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Depending on how things go I see this being tough for us, but we haven’t really discussed it and honestly will probably just deal as it happens. DH is an only and his parents are not close to their siblings or other family. We live really far from all parents at this point. I don’t think we could have any of them live with us, so if they lost independence it would be moving them close to us to a nursing home I guess, which I see as not desirable until no other choice since we’d be their only link to the outside world. My mom always morbidly jokes she wants to just go quickly before deteriorating but of course you don’t get to choose.

All of our grandparents lived in their own homes until they passed including DH’s 96 yo grandmother so we’ve never discussed it! Our house is not big enough to take anyone in so I think we’d all hit that road when it came to it. But all our siblings live nearby too.

None of my grandparents have moved in with their kids as they got older so I don’t think my parents would be thinking that anyway. My grandmother is in her 90s and not doing well at all and would really benefit from an assisted living place, but flat out refuses to leave her home- and she was very clear on that wish when she was much more clear minded than she is today. I think seeing how difficult it is on her grown children to get the right care for her has probably warmed my parents up to the idea of assisted living when the time comes. They don’t want to do that to their own kids.

DHs parents are both very independent and would not want to live with their kids. His 87 year old grandmother still travels internationally by herself but has thought about where she would go when she can’t stay in her home.

My DH and I discuss this regularly and in detail. A few years ago, my dad had a severe stroke, and DH and I struggled for years with how to honor and support his wishes of living independently (after his recovery) vs an assisted living community, where I felt he would receive better care and comfort. It was a daily stress on me and incredibly hard. I struggled daily with monitoring how he was, whether he had food, what his health was like—all from over 1,000 miles away and a very limited budget. Dad refused to live in a community or nursing home closer to me and I felt he wasn't living well on his own. To date, it's one of the hardest experiences I've ever had.

Now that Dad has passed, the conversation has shifted to what we'll do when DH's parents and my mom reach that stage. It's a real struggle, and the experience made me look at my own retirement plans in greater detail too.

It also has made us sit our parents down and have frank conversations about the kind of lives they want us to help them achieve in their older age. DH's parents plan to sell their home when the time comes and possibly move into an active retirement community, a move DH and I support, as it will let them keep some level fo independence while having care close by (we live a full day's travel away). We're preparing for the same experience as my Dad with my mom.

A pharmacist friend once said that the people she sees who come in who are caregivers to live-in elderly relatives ... well, it takes 10 years off their lives. I'm sure it was an exaggeration, but after I went through what I did with my dad, I understood her point. I still wished every day that I could take my dad into my home and care for him. There's no easy way around it, but my experience taught me that it has to be discussed, no matter what.

My mother has stated that she absolutely doesn't want to live in a nursing home. My grandmother (her mother) lived in one for the last ten years of her life due to medical issues and it was very hard on my mom to manage it and also to see how sad her life was once she couldn't get out of bed. If we can't take her in, I want to get her into an active living community where she still has some autonomy but will get the help she may need. My MIL will probably come live with us when my FIL dies.

We do have a guest room that is fairly spacious and an upstairs den that we are currently using as an office, but it can be reconfigured to be a separate living area if someone needs to move in with us for an extended period of time.

I dread this, to be honest. My MIL does not respect boundaries, at all, and does not get on well with my husband, but culturally expects that she will move in with us when she gets a bit older (she's already 70 and DH is an only child). And I think my husband would feel obligated to go along with this plan. Her parents lived until their death with their kids, but our situation is different - her parents had a lot of money and completely supported their kids with a very nice lifestyle in which they either didn't work or retired very young. In contrast, DH and I both have busy jobs and do not receive family support. To make things worse, DH's parents are divorced, his mom can't stand his dad, but his dad might expect to move in too. We are hoping to dodge that mess by virtue of the fact that FIL remarried to a younger woman who most likely will be able to take care of him throughout his life.

My parents say "don't put us in a nursing home." But I think they'd be happy to be in a decent assisted living center. They purchased long term care insurance to help us defray the cost of taking care of them when they are old. My mom understands better how difficult this can be - her mother was in ill health for a long time, had to be put in a nursing home because my mom was unable to provide intensive round the clock care, but she still ultimately had to find a job that was fewer hours so she could assist with my grandmother's care and struggled financially. My parents are very considerate about how not to leave us with a similar burden.

@snarkybiochemist: I think this is a good perspective, i.e. agreeing in advance with your partner on the conditions under which it will versus won't work out...I'd like to draw a similar line.

My husband's grandparents were being cared for at home when his grandfather had advanced staged alzheimer's disease, as that was the cultural expectation. They hired a woman to help, but she wasn't a skilled nurse - more like a housekeeper - and wasn't there all the time, and ultimately there was a fatal accident. I worry about a similar scenario, I'm trying to convince my husband that if his parents' end up in a similar situation, it's really not in the best interest of anyone to try to care for them in home, even if it is what his parents expect...

This is a huge issue in our household, but mostly because my husband refuses to deal with it. He is the oldest of 2, and in the culture he comes from, it's expected that he will be his parents' caretaker. His parents are in their 70s and their health is getting worse, so this is coming, but he absolutely refuses to have this conversation with them. The reason I think there might be other options is because they have a robust cultural community where they currently live (we're a few hours away), and because they mostly lived in the US, and because we don't have a house, and because their son married outside their culture, I think they might want to stay in assisted living, but again, he refuses to talk to them about this so I have no idea what's going to happen. It's a huge issue of contention.

