The biggest challenge

There is no dearth of challenges that an immigrant to US (or any country for that matter) faces. Getting trained to have a successful career in a new country, making a living in a new work environment, and raising children in a new culture are some of them. Add to that the biggest one of them all: What to do about the aging parents you left behind in the old country, say India.

How to take care of them and who takes care depends on a whole bunch of factors. The most important is where the children are located. If all of them are in US, it is one thing. If at least one is in India, a different set of issues needs to be dealt with.

Let us start with the scenario of all in US.

There are basically three options: bring the parents to this country, find someone (a relative, a friend) who will look after them in India, or have one of the siblings go back to India when parents age and need care. Each has its own set of benefits and difficulties.

Bringing parents to this country clearly has some benefits. The children can take turns at looking after them, and being close to their loved ones would definitely have a positive impact on the parents as they glide through their golden years. In addition, external factors such as the lack of pollution, noise, and maddening traffic would add to the quality of life. Finally, the medical system in US is better set up for the end phase of life; in terms of nursing homes, palliative care facilities and hospices. Such institutional options are lacking in India, where home care is the only way.

However, transition from India to US is a tough one for parents. They find themselves totally uprooted from the familiar surroundings. Not being able to drive, or walk anywhere, makes them prisoners in the gilded cages of their children. They have few friends and their children, busy in their lives, may not be able to provide comfort and company they had hoped for. If they do end up going to nursing homes, unfamiliar people and food makes that experience quite unpleasant.

It is equally hard on their children, the immigrants. As they struggle through the tough phase of their children growing up, there is an additional demand placed by their parents. Once the really old age sets in, and/or only one parent is left, life can become quite challenging. There are no servants to serve the needs of an old person, as would be the case in India. Hired help is available but at very high cost. If the parent cannot be left alone, the quality of life gets severely impacted. Placing the parents in a nursing home does provide relief but the guilt that accompanies that decision is deep and unrelenting. Finally, given how long people live, this phase of parent’s life may coincide with children’s early retirement stage, a time period that they had set aside to relax and explore the world. It is hard not to build resentment and self-pity under the circumstances.

So, may be the parents should stay in India instead of emigrating to US to be with their children. However, that too is not a great solution. There has to be someone…uncle, aunt, neighbor…who is willing to look after them. As the parents age, the burden on these friends and relatives may become too much, and at that stage bringing parents to US may not be a viable option. For the immigrants, leaving their parents back home not only brings enormous guilt but also requires asking the caretakers to provide support they may not be willing or able to. Further, from a very practical perspective, such an arrangement would mean seeing their annual vacations getting chewed up by the same two trips to India. Goodbye to any other travels or experiences.  

Some immigrants to US end up relocating to India just to make the later life of their parents enjoyable. This solution is fine for parents but it leads to complete dislocation in the life of immigrants, who now find themselves becoming immigrants again, with the same problems of adjustment in a society that is unrecognizable from what it used to be when they left. Further, the grandchildren, Americans by birth, find the adjustment very difficult and frequently go back to US. So, now instead of making the twice-a-year trips to India to see parents, the immigrants end up making similar trips to US!

One would think that having a sibling who decides not to emigrate to US would solve the problem. However, that too is not satisfactory because now the burden of taking care of aging parents falls squarely on that person. It would be difficult for that sibling not to harbor feeling of resentment toward the America based ones who escape the responsibility and have to make just a couple of trips per year to do their share. As I wrote in one of my earlier Blog Posts, unfair distribution of parental care is a major factor in relationships among siblings breaking down.

So, there you have it, dear fellow immigrants. If you are already in the middle of this phase of your life, I am sure you would agree with what I am saying.

If you haven’t yet faced this challenge, you are in for a big surprise.