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Saturday 10 October 2015

Meet the professional women who claim they're too busy to visit their elderly parents - and don't feel bad about it (even when they've just had a hip operation)

Meet the women who claim they're too busy to visit their elderly parents
From her mother’s osteoporosis, which makes it a struggle to climb stairs, to her father’s heart condition, Andrea Gould is acutely aware of her elderly parents’ failing health. Every day, her mother texts Andrea, 39, to check how she is and calls her once a week so they can exchange news.
However, for more than 15 months, Andrea has been unable to find the time to visit her parents, who live 200 miles away from her.


She blames her hectic working life in Essex for the fact that she also has no plans to fit in a trip to the family home where she grew up in rural Worcestershire any time soon.
‘I really wish I could see more of my parents, but I’ve got a lot of things going on,’ says 
Andrea. ‘They are aware of how busy I am and they like the fact that I’m doing well.’
Among the things Andrea has ‘going on’ is running her business buying and selling second-hand furniture online, through sites such as eBay, then delivering the products to purchasers. She also sells her own artwork as well as earning additional cash working as a TV extra. ‘I go to the gym twice a week to keep fit,’ says Andrea, who is single. ‘It’s a lot to fit in but I like being busy. The only downside is not seeing my mum and dad.’ Her parents, Olwen and Stan, are both 73-year-old retired teachers and while they were once able to travel to visit Andrea they no longer feel up to the drive to Frinton-on-Sea.
But Olwen says she and Stan understand why it’s difficult for Andrea to make the three-and-a-half-hour journey to visit them, because ‘it’s a terribly long way’.
‘I have three daughters and they all live away and are extremely busy with their jobs, but they try to get here when they can,’ says Olwen. ‘I love to see them, but understand that their working lives do not always allow it.’

In an age when many children grow up and move long distances from home to pursue careers, and generations of families no longer live in each other’s pockets, this is a scenario familiar to many. However, alarming research this week revealed this state of affairs is making our elderly very unhappy indeed.
If families want to prevent their older relatives becoming depressed, they should visit them at least three times a week, the study said.
Speaking on the phone or having online contact doesn’t count, as it does nothing to improve older people’s depression risk.

Scientists from the University of Michigan studied 11,000 adults aged 50 and over, examining how often they were contacted by family in person, by telephone, via email or on social media.
Two years later they returned and assessed what proportion of the group was depressed.
Those who were visited three times a week had a 6.5 per cent chance of developing depression, while people who saw family and friends just once every few months had almost double the risk at 11.5 per cent.
Unhappy: Studies have shown elderly people visited regularly by family are far less likely to be depressed
Unhappy: Studies have shown elderly people visited regularly by family are far less likely to be depressed

According to the report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, while people under 70 experience less depression if they socialise with friends, those over 70 need to see their families regularly to feel happy.

This may go some way towards explaining the depression epidemic in Britain, where more than five million people have been diagnosed with the condition, including a fifth of older people living in their own homes and a heartbreaking two-fifths of those in nursing homes.
The report’s lead author, Dr Alan Teo, says: ‘Research has long supported the idea that strong social bonds strengthen people’s mental health.
‘But we found all forms of socialisation aren’t equal.
‘Phone calls and digital communication do not have the same power as face-to-face social interactions in helping to stave off depression.’

This is cold comfort for Andrea, who has convinced herself that a daily text and weekly telephone call from her parents are contact enough. Indeed, she appears to believe that this interaction is more essential to her well-being than her mother’s and father’s.
‘If I am upset about something I will speak to my mum about it,’ she says. ‘Every day I think, “What would Mum say if she was here? How would she be able to help? How would she speak to this person?” ’
Commitments: Esther Stanhope didn't manage to see her mother for four months after she had a hip operation because of work and her own children
Commitments: Esther Stanhope didn't manage to see her mother for four months after she had a hip operation because of work and her own children

But does she ever worry about how tough it must be on her parents seeing so little of her?
‘Sometimes I think they miss me and that the house feels very quiet to them,’ says Andrea, who left home aged 19 to go to university in East Anglia and until recent years managed to visit her parents once every 12 months.
Although Christmas is a time when many families get together, Andrea will be house-sitting to earn extra cash this December, while in previous years she has chosen to spend the festive season ‘relaxing with friends’.
This is in stark contrast to the family Christmases she and her sisters enjoyed growing up when their paternal grandmother would join them for roast turkey and all the trimmings.
‘I never imagined back then that I would go so long not seeing my parents,’ says Andrea. ‘I thought we were one of those families who would always be close.’

Nonetheless, the poignancy seems to be lost on Andrea that when she appeared on the television quiz show Fifteen To One last month, her parents were so excited about catching a glimpse of their daughter, for the first time in over a year, they told all their friends to tune in.

Afterwards, they texted Andrea to congratulate her on her performance.
Olwen commented on how different Andrea’s hair looked, compared with the last time she’d seen her in June 2014, when she and Stan made a special trip to Essex to attend one of her daughter’s art exhibitions.
Andrea doesn’t dwell on the likelihood that she will one day lose her parents and perhaps feel guilty and sad about having spent so little time with them during their twilight years.
‘I try to put the thought of my parents dying to the back of my mind because I don’t like to imagine it,’ she says. ‘I think of it as something a long way in the future.’

Earlier this year, Pope Francis shocked many by declaring that those who don’t visit their parents for months on end are likely to go to hell.
After learning about an elderly woman whose offspring hadn’t been to see her in a care home for eight months, he told an audience in St Peter’s Square: ‘Children who do not visit their elderly and ill parents have mortally sinned. Understand?’
However, the demands of modern life leave many struggling to be dutiful daughters and sons.

