Financial and relationship woes caused by Covid in the UK are driving a rise in older people returning to live with family
The Covid pandemic has led to growing numbers of baby boomers in Britain moving back in with their elderly parents, experts have said.
The reasons are varied, from the positive – grown-up children ensuring their parents had care and company during lockdowns – to the negative, including financial and relationship breakdowns.
Continue reading...It was like a beehive. A buzzing mass of 800 guests gathered around the queen, their larder of honey replaced by shrimp croquettes and caviar. It was 32 years ago when my mother, Ann Russell Miller, threw a combination 61st birthday and bon voyage party in the grand ballroom of a San Francisco hotel. Above her floated a balloon, tied to her wrist and emblazoned with the phrase: “Here I am.” She manoeuvred about, dressed elegantly in sparkling black. Her makeup was flawlessly applied, her hair expertly coiffed, her shoes chosen from hundreds of exquisite pairs. But this was her last formal outfit. She would never wear makeup again. The following day her hair would be shorn close to her scalp and forever hidden under a veil. For the next three decades she would wear the simple brown habit, with sandals or work shoes, befitting her new life as a cloistered nun.
As the orchestra played the familiar strains of Happy Birthday, she could doubtless hear the echoes of birthdays past. The song played in Oregon and California during her youth. It was sung by her classmates at the Spence School on East 91st Street in New York. Her 21st birthday was spent newly married and five months pregnant. She would be in that condition more than 90 months of her life. By her 41st birthday she had completed her collection of five daughters and five sons. My father, who died when my mother was 55, was fond of saying that he had wanted 12 children and my mother wanted 10, so they compromised and had 10. She talked nearly nonstop on the telephone and in person. She had the exceedingly irritating ability to nap almost at will and wake up in such a manner as to make one doubt that she had been asleep at all. With charm and eccentricities to spare, she fairly skated through life with the benighted ease of the fabulously wealthy.
Continue reading...From an early age, she encouraged me to be strong, physically and mentally. Those gifts helped me through the day we buried her
My mum was a PE teacher and coach. One of her early gifts was to help me feel like a physically capable female. For the couple of years before she died, my body had taken a battering, with illness and major surgery, then pregnancy and the aftermath, so I wasn’t feeling at all hale. Carrying a coffin is not something a woman necessarily plans to do – usually men perform this task; assumed to be stronger bearers. It’s a frightening, demanding duty.
But I wanted to do it for Mum. I wanted to be involved practically with the process of grief, and “put my hands under the stone”. My cousin R, an upland sheep farmer and incredible woman, walked at the front with me. What the congregation in church saw first as we entered the building was not a typical sight – a beautiful white wool coffin carried in by women. The coffin was chosen by my dad, my brother and me. It was constructed from local fleece and covered with flowers, a visual antidote to fear and darkness.
For the interment, we had the catastrophic challenges of storm Desmond’s tail – a Met Office red weather warning, flooding and damage in the village cemetery, debris everywhere. The entire burial was in question. Throughout, the undertakers were superb, calm, stewarding, agents of a remarkable humanity. Drains were unblocked; the grave was dug, the burial would go ahead, they insisted, the coffin taken via a high passable pathway, between the oldest headstones.
It’s an old Westmorland tradition that mourners walk in a cortege from church to cemetery behind the hearse, and everyone did. The scene was like something from an oil painting; the formal procession through a drenched Lakeland village, the gales dying out and black clouds breaking apart, rays of brilliant, gilded light. People had fought to get to the funeral – train lines and roads were shut and there were long delays, blockages, power cuts. Those who tried all made it, or sent representatives from as far afield as India and the US.
It was an incredible experience – a good disturbance in the heart. I’m haunted, but not traumatically, and a few years later wrote a short story about it all called Sudden Traveller. It is the only story I cannot read out in public.
Regardless of the epic December weather, there were absent people who might have come in support – of me, if not my mother. At the time, my marriage was breaking down and my daughter was only 16 months old. Mum had been sick with cancer for a year and I lived six hours away from her and Dad. I was in the eye of a personal storm, too.
