Mind your aged Ps and Qs

We middle-aged children can be fairly wearing for our older parents: one minute we're full of our own busy, busy lives, making it seem they're just another burden, a responsibility to be squashed into an overcrowded schedule.

The next, we're trying to run their lives, quizzing them about what they eat and when they last went to the doctor.

Fortunately, most older people are fairly indulgent: just as we scoff the half-cooked breakfast in bed made by a 10-year-old for Mother's Day, they know middle-aged children mean well, and they try to keep us happy.

Sometimes that's a problem for Margaret, a spirited 84-year old with three daughters and a son. "It's better that only one of my daughters takes me over at a time - if I'm obeying one, I'm not obeying another."

Margaret enjoys a lively relationship with her children, based on friendship more than respect. "Oh no, I don't get that - I get `shut up mother' all the time. But we're great friends. We go away on holidays all the time. I do appreciate them - I guess I don't tell them that. We were never very effusive."

Margaret lives alone - she was widowed many years ago - in a town outside Dublin; her children all live in the capital. But they are frequent visitors, and phone most days to see how she is. "They want to know what I'm eating, and I forget to be evasive and tell them the truth, and then regret doing so, because they want to know that I'm eating nourishing food. They want to know when I was at the hairdresser last - and when they come home, one of them will sit me down and do my hair and face.

"Mostly they check on me and keep me in order, but they don't bother me," she laughs, obviously loving every minute of it.

Keeping tabs on Margaret is probably no easy matter, though: "There's no regularity in my life, I come and go at different times, to different places." She is active in the ICA and other community activities; most of her friends are much younger than she is.

Obviously her present relationship with her children is based on a good relationship in the past. "I can't remember a time when we weren't talking," she says. She herself doesn't pry or probe, she says.

Margaret reckons older people "should have their own lives and be independent, and let their children be independent too". She knows a time might come when she becomes physically dependent: "I was sick this winter, and the awful thought crossed my mind `Maybe I'm getting old.'"

She would like it if one of her children were to take care of her the way she took care of her own parents towards the end of their lives. "That was the tradition, I suppose, but I wouldn't demand or expect it. "I would hope it wouldn't come to that - though I'm going to live to over 100," she chortles.

The relationship between ageing parents and ageing children can be a fraught one, with a mix of love, guilt, dutifulness, parental expectations and emotional dependency clouding the basic friendship between parent and child.

Often emotional dependency is a greater source of pressure than the demands of physical care. And more often than not, it's an issue between mothers and daughters. Middle-aged daughters may complain of mothers who are too emotionally dependent on them - but often, they set themselves up for it, says Mamo McDonald, cathaoirleach of Age and Opportunity, the agency which promotes older persons' full participation in society and campaigns to change negative attitudes towards ageing.

"Daughters tend to `mind the mammy' and create a dependence sooner than necessary. I remember seeing two daughters at the hairdresser's with their mother, who was old but quite able. They were flanking her and instructing the hairdresser on how to do her hair. "Later, I saw the three of them in a tea shop; the older woman asked for one kind of dessert, and one daughter said, `Oh no Mammy, that would be bad for you - this is what she'll have.' "And then they opened the mammy's purse to pay for the tea! Senile but solvent, I thought to myself."

McDonald, now 70, is herself one of Ireland's best-known older persons. Former president of the ICA and mother of 11 - nine sons, two daughters - she obviously hasn't started to run out of energy yet. She recently returned from a holiday to India with friends 30 years younger than herself, and found it hugely enjoyable. She's probably more on the move than her children and, if anything, they have a hard time tracking her down, not the other way around.

DAUGHTERS, she says, generally have a fundamentally different relationship with their mothers than sons do. "Lads assume they can land home whenever they want, that mammy will be there and there'll be lager in the fridge. As far as she's concerned that's fine; if she's going to be away, she makes sure there are enough supplies in so her sons can take care of themselves.

But daughters tend to take on responsibilities, sometimes unnecessarily. The important thing, says McDonald, is for both mother and daughter not to make assumptions about what the other is willing to do. "It's not right to expect a daughter or daughter-in-law to bring Mammy shopping every week at the same time. Equally, it's not right for children to assume that grandparents will always be available to babysit for them. This might call for some tough love, if you need to make it clear that you don't want to do this every week."

Still, her advice to children of older parents is "to visit, to drop in unexpectedly. A visit during the week of even 20 minutes is more valuable than any financial support. It doesn't have to be long - popping in and out is a great joy. It might just mean ringing up and saying `Can I drop by for a bowl of soup?' "

And McDonald advises older people: "The greatest gift you can give your children is your own independence."

Especially in this UN-designated Year of the Older Person, Age and Opportunity is actively promoting the message that old people do, can and should live healthy independent lives in the community, and, McDonald explains, attacking the mindset that says "once you cross a certain threshold, you're past it; that says `You can't expect me at my age . . .' "

The idea for this article suggested itself when one fortysomething told her mother she was enrolling for a course on "Children of Ageing Parents". "How about one on Parents of Ageing Children?" her doting parent snorted.

McDonald laughs: "I could become a consultant on that one."