throws up? And how can one manage this new trend of parents moving in with children in their old age rather than the earlier practice of children staying with parents in the family home?
Lakshmi Murthy, thinks that having her parents-in-law live with them form the very beginning meant that they had to be sensitive to the parents' feeling of loneliness and take care of their health problems which naturally increase with age. For Sandeep Dey, (name changed), however, the main problem with having his parents stay with him is one of cultural adjustments. "I married late", he says, "because it was really hard for me to find a girl modern enough to fit in with my ad club crowd and yet traditional enough to accommodate my very conservative mother. Since I was an only child, not getting married was also a problem for my elderly mother, as she had absolutely no one to talk to when I was away at work".
But the adjustments are certainly not all one sided. Elderly parents are fully aware that though they may have grown up in an era in which the diktat of the elder parent was law, today they must adjust to a world in which the mores are different. Lakshmi points out something which others echo, somehow, when children stay with their parents, they tend to make the adjustments, however, when parents move in with their children, it is they who must adapt to their children and grandchildren.
For some, the new more westernized norms with regard to serving alcohol or meat in the house, the non-observance of time honoured rituals and pujas, the more liberal attitudes to what the grandchildren and especially the granddaughter may wear are all a source of friction. Indeed, it is not unusual to find executives in Kolkata deciding to find separate flats in North Kolkata for their elderly parents and supporting them financially.
Interestingly, the rise of the dual career family has in some ways made grandparents a real asset, as there is someone in the house to keep an eye on the children, and on the home. "Of course if someone is really very independent than such an arrangement may not work very well", Lakshmi says, but otherwise," I think for many they may actually have very selfish reasons to keep their elderly parents with them".
Gaurav Ghosh who is an executive with a tea company and his wife Kiran Uttam who is a fashion designer face a problem that is unusual today but is likely to become more common, as we look to the future. Both Gaurav and Kiran are only children and both have parents who are divorced. "This means that we have four parents in different places to worry about", Kiran says.The problem is compounded because Kiran's mother lives in London. "My mother has lots of friends but one hears about the classic case of milk bottles outside a front door alerting neighbours to problems of elderly people there so there's not a day when I don't worry about Mom", Kiran elaborates.
The financial needs of the elderly are another concern. "One of the reasons I feel the urge to save is that there are four parents to consider. It's something I have a phobia about: how much is enough?" Many of those who are in a similar situation are bitter that most medical insurance policies are not available to those who need them the most, those over the age of 70! In addition frequent users of medical insurance policies chafe at the stipulation, which requires that medical bills be first paid by the patient and only later reimbursed by the insurance company.
There's plenty of research that shows that demographics dictates that with the declining birth rate and increased longevity, most societies are aging and need to provide solutions to the problems of elderly parents. Apartments in a colony or in an apartment block used to give some sense of community. Again, free medical benefits for dependent parents were invaluable perks that are now on the way out. So are there any solutions?
"Flexibility with regard to timings always helps in balancing home and family", Lakshmi says but feels that for parents of her own generation, and old age homes for a more affluent section of society may become one way out. "There are already are some homes coming up in places like Hyderabad. It's not a castaway home", Lakshmi clarifies, it's for like-minded people and offering many of the support systems old people may need. They are expensive though, so one would have to manage savings efficiently to be able to afford them " For many others, the very thought of an old age home is anathema. They will have to figure out what it is that they seek. Perhaps with time, new solutions will emerge.
(A Press Fellow from Wolfson College, Cambridge , The author has been writing on the family for over 15 years.)
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Copyright © 2002 Gitanjali Prasad