The US transportation secretary and his husband recently adopted newborn twins and praised ‘an administration that’s actually pro-family’
US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has been on paternity leave since mid-August with newborn twins, called right-wing attacks on his paternity leave “strange” and from “a side of the aisle that used to claim the mantle of being pro-family”.
Buttigieg – who is gay – was the subject of criticism from Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Thursday, who belittled the secretary’s paternity leave while making homophobic comments and criticizing the administration for supply chain woes.
Continue reading...Fifteen years ago, writer Charlotte Raven was diagnosed with the incurable neurodegenerative disease – what did it do to her family and her marriage?
The day I found out how I was going to die began innocuously enough: the usual blur of nappy changing and tetchy texts to my husband. Life in our recently refurbished London home had settled into a rhythm, with a low-level background of domestic discontent. Arguments about wallpaper had run their course; our cats had made their peace with our one-year-old daughter, Anna; and I was pleased to have married a responsible hedonist who liked babies but never made me feel guilty for finding them boring.
That day, my husband, Tom, had gone to work early; a documentary director, he was filming a series about the London Underground. After a sleepless night, I was eating breakfast with Anna when the landline rang. It was my dad’s old friend Eric, who had been keeping an eye on him ever since my mum had died four years earlier. We were all worried because Murph (everyone called my dad Murph) had been making some bad decisions, then digging in defiantly.
Continue reading...The first thing to think about is what you hope to achieve by replying to him, and whether this is achievable
My dad is in his 70s and has contacted me on Facebook. I have not yet replied. I last spoke to him almost 20 years ago, shortly after my mum died. I was 17, and he was angry with me for ignoring him. In my early childhood my dad lived with us only briefly, but was often drunk and angry, and I heard stories of him hitting my mum.
My mum left him when I was four and I saw him again when I was eight, when I was expected to keep him company; if I didn’t he would go to the pub and get very drunk. One time I went to play with my friends, and when I came home he was so drunk he hit my mum and threw my dog against a painting. That day I decided I hated my dad.
Continue reading...They are working three jobs, changing careers or moving to faraway areas with affordable housing in order to drum up enough money for children of their own. Sadly the numbers still don’t add up
“People need to stop telling me to ‘just get on with it’ if I want to have children,” Jen Cleary says, clearly exasperated. “Most of my generation simply cannot afford to. Being childless is out of my hands and it is a devastating and frustrating reality.” Cleary, a 35-year-old former teacher, is recounting how financial precariousness means that her dream of having a family may never come true. It is an experience that many millennials – defined roughly as those born between 1981 and 1996 – have encountered.
The UK’s birthrate is at a record low, with fertility rates for women under 30 at their lowest levels since records began in 1938. There are many factors that contribute to this, including the fact that many people struggle with infertility; some make a positive personal choice not to have children; and others decide against having kids because of the uncertainties and peril of the climate crisis. But finances and the rising costs of living are a persistent and growing issue. Just last month, the Labour party chair, Anneliese Dodds, pointed out that many people are being forced to put off settling down and having families thanks to “cost pressures” overseen by the current Tory government.
Continue reading...The comedian and her dad recreate a childhood photo and talk about early days in India, agoraphobia and swapping banking for comedy
Born in New Delhi in 1969, Sindhu Vee spent her childhood in India and the Philippines, before throwing herself into academia, getting degrees from Oxford, Montreal and Chicago universities. In her early 40s, she traded the world of investment banking for standup comedy. Her career quickly ascended, with appearances on QI, Have I Got News for You, Radio 4 and Netflix’s forthcoming adaptation of Matilda. She lives in London with her husband and three children; she is currently touring her new show Alphabet.
Continue reading...Fresh from winning gold in Tokyo, the diver answers readers’ questions on everything from gay role models to his passion for knitting and the secrets of his success
Tom Daley, Britain’s most decorated diver, grew up in the spotlight. He was 14 when he made a splash at his first Olympics, in 2008, and at 15 he became a world champion. This year in Tokyo, at his fourth Games, he finally won a longed-for gold, with his synchronised diving partner, Matty Lee. In 2013, Daley came out – a rarity among professional sportspeople – and he has become a campaigner for LGBTQ+ rights. Now 27, he is married to the screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, with whom he has a three-year-old son.
