Did we create nursing homes because we stopped loving our parents and aging loved ones? It may look like we did or at least like we do not love as much as past generations. Where once we took parents into the home and cared for them for the rest of their lives, now it may seem like we look for any other alternative we can find. It may look that way on the surface and some may make that kind of judgment, but to do so is to miss some dramatic changes in our society. One of the changes is that we now live so much longer and, in the process, live beyond our children's ability to care for us.

Another major change is that we are now a scattered society. We don't live where we once did. There was a day when if there were six children in the family, five of them would live within a few miles of where they were born. One would get away, and we talked about them thinking they were too good for us and moving to California or some other far off land. Now all six are gone. There is no longer a core group of family living in the area and ready to give the care needed for their parents.

Major studies have been done on the high cost in time and productivity faced by industry as employees try to give care to parents living thousands of miles away. The worry alone is enough to make a person far less productive on the job.

The scattering of society forces many families into a question that may not have a good answer. "Is it better to move a parent to be near the children or let them stay in their own environment and find care there?" If they move, we can give much more attention and care, but they loose their friends, their comfortable surroundings, their home, the medical care they are acquainted with, and other things we cannot think of or imagine would matter. One woman explained it by saying she was loosing her world. I asked her what she meant and she began telling me about every service she needed being within a few blocks of her home, how she knew the people who waited on her at the cleaners, the pharmacy, and the grocery store, and how much she dreaded starting all over with strangers who might not be friendly. The decision is not easy and there is no right way to do it.

My parents moved to be near us when we lived in Texas. My father had a very hard time making the adjustment. I could not understand why at first but he said something that gave me a clue. He said, "A person who has lived for seventy years in one place ought not to have to move." He was quite angry with me when he said it. Somehow his moving had become my fault even though he and my mother made the decision without any input or pressure from me. As I thought about his statement, I began to grasp the problem. In the small town where he lived he was known and loved as Tom Manning. He had a place. He meant something to the community. He was well known and highly respected. In Texas, he was Doug Manning's father, and he resented it as well he should have. In time it became clear even to him, that the move was the only way he and mother could have been cared for as age took its toll. 

My mother-in-law was the same and yet different. She moved after she was in need of almost constant care, so she did not feel the same resentment. She did suffer the same losses at the time when she was still in the early throes of grieving the death of her husband. Since she was alone, she had no social outlet at all, and our house could have become a very lonely prison for her. My wife and I both worked outside the home, she knew no one in our town, she had lost her social life and had no prospects of finding a new one. Her health broke too quickly for us to address this issue, but had it not done so, I would have insisted that we find an assisted living center for her, not so much to give us relief, but so she could have a life of her own. A life with no socialization becomes a prison no matter where it is lived. 

We did not build nursing homes because we stopped loving. Nor does making that choice for care mean we are selfish. We did so because our world changed and brought on some questions with no good answers. A scattered society must of necessity find a way to give care and a new way to have quality of life at the same time. Sometimes that requires facilities outside of our homes. 

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