Friday, May 9, 2014

Honoring Mom should mean more than a card

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The flowers and cards and brunches that will mark the second Sunday in May are wonderful gestures and surprisingly good for the economy. Perhaps the central focus of Mother’s Day should shift, however, from honoring the past to considering how to care for mom, and everyone else, who will reach very old age in record numbers in coming decades.
    Mother’s Day came into being in the early 1900s, when a woman named Anna Jarvis held a ceremony to honor her mother. As dutiful sons and daughters, most of us have come to accept it as a necessary sign of honor and remembrance for all that mothers do. Somewhere between guilt and appreciation, Americans will spend approximately $14.6 billion in remembering mom on this single day.
    Recently, the American Association of Retired Persons noted an indisputable fact of demographics. “Rapidly increasing numbers of people in advanced old age and shrinking families to provide support to them demand new solutions to financing and delivering long-term services and supports.”
    The aging of the Baby Boom generation at the same time the numbers of potential caregivers in the next generation are significantly fewer creates an obvious imbalance. More and more often, people are living well into old-old age, defined as 85 and older. On average, the need for a caregiver’s support lasts 4.3 years, and that period is likely to get longer.
    How will we navigate the gap between caregivers and longevity?
    Historically, friends, neighbors or children provided care for elders. The economic consequences were hidden within each family’s budget. With families becoming smaller, with more people remaining childless, with relatives and friends scattered across the country and mobility reducing the likelihood of even knowing neighbors, we will have to find solutions that depend on more than family relationships for care for the elderly.
    Flowers are beautiful, candy is dandy and Mother’s Day cards express warm thoughts, but one day much more is likely to be needed to honor our mothers. Families need to create a plan for how to care for the parent who has cared so much for them. What we need to do as a community and a nation is to make sure that no one is alone in the planning, in the caregiving, or in their last days.
    Using Mother’s Day to kick off this kind of planning would surely be a useful addition to this annual day of honor and the traditional meals, flowers and gifts.

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