When You're Caring for the Aging Parent Who Harmed You

The grown children at the center of Katie Engelhart's New York Times piece didn't just have "complicated" childhoods; some were beaten, terrorized, or molested by their parents. Now they're the ones driving to appointments, managing the pills, and handling housework to sustain the now-elderly parents who harmed them. Engelhart follows people like Carole, a 58-year-old caring for the father who kicked her "like you would kick a dog," and Asia, who became a full-time caregiver to the strict, violent dad who didn't permit his children to laugh in his presence.

They aren't outliers. One 2015 study Engelhart cites found that nearly one in five Americans caring for an aging parent say that parent abused them verbally, physically, or sexually. The article is less about forgiveness than about obligation—moral, financial, and legal—and how America's thin long-term care system "is reliant on unpaid family caregivers, and adult children in particular." Carole summed up her decision to care for her father by saying, "I have enough integrity. And I have to be able to live with myself after that [expletive] is dead." Read the full story here.