In a new autobiography, he describes struggles with injury, debilitating anxiety and coping with the death of his father, his biggest champion. Here, one of Britain’s best-loved athletes gamely answers questions from our writer and Guardian readers on all of the above, as well as his other great passion: knitting.
Continue reading...Only 31% of pregnant Americans are fully vaccinated. I felt responsible for this bean-like bundle forming in my body. But the conflicting advice made it hard for me to decide
These are the first three things I did when I found out I was pregnant in February. I took about six more tests. Then, I called the doctor’s office to make an appointment. A few days later, I signed up for a Covid-19 vaccine. I stood in line, freezing, at a high school in Coney Island to get my shot.
Deciding to get the vaccine that same month was not easy – even as a former health reporter accustomed to deciphering medical journals. I felt a very visceral and personal responsibility toward this bean-like bundle forming in my body. There were only preliminary studies about vaccine safety – saying the vaccine was likely safe – but based on participants who didn’t know they were pregnant during trials. Gynaecologists and family physicians had not yet achieved full and public consensus on their recommendations as most have now.
Continue reading...The question I am writing to ask your advice about our 22-year-old granddaughter. We house-sit for my daughter and her family when they are away. They have dogs, but don’t like to put them in kennels. We have always got on well with our granddaughter and indulged her, along with her brothers. But she is spoilt. Last month while we were there to house-sit, there was shouting between her and my husband. She didn’t like the fact that my husband had disciplined our dog when we arrived – but our dog was jumping up.
I know my husband has a short temper, but it blows over quickly. Her reaction was over the top. She stormed off and wouldn’t look at him. She asked him to leave the lounge as she wanted to watch a film. She actually arranged for a friend to call every two days to check the dogs were being looked after OK, as if we are untrustworthy. She texted me to say we were not to go into her room and she referred to my husband by his name and not “Grandad”.
Continue reading...Women who turn down advice from health service staff say they are being coerced with threats of referrals to agencies and police
Pregnant women and new mothers are being referred to social services by midwives for refusing to follow their advice, patient advocacy groups have warned.
Expectant parents who have declined care, including opting out of scans, refusing inductions or failing to attend antenatal appointments, are among those who have faced threats from healthcare professionals amounting to coercion, according to the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (Aims).
Continue reading...The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are advising visitors to their Archewell website to take regular screen breaks. How does this approach line up with the evidence?
Name: Screen time.
Age: It’s less about how old, more about how long.
Continue reading...My creativity can be traced back to my heritage, to the skin colour that defined how I was perceived. But, like my ancestors, I wouldn’t accept defeat
When I won the Booker prize in 2019 for my novel Girl, Woman, Other, I became an “overnight success”, after 40 years working professionally in the arts. My career hadn’t been without its achievements and recognition, but I wasn’t widely known. The novel received the kind of attention I had long desired for my work. In countless interviews, I found myself discussing my route to reaching this high point after so long. I reflected that my creativity could be traced back to my early years, cultural background and the influences that have shaped my life. Not least, my heritage and childhood
Through my father, a Nigerian immigrant who had sailed into the Motherland on the “Good Ship Empire” in 1949, I inherited a skin colour that defined how I was perceived in the country into which I was born, that is, as a foreigner, outsider, alien. I was born in 1959 in Eltham and raised in Woolwich, both in south London. Back then, it was still legal to discriminate against people based on the colour of their skin, and it would be many years before the Race Relations Acts (1965 and 1968) enshrined the full scope of anti-racist doctrine into British law.
Continue reading...Paul was in his 80s when someone called to say she was his daughter, conceived in a fertility clinic with his sperm. The only problem? He’d never donated any
For 40 years, Catherine Simpson thought she knew who she was: a nurse, a mother of three, a daughter and a sister. She looked like her mother, Sarah, but had the same temperament as her father, George: calm, unflustered, kind.
Then her father died. There was a dispute over his will, and that led her mother to call and tell her something that made the ground dissolve beneath her feet. George had had a vasectomy long before Catherine was born. She and her brother had been donor conceived in Harley Street using the sperm of two different anonymous men. George was not her biological father.
