Crisis in long-term health: Boomers caring for elderly parents, but who will care for them?

Pioneer Press

Updated: 04/17/2009 11:03:24 PM CDT

WHO WILL CARE FOR THEM?

The demands of caring for their aging parents are putting a strain on the generation born after World War II. But the children of baby boomers will face an even greater burden.
By Jeremy Olson
jolson@pioneerpress.com
Maggie Jessen was once the death of her mother — a teenage wild child who smoked and ignored schoolwork and left home at age 16 after an argument with her father.

Now, she is the lifeline keeping her 91-year-old mother, Maurine Martin, out of a nursing home.

Maurine has lived the past four years in Maggie's home in St. Paul, in a bedroom that Maggie's husband built in place of the back porch. She is forgetful and hallucinates about cats and children. Sometimes, she thinks her room is an apartment and calls her daughter's house "the building."

Caring for Maurine takes energy and patience — whatever Maggie has left after working with special-education students at Central High School. Friends tell Maggie she's "done her time," but they don't undersBut studies show that tand.

"You can't understand unless you've been through it," she said. "I mean, it's my mom!"

A cluttered nursing home may be the stereotype of elder care in the United States, but spouses, friends and adult children provide more than 90 percent of the care to the nation's frail and elderly. This informal network is the backbone of the nation's long-term-care system, and it will be needed more than ever as the baby boomers

But studies show that..........read the whole article and comments

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