My parents have been very clear that they want to go into assisted living, and under no circumstances will they live with us. My mom has worked in elder care for years and they are very independent and come from a "don't want to burden" mentality. They're in better health, so barring anything tragic, for my parents this is 10-20 years away, but with my ILs, yeah...

We haven't discussed this topic yet. My parents have always said they wouldn't want to live with us and wouldn't want to burden us which I so appreciate! My IL's are around the same age as my parents but they aren't as physically active and mobile and I can totally see them wanting to live with us. But we don't have the space-we have a three bedroom house and each bedroom will be filled. DH has a brother who is married and they have a huge house with plenty of room but the wife can't stand the IL's (MIL is super annoying and no way I could live with her) so I don't think their marriage would survive. I think they'd have to end up in some sort of assisted living facility.

DH and I haven’t fully discussed it. It’s mqybe come up fleetingly over the last 10 years but never a full discussion where we come to a conclusion.

Thinking about either of my ILs moving in with us - nightmare. My MIL would probably looooove it but my husband knows better than to even ask me. (And I don’t think he would want that either). We’d pony up to put her in a very nice assisted living community nearby. My FIL would probably never leave his house, he’s super stubborn. He would never want to rely on us for anything.

My parents - they live far away from us so it’s pretty unlikely they’d ever expect to live with us. I actually can’t see either of them wanting to. My mom would like to just live in her house alone, maybe with a housekeeper to help clean/tidy. My dad (if he were alone) would want to be in an assisted living community becuase he’s a total homebody and would like that he wouldn’t have to do household chores/maintenance/cook/etc.

So the general blanket is that if it's much safer for them to be in a assisted living facility or nursing home, we would, as a family make that choice for our parents. But as long as they can manage day to day, we agreed on the following -

My in-laws will live with DH's brother. He is a single dad, so even when my nephew grows up and moves out, his brother will continue to live with his parents. There are 3 siblings in total, we're all close enough to be around and help out as needed.

With my parents, once I don't really trust them to live alone, but they're not in any situation where living "by themselves" is dangerous, they would live with us. There would be 2 options, 1) stay in our house and build up or 2) we both sell our houses and move into a bigger one in our town. My sister is not in the pictures because she's much younger than me and just getting married next year, so her future kids would be much younger where as we're probably more "free" with older kids. Also I don't know what her fiance's situation is with his parents so since we feel good about having my parents with us, that's the plan for now.

We've had this discussion. Not really sure where my parents would live, because there's an extra complication there and I don't think I can handle them living with us. I think this is an amazing arrangement for both the older and the younger generation, but in this particular case, nope nope nope. They'll probably just syay in their house as long as possible, and I'll come over to help.

We've tried to get MIL to move in with us, but she doesn't want to. And she's really sick, so I can only wish she had ten more years... but she's planned to stay in her senior housing for the rest of her life.

@snarkybiochemist: yeah, I had a friend who managed a startup to improve in-home nursing care. It's super expensive, and I think there can be huge issues with reliability, caretakers quitting without notice or being out on very short notice, etc. The same issues you run into with childcare, but I think in general the workforce tends not to be of the same quality... But yeah, my MIL has gone so far as to send us house listings of places where she would like to move in with us, thank goodness my husband shut that one down. So I'm sure she expects it.

@Mrs. Carrot: Our situations seem very similar, in-laws who culturally expect it and are older, my parents who are don't want to burden types, and living in a small place...ugh...

So this used to be a huge issue between DH and me. I felt an obligation to care for my mom and felt there was a stigma to assisted living. And my mom didn't really want to move into an assisted living setting. (My mom lives in MI, we live in Chicago)

My 60 yo mom has been sick for years. Up until last May, she had mild cognitive impairment and MS; she was slowly declining but lived alone/independently with a few hours of home health aide.

When we were house hunting, I was insisting on finding a first floor in law suite. Our agreement was that she could stay with us 4 months of the year (I have two sisters). But, then in May she fell (right as we were house hunting) and it was clear that she couldn't live alone for another day. We needed a solution immediately, so we arranged for assisted living at a Sunrise. We sold it to her as her own mini apartment with the opportunity for community meals/activities etc. I wouldn't say she's 100% happy and wishes she could still live alone, but she does admit that she can't. We also had to tell her that it would be neglectful on our part to let her go home from the hospital without 24/7 care. And 24/7 inhome care was going to be like 15k per month through an agency. (Agency felt necessary bc otherwise private hires aren't reliable, call in and require tons of management).

Sunrise is still expensive, so we may have to readdress everything in like 10 years when her savings run out.

Now, she will come visit us for like 5 days at a time -- and there is absolutely NO WAY I could care for her and the kids at the same time. Those visits are very stressful - I basically can't leave the house. It's too hard to move her and the kids through a parking lot etc.

So, even though I had the best intentions and truly wanted her to live with us (well, felt like I should have her live with us), I now realize I couldn't handle it.

Essentially, my advice is that you may have the best intentions and plans, but life is tricky. It's much easier to agree to elder care in concept, execution is difficult.
Definitely do not plan to take care of someone with dementia in your home.