When starting to collect the widow’s pension from ‘Social Security’‘ in the United States (the so-called social security), a woman realized that she did not have enough money to pay for her house and groceries at the supermarket. Faced with this situation, she asked her daughter, who was a single mother, for help and saw a simple way to get ahead. If her mother moved into her house, she could half pay the expenses with her salary and pension, but she would also get someone to help her take care of the children.
The story that tells Business Insiderbegan when they called the daughter to tell her that her father had died. “At that moment I knew that my life was going to change forever, what I couldn’t foresee was the extent to which my mother’s life and mine were going to meet again on the road.” In this way, multigenerational coexistence began, which is a growing trend due to the economic need and emotional support that many parents feel when they reach old age.
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What was initially going to be a short-term coexistence, while they found a solution to the problem of paying the mortgage on the apartment where the retiree lived, turned into more than 10 years of coexistence. During this time, they learned to manage money to half pay for the house, bills and food, and at the same time, it helped him take care of his children.
“We pooled our bank accounts, having her with me was an extra help for everyday life, it helped us both, we saved money and we got stability and emotional support.” Because she was also going through financial problems due to the high cost of housing, a situation that also happens in Spain with the Mortgage prices showing a rise of 63% in just a decade.
“At 30 years old I was inviting my mother to live at home”
The ‘sandwich generation’ is a phenomenon that occurs in almost all countries in the world and is recorded by data such as that of the National Institute of Statistics in Spain (INE), where they warned that almost 10% of households are already multigenerational. “At 30 years old I found myself in this situation: I was the one who opened the doors for my mother to live with me. I was not the only one, because I know cases in which young or middle-aged adults are the ones who take care of our parents when they are elderly, at the same time as the children.”
Now, this represents a high economic cost, but it is not the only thing, since what is known as “emotional exhaustion” appears. And the thing is, suddenly, he had to put medical appointments on the agenda, keep the medication schedule and attend to the small mental health problems that his mother had.
“It affected me because seeing her go from the caregiver who was for me in the years of my childhood to the person in front of me, who needed my help for everything, broke my heart,” she says in the aforementioned medium.
“I have sacrificed my personal freedom”
Soon, the daughter asked herself a series of questions, although the main one continued to be the high price she had to pay for having her mother at home. As she claimed, she had lost her independence and time for herself. “I underestimated how much of my private life I would have to sacrifice,” she said, “when I wanted to do something I had to first consider how it was going to affect her. Is it selfish to want a night for myself, to be alone? Can I travel without planning her care in detail?”
The author highlights that coexistence brings positive aspects, including being able to share the care of the home but, above all, parenting. “When I’m overwhelmed, the simple fact that she makes dinner or helps me take care of my daughter shows that there is someone who cares about me.”
More than two million people live alone in the United States
The problem, according to the Continuous Household Survey, is that more than two million people live alone in the United States, so there is more and more intergenerational coexistence. “Thanks to this I understand aging better, I have been able to realize how complex it is for an older person to be completely alone and how fragile independence can be.”
“This does not mean that I have to give up my life, but that I must build a coexistence that is based on support and empathy, they need care, support towards them and towards ourselves.”