Esther Stanhope’s mother Aida, 77, had a hip replacement operation in April but, due to the juggling act of running a business, which often takes her abroad, and raising two children, Esther was unable to find time to visit her until four months later.
‘I went up in August and it was the first time I’d seen her since the operation. I suppose that means I must have sinned,’ says Esther jovially. ‘But in all seriousness, I didn’t feel bad. I spoke to her on the phone.
‘We live in a different culture to Mediterranean families. They grow up with a sense that family sticks together, whereas I was brought up in a family that did not spend that much time in each other’s houses.
Horrified: When Pope Francis heard people weren't visiting their parents for months on end, he told them they had mortally sinned - but Esther shrugged this off. 'I don't feel bad,' she told the Mail
Horrified: When Pope Francis heard people weren't visiting their parents for months on end, he told them they had mortally sinned - but Esther shrugged this off. 'I don't feel bad,' she told the Mail
‘My mum certainly doesn’t feel angry about it. With a business, a husband and two young children, I’m being pulled in many directions and desperately trying to make my life balance.
‘Mum understands. She doesn’t want to get in the way of my work and knows that when I’m not working, I’m really busy with the children.
‘She doesn’t want to be a pain or a burden and never gives me the impression she thinks I should be going up to see her more often.’
Esther, a former BBC producer who runs a business teaching people how to present proposals to clients, lives in London, while her mother is in Norfolk, a two-hour train ride or two-and-a-half-hour drive away. She tries to visit three times a year, but says that has got trickier since her children, aged nine and five, started school, as they have to stay in London in term time.
Esther’s father died when she was a child and she has five siblings, some of whom live closer but, according to Esther, don’t visit their mother often either because they are also busy running businesses and looking after their families.
Aida, a retired teacher, nursed her own mother, who wanted to stay at home rather than go into a care facility, in the years before she died in 2011, aged 98. And Esther acknowledges that as her mother advances in years, she is likely to need care, too.
‘That’s going to be difficult,’ she says. ‘I’ll probably have to go up at weekends a bit more.
‘Mum was retired when she was looking after my grandma and didn’t have anyone else to take care of, so she could spend more time visiting her. It took over her life at one point, but I have got a young family.’
Children move away to forge ahead in their careers to keep their families going, and their families come first. Parents are rather low down the list of importance.
Aida, whose daughter Esther did not visit her until four months after she had a hip operation 
When Aida was in better health she would visit Esther in London and help with the children. As she is no longer able to come to her, Esther agrees that visiting her mother should be more of a priority but, like many working mothers, already feels stretched to the limit and relies on modern technology to stay in touch instead. ‘I send mum little film clips of the kids on her phone, but she can’t work out how to play them,’ says Esther. ‘And she writes way too many words in a text message.

‘She asks loads of questions and I send back a brief reply saying: “Yes, all good. X”, because I haven’t got time to send a long-winded response.’ Aida admits to feeling lonely but, rather than being upset with Esther, considers her to be something of a linchpin, the person the family relies on to get them together for a meal, like the one she travelled to Norfolk for in August, four months after her mother’s hip operation.

‘Children move away to forge ahead in their careers to keep their families going, and their families come first,’ says Aida. ‘Parents are rather low down the list of importance. I wouldn’t have felt my children’s absence so much if I had a partner, but I do feel lonely.
‘I would love to see more of Esther, but I’m very happy that she is doing well. I can see that the better you do, the more difficult it becomes because you have less and less time.
‘And I wouldn’t like to think I was being a nuisance to my children, if they felt they had to visit me when they really can’t fit it in. I wouldn’t want them changing their lives to be more available.’

While saying that in an ideal world children would visit their elderly parents three times a week, Queen Allen, 39, takes issue with the Pope’s proclamation that those who don’t are sinners.
Her 81-year-old father is in a nursing home, suffering dementia, and Queen believes that given he was far from a model father, she is doing more than her duty by making the 45-minute journey to visit him once every four months.
Despite severe memory problems, he still recognises his daughter and even cries with joy when he sees her.
Sad: Esther's widowed mother Aida (not pictured) accepts she is 'rather low down' the pecking order when it came to her children's time
Sad: Esther's widowed mother Aida (not pictured) accepts she is 'rather low down' the pecking order when it came to her children's time
But Queen, from West London, has not forgotten how he refused to speak to her for ten years after she chose to go to drama school, aged 16, instead of joining the family catering firm.
Even once he relented and the lines of communication were finally reopened, contact was so sporadic after Queen’s mother died a decade ago that social services struggled to track down his next of kin when he was found wandering the streets in a confused state in 2012.
‘They said he needed someone to deal with his financial affairs because he no longer has the mental capability to do it himself,’ she says. ‘So I do my duty as a daughter, which is to make sure the home is paid for and he has enough toiletries. But emotionally it’s difficult because I don’t feel love for him.

‘Saying it’s a sin not to visit your elderly parents does not take into account the fact every family’s circumstances are different. My dad was controlling, dominant and aggressive. Everything had to be his way, there was no compromise, so it was very hard growing up in that environment.

‘Now he’s unrecognisable. He will ask the same questions, like, “Where am I living?” over and over again. He recalls past addresses, places he must have lived before I was born, and will refer to siblings he has not seen for many years.
‘If he’d been a better dad, I would have looked after him. I would have visited two to three times a week, instead of two to three times a year.’
Queen feels confident that she will not mourn her father’s loss, nor wish she’d spent more time with him while she could, once he dies.
But can the same be said for Andrea and Esther, and the rest of us too busy with the demands of modern life to set aside sufficient time for our parents, the very people who brought us into the world?

Via - Dailymail

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