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Nursing home visit raises questions of elder care
By Wan Lixin |
February 22, 2013, Friday
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On Saturday, two days before the new school term began, my son and five of his classmates armed themselves with brooms and dustpans and marched to a facility for the elderly in the middle of a neighborhood opposite the school.
Under the supervision of their parents and grandparents, they were going to "do a good deed," as part of their assignment for the winter vacation.
Simple as "doing a good turn" appears to be, an eminently good deed is best done publicly, collectively and with political or social-welfare overtones.
It put me in mind of a similar assignment I had decades ago during a winter vacation. How to assertively execute a manifestly good deed hung so heavily on my mind that it nearly spoiled the vacation.
But kids sweeping the floor in an elders' home certainly has the makings of a good deed.
I used to pass through that neighborhood daily, but it never occurred to me there was such a care center. Unlike a school, which can be noisy, these places are often unnoticed.
When my son and his contingent arrived, around a dozen elderly people were sitting in their wheelchairs basking in the morning sunshine, quiet and passive.
A manager by contrast was vigorous and profuse in her thanks.
The facility had received quite a few good samaritans from my son's school of late, and there really was nothing to be done in that immaculately kept courtyard.
But one shrewd mother quickly espied a long-forgotten 10-square-meter concrete space under a pergola covered with grapevines. This would be the stage to showcase the kids' capacity for charity.
It took the kids one hour to sweep the area that would have taken a typical cleaner just five minutes.
The climax of the trip was, no doubt, when the kids posed with the elderly citizens, with the parents eagerly training their cameras on them.
It was a moving sight of contrasts: the freshness of early bloom and the withering of age. I regretted that I hadn't taken my camera along.
In a subsequent chat with a middle-aged man who was visiting her mother there, I learned that this was a privately run institution where monthly expenses amount to 3,000 to 4,000 yuan (US$476-635).
That's way above the average pension, but it's situated in the middle of a downtown neighborhood, and just 15 minutes' walk from a hospital.
By comparison most such public institutions for the elderly are located in the suburbs, being long priced out of downtown area by soaring land prices.
Recently there has been quite some talk about the care of the elderly.
That had never been much of a problem in traditional extended families where the patriarchs held almost despotic sway and filial impiety was a cardinal sin.
Shock of gray
Modern professional requirements and the enshrinement of individualism as emancipating and progressive have led to a new code of ethics that effectively evaluates individual worth in economic terms. Adding to that are complexities brought about by years of family planning.
On Monday's Wenhui Daily was a front-page package headlined "How to provide for the elderly couples who had lost their only children?"
These mainly refer to couples above 50 whose only children have died or been disabled. Being past child-bearing age, these couples are no longer able to have another child. There are no reliable statistics regarding the number of such couples, but it is estimated to be around 10 million.
According to one study in Shanghai, nationally about 218 million only children were born from 1975 to 2010. Given the probability of accidents and diseases, about 10 million children might die before age 25, meaning nearly 20 million parents would live without the consolation of their children in their middle and old age.
The issue looms so large that it became an important topic during the recently concluded provincial and municipal congresses. In the government report of Hunan Province, the plight of such couples was disussed and the first proposal made to the Jiangsu provincial congress was on assisting these families.
Some deputies to Shanghai's municipal congress reported that most of these couples were low-income and in poor health. In addition to their bereavement, they eventually will have to tackle serious problems of old age, including medical treatment and finding care-givers. Shanghai has around 7,000 such couples and the number is growing at 500 a year.
Before long these people will be in need of old-age care, but most are financially unable to afford expensive, privately run institutions. Gaining admission to public institutions can be difficult, typically requiring the written approval of children.
Government duty
The government is morally bound to provide for a situation that is, to a degree, an outcome of the family planning implemented since 1970s.
It is high time policy makers objectively reassessed the long-term impacts of artificially deflated birth rate on family structure, old age care, pension, and economic and social developments, as a fast shrinking pool of prime-age workers are compelled to provide for an expanding aging population.
Of course the care of the elderly is not an issue concerning only people who have lost their children.
Another long overlooked segment of the population is the elderly living in rural areas. For two or three decades, migrant youths have been encouraged to proffer themselves as cheap labor in cities far from their children and parents.