Continue reading...Computer games may be filling a void left by friendships that fell away over lockdown
My son is nearly 15 and my only child. His father and I separated some years ago and they see each other regularly. My son also has a good relationship with my partner, who has lived with us for a few years. He has always excelled at school and is a talented musician. When he was younger he was confident and eloquent beyond his years; he could make friends or have a conversation with anyone.
I have seen huge changes in him. Before Covid, he played in a couple of bands at school and had made friends with some older children through school productions. With lockdown, these friendships melted away and even at school he has been unable to mix with different year groups.
Continue reading...Growing up in Essex, my summers in Iran felt like magical interludes from reality – but it was a spell that always had to be broken
When I was 12, a bespectacled boy with a shock of thick hair and his forearm in plaster gave me the first Harry Potter book. We were at that age when gifts need little occasion, and this marked the last day of our first year of secondary school. It was 1999, and the book was unknown to me. I was mildly embarrassed by its childish watercolour cover, but I dutifully packed it in my satchel when, two days later, my family flew to Iran for our six-week summer holiday. On the large, faded floor cushions of my grandparents’ apartment in Tehran’s central district, I read the book aloud, flanked by my twin younger sisters, while the adults took their siesta and scorched air and car horns filtered through the mosquito blinds. We fell for it instantly, rooting for Harry as he was transported from life as a misfit in a gloomy suburban cupboard to the secret world of wizardry in which he found fellowship, adventure and belonging.
In the years that followed, I would read each successive book to my sisters. Even from the start, they were too old to be read to, but it was more gratifying and companionable to follow Harry’s story together, and besides, we could only ever get our hands on one copy. Every now and then one of us would sigh and say, “Don’t you feel sad when it hits you that Harry Potter isn’t real?” We lived in Southend-on-Sea and attended the local school, an underperforming comprehensive housed in a squat brutalist building on the edge of a large council estate. Most of the pupils were poor, and many underfed, which gave rise to an unshakeable fog of hopelessness, shame and anxiety. While there were few children of colour, racism prospered alongside the many other casual cruelties. With our packed lunches and summer holidays, we were the lucky ones (as our parents often reminded us), but we nonetheless lived in hope that the prosaic, heartless world around us was just the opening scene of a story with a stronger narrative, a better set of characters, and the clean justice of magic.
Continue reading...Social Market Foundation suggests measures including better childcare provision to increase birthrate
Britain is facing a “baby shortage” that could lead to “long-term economic stagnation”, a thinktank has said.
The Social Market Foundation (SMF) said the birthrate was almost half what it was at its postwar peak in the 1960s, and the country’s ageing population could lead to economic decline.
Continue reading...My parents are Bangladeshi Muslims. My husband is an Ashkenazi Jew. And our baby son? He’ll eat chicken soup and chicken curry…
Even before my son was born, I used to imagine all the things I would feed my future children. They would come home from school, backpacks hanging off their shoulders and tummies rumbling, and ask what was for dinner. I pictured them round-faced and cheerful, tucking into the same meals that I grew up with. I would heap their plates with hot white rice, garlicky dal garnished with coriander, and spicy fried fish. They would eat with their hands of course, like any well brought-up child of Bangladeshi origin, deftly picking out the tiny bones, and squeezing wedges of lime over the crispy fish skin, which they would save until last as a treat, licking the tangy juice off their fingers.
I already knew the satisfaction I would get from watching them eat; and knew too, the importance of warding off chok – the Evil Eye – by saying “Masha’Allah”, thanking God for their hearty appetites and chubby legs. I would teach them to say “Bismillah” before every meal and “Shukr alhamdulillah” when they finished, making sure they were aware of the gift of nourishment they had received.
Continue reading...Campaigners fear ban emboldens anti-choice governments as more aggressive opposition, better organised and funded, spreads from US
The new anti-abortion law in Texas is a “terrifying” reminder of the fragility of hard-won rights, pro-choice activists have said, as they warn of a “more aggressive, much better organised [and] better funded” global opposition movement.
Pro-choice campaigners have seen several victories in recent years, including in Ireland, Argentina and, most recently, Mexico, where the supreme court ruled last week that criminalising abortion was unconstitutional. Another is hoped for later this month when the tiny enclave of San Marino, landlocked within Italy, holds a highly charged referendum.
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