How to deal with an old fashioned father who expects me, his daughter, to constantly wait on him? My mom is old and frail and not able.

Welcome, HS!

Clearly, this situation is not working. Caregiving has to work for all parties.

What are your parents' resources? Is moving to a nice facility an option? Hiring aides?

Your dad is not going to be happy. Forget trying to placate or please him. The world has moved on from the expectation that women were put on earth to serve men.

You are a salaried professional; he and your mom are going to need to pay for their care.

Either your parents hire help to come assist them , or they go to assisted living on their dime. You are not their servant .

Well, you knew how he was before so you cannot expect him to be any different.

My deceased husbands father was waited on hand and foot by the women in his family, we were at a dinner in their home. I was helping to clean up the table walked by FIL, he stops me and says "You are the only DIL who hasn't served me today, get me a glass of milk"!

Right, I'll be doing that, NOT, I just kept walking.

The only way out at this point is to place them both, they can still live a lot longer, trust me I know...my mother is 98, will be 99 in February a mere 5 months from now. She is in AL and loves it!

More info from your profile:

"I am a working professional and I immigrated to this country 25 years ago My parents have moved here with me..."

I totally understand the "old country" cultural expectation thing. There isn't going to be any smooth way to deal with it except to tell your parents you are overwhelmed and that you need help, and they have to pay for it.

First and foremost: are you their PoA? If not, this needs to be a condition upon which you continue with the current arrangement. You won't be able to easily get them transitioned out of your home without the legal ability to do so. Please let us know if you are their PoA because this will dictate what advice you are given.

Still, you can start with hiring out housekeeping, yardwork, and maybe a companion aid to keep them busy. My 2 Italian-American Aunties (who took care of my Gramma until she passed at age 96) were dead-set against anyone (strangers!) coming into their home to help them. I explained the help was for me. Through some effort I found an awesome companion through an agency who stayed with them for 6 years and they adored her.

My Grandma lived in the US from her teenage years on but hardly spoke any English. Hoping your parents have a working knowledge of English, otherwise this will be another speedbump in releasing you as their caregiver.

Also hoping they have the financial resources to fund more help. This info will be helpful too in what advice is given.

Please provide more info.

Same here. Don't have to be immigrants. My family on both sides have been American for two or more generations. They are still in the mindset of The Old Country and the 19th century. It may be a Catholic thing- this waiting on men like they are kings...or maybe it is just the Patriarchy. Either way, I relate to your frustration. Sometimes I don't mind it but then other times...for instance, a couple of weeks ago I had a flair up from a badly sprained ankle and walking was extremely painful. I wanted to cry that my father had no problem walking for something he wanted and didn't have the patience to wait for, like walking down two sets of steps and to the end of a long driveway to get the newspaper or the mail, but could not put his dishes in the sink, let alone serve himself even a glass of water. And it was obvious by my limping that I was really struggling. And like you, it was my mother who conditioned him to this treatment. When they married in the 1950's a woman did not work outside the home and the man went to work and then came home no later than 5:30 and put his feet up and was done for the day. At least that is the case with my relatives and friend's families. It is tough. And its tough that my father has no idea how hard "women's work" is, nor how hard to maintain my own home as well as his. I made an executive decision to hire maids to come in every two weeks and I am so glad, but the other day he threw a fit and said that seemed very expensive (its not and they do a great job). I wanted to cry as he wrote twice what they cost to clean almost the entire house in checks, in an hour, to every political cause that came in the mail, no matter how sketchy, but would begrudge these hardworking people their modest pay for cleaning up after him. But then I thought about it and I realized this man has probably never cleaned a toilet or dusted a room in his entire life. Anyway, I have no more advice than to learn all about boundaries and learn how to not give nearly as many you know whats about what other people think, including your own parents. When I firmly but kindly lay down the law with my Dad on certain things it tends to go way better than I anticipated...but I do try to do it when he is not super grumpy...

I lived thru this too: you sit them down and tell them what you’re able to do & still have a life. Either other siblings get on board or they hire. All children have to find a way to contribute and, if there’s only one, < one cannot do it all!!> No ONE person should be expected to do it all, just because it happens to be a daughter!” The era of women doing most of the world’s dirty work FOR NOTHING is OVER!!

So your parents are not US citizens? Do they have green cards to establish residency? I will assume they never worked here to get SS and Medicare. That they have not hit the 5 year residency mark, so no Medicaid help. I so hope they have money, because both would do well in AL. At this point, I have no idea what you can do with a man who has been waited on his whole married life. If it was just u and him, you could set boundaries. But by u not doing, he expects Mom to do it and she is getting too frail.

My Mom did everything for my Dad which included drawing his bathwater. He went on disability in his early 50s. They were in their 70s when Dad asked Mom to do something for him (perfectly capable of doing it himself). She told him "You have been retired for 25 yrs, when can I retire" Dad said "never". Not sure if he was serious or just pushing her buttonsv but she blew up.

Old fashioned or not, having moved in with you gives your dad (parents) the expectation of being taken care of.

Those might not be old fashioned ways, my Dad was born in 1937 and he treated me and my sister like flowers. He expected something different from my brother.

Being old fashioned is different than being demanding, sounds like this goes way back. He’s not going to change, you’ll need to make other arrangements for him. I bet he does a lot better interacting with strangers he can’t order around. Good luck 💜

I’ve been thinking about you all afternoon, please forgive me if this message seems ‘over the top’. So:

Why have you gone back to being a dutiful slave daughter, after 25 years in the USA? Didn’t you emigrate for better opportunities NOT to be that?

We regularly have posters who are angry to find that their parent/s’ retirement plan is THEM. Their house, their time, their privacy and their money. They want a bit of support not to fall into the trap. Why should you fall, just because your parents expect it?

You would know if your father’s arthritis was crippling. It’s not. Most of us have a bit as we age, and we manage it with good habits plus appropriate pain killers. It’s no excuse for him not pulling his weight in looking after himself, his wife and your house they are sharing.

Your concern for your mother needs questioning. She is willing for you to do everything to avoid a MAN doing it. It’s not on, mother. And hiring a woman to do the jobs, to avoid a MAN having to do them, is more or less fine if it’s their money, but not with yours.

Why did father retire at 59? Some European countries have a retirement age of 60. I have sympathy with manual laborers whose bodies wear out, but it’s ruinous when applied across the board, backed up by a generous pension and provided to an inflated public service. It helped to ruin the Greek economy, which nearly shackled the EU. An alternative to retirement is that he was sacked, and wasn’t willing to look for another job. And in either case the line would have been ‘We are going to live with my daughter (in the land of milk and honey) (when we’ve spent our money)’. How old is he now? Many people in their sixties and early seventies are working. Perhaps he could get a part time job as a carer, even? Why not?

Regular advice is to read the book ‘Boundaries’. It could help you, and even get the message across to your mother and father. One boundary is that you do everything for yourself that you can.