The best gift for our kids

My youngest sister said something to me recently that got embedded in my thoughts and how I look at my health.

The best gift we can give our children is our own health when we are old.

It first sounded like generic advice that people say. But when I started thinking about what it actually means, it turned out to be arithmetic.

Everyone in my WhatsApp groups is saving for their kids in some way. A college fund. Help with a first home someday. Their first retirement account. Something left over at the end. That’s the gift we plan for.

Nobody plans for the other one.

When a parent stops managing on their own, someone steps in. Usually it’s family. And it isn’t the occasional visit. It’s hours, every week, for years.

A study followed close to a thousand older Americans through the years before they moved into care. The ones moving into independent living were getting less than seven hours of help a week. The ones moving into a nursing home were getting twenty-seven. Almost all of them had someone helping. Only a third had anyone who was paid.

Lam et al, JAMA Internal Medicine 2023. National Health and Aging Trends Study, 932 people, 2011 to 2020.

Twenty-seven hours a week is a part-time job. Nobody pays for it, nobody trains you for it, and you can’t quit.

I’m 47. When I’m 85, my kids will be about the age I am now. Right in the middle of their careers, maybe raising their own kids, and then looking after me.

And it costs them. Women who look after a parent and keep working cut back three to ten hours a week and earn about 3% less. A smaller number, men and women both, leave work altogether. The researchers were careful about cause and effect here. It isn’t just that people who work less end up caregiving. Caregiving makes people work less.

Van Houtven, Coe & Skira, Journal of Health Economics 2013. Health and Retirement Study, followed over time.

One honest caveat. Every one of these numbers is from the United States. In many cultures across the globe, families live together more and care is shared differently. There are published numbers for that, but none I’d trust as much, and I do feel that slow westernization of the cultures is making US numbers applicable in several cities across the globe.

So here’s the arithmetic. A parent who stays independent is giving their kids free time, room to take risks in their careers, money, and sleep. A parent who doesn’t is handing them a second job with no salary, arriving in the exact decade they are trying to build something.

That’s what my sister meant.

I can’t promise my kids I’ll never need them. Nobody can. But whether I end up on the seven-hour side or the twenty-seven-hour side isn’t only luck. The strength and balance that keep people independent can be measured today, and they move.

Fifteen minutes, a chair and a tape measure.

Get your Independence Number at independencenumber.com.