Talk:Old Age Homes and Shelters

By Vishal Agarwal

In traditional homes, elderly parents live with their children and grandchildren (or in their close proximity) till their very end. As a result, they pass their last days happily, playing with their grand-children, and being served lovingly by their children whom they had raised with great effort and pain in their own younger years.

In modern times however, many young couples do not want to take care of their old parents. The excuse of these young couples is that they do not have enough money to take care of their kids as well as their own parents. Sometimes, both the husband and wife are working and therefore they arrange to have their aged parents housed at an old age home where a full-time staff takes care of them. Unfortunately, some people do not want to have their elderly parents around because they do not want to see them or do not want their own little kids to see them suffering of illness of old age.

In old age, people like to live in a fixed location and are not very comfortable moving around. Unfortunately, modern life has become very mobile. Job changes force us to move from one town to another. In many cases, we do not change our job, but it is the job itself that moves to another city because the employer decided to move their plant or office to the new location. Moving with elderly parents to follow a new job to a new location can be traumatic for both the couple and also their elderly parents who are staying with them. And yet, it is not right to just leave behind one’s aged parents and live thousands of miles away from them.

A major benefit of elderly parents staying at an old age home is the availability of professional medical care staff to look after them round the clock. On the flip side, parents often feel lonely there and sometimes these facilities are not managed very properly.