In one sense policy makers can afford to be so smug about decades of GDP growth simply because they can ignore the hidden costs of these left-behind children and elderly, now.
Under the supervision of their parents and grandparents, they were going to "do a good deed," as part of their assignment for the winter vacation.
Simple as "doing a good turn" appears to be, an eminently good deed is best done publicly, collectively and with political or social-welfare overtones.
It put me in mind of a similar assignment I had decades ago during a winter vacation. How to assertively execute a manifestly good deed hung so heavily on my mind that it nearly spoiled the vacation.
But kids sweeping the floor in an elders' home certainly has the makings of a good deed.
I used to pass through that neighborhood daily, but it never occurred to me there was such a care center. Unlike a school, which can be noisy, these places are often unnoticed.
When my son and his contingent arrived, around a dozen elderly people were sitting in their wheelchairs basking in the morning sunshine, quiet and passive.
A manager by contrast was vigorous and profuse in her thanks.
The facility had received quite a few good samaritans from my son's school of late, and there really was nothing to be done in that immaculately kept courtyard.
But one shrewd mother quickly espied a long-forgotten 10-square-meter concrete space under a pergola covered with grapevines. This would be the stage to showcase the kids' capacity for charity.
It took the kids one hour to sweep the area that would have taken a typical cleaner just five minutes.
The climax of the trip was, no doubt, when the kids posed with the elderly citizens, with the parents eagerly training their cameras on them.
It was a moving sight of contrasts: the freshness of early bloom and the withering of age. I regretted that I hadn't taken my camera along.
In a subsequent chat with a middle-aged man who was visiting her mother there, I learned that this was a privately run institution where monthly expenses amount to 3,000 to 4,000 yuan (US$476-635).
That's way above the average pension, but it's situated in the middle of a downtown neighborhood, and just 15 minutes' walk from a hospital.
By comparison most such public institutions for the elderly are located in the suburbs, being long priced out of downtown area by soaring land prices.
Recently there has been quite some talk about the care of the elderly.
That had never been much of a problem in traditional extended families where the patriarchs held almost despotic sway and filial impiety was a cardinal sin.
Shock of gray
Modern professional requirements and the enshrinement of individualism as emancipating and progressive have led to a new code of ethics that effectively evaluates individual worth in economic terms. Adding to that are complexities brought about by years of family planning.
On Monday's Wenhui Daily was a front-page package headlined "How to provide for the elderly couples who had lost their only children?"
These mainly refer to couples above 50 whose only children have died or been disabled. Being past child-bearing age, these couples are no longer able to have another child. There are no reliable statistics regarding the number of such couples, but it is estimated to be around 10 million.
According to one study in Shanghai, nationally about 218 million only children were born from 1975 to 2010. Given the probability of accidents and diseases, about 10 million children might die before age 25, meaning nearly 20 million parents would live without the consolation of their children in their middle and old age.
The issue looms so large that it became an important topic during the recently concluded provincial and municipal congresses. In the government report of Hunan Province, the plight of such couples was disussed and the first proposal made to the Jiangsu provincial congress was on assisting these families.
Some deputies to Shanghai's municipal congress reported that most of these couples were low-income and in poor health. In addition to their bereavement, they eventually will have to tackle serious problems of old age, including medical treatment and finding care-givers. Shanghai has around 7,000 such couples and the number is growing at 500 a year.
Before long these people will be in need of old-age care, but most are financially unable to afford expensive, privately run institutions. Gaining admission to public institutions can be difficult, typically requiring the written approval of children.
Government duty
The government is morally bound to provide for a situation that is, to a degree, an outcome of the family planning implemented since 1970s.
It is high time policy makers objectively reassessed the long-term impacts of artificially deflated birth rate on family structure, old age care, pension, and economic and social developments, as a fast shrinking pool of prime-age workers are compelled to provide for an expanding aging population.
Of course the care of the elderly is not an issue concerning only people who have lost their children.
Another long overlooked segment of the population is the elderly living in rural areas. For two or three decades, migrant youths have been encouraged to proffer themselves as cheap labor in cities far from their children and parents.
In one sense policy makers can afford to be so smug about decades of GDP growth simply because they can ignore the hidden costs of these left-behind children and elderly, now.
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