I find this incomprehensible. My own mother disliked her mother-in-law intensely, and had the means to put my grandmother in a lavish setting with a legion of nurses; but my grandmother wanted to be with family when she started to fail. She lived with us five years, and NO nurses -- my mother did it all herself, and got over her disaffection in the process.
That's all of one experience, however. But how did people take care of their elderly up until recently? And why do they call it a family if they don't provide for their own? The more government becomes "humane," the less individuals retain that quality. We are seeing the natural bonds loosen.
My mother was an ogre my entire life, abused me throughout my xhildhood, and became even more vicious and unpleasant when elderly. I could not stand her. Yet when she became infirm and bedridden, I couldn’t put her into one of those places - I didn’t hate her enough. I kept her at home with two health aides. During those three years I saw so much fraud and waste from the system. It’s just an empty billing system to steal your money.
Suddenly, my memory hearkens back to James Michner’s most uncharacteristic work, his semi-autobiographical “Fires of Spring”.
In that novel, the hero grows up indifferently raised by his aunt (Michner referred to himself in interviews as a “foundling” abandoned by his parents—Mom told me that in olden times most illegitimate children were given over to orphanages or put up for adoption as that was better than growing up a bastard in a small town [how many classic short stories or country songs have that as a bitter theme?]). The protagonists’ cruel aunt runs a “poorhouse” which according to the author’s description is where farmers would dump their aged parents when they took over the spread. I recall thinking as I read it that this did not exactly fit in with the image of the Good Old Days.
As the boomers retire and reap the legacy of divorce and bad parenting we’re really going to be in for it as I do not think for a hot minute that most of us Gen-X’ers feel the slightest obligation to parents who walked out on them or neglected/abused/molested them. Those chickens will be coming home to roost as the right-on Reverend Wright said.