A family can agree that someone needs looking after and still leave the same person to do nearly all of it. There need be no deliberate cruelty involved. One person lives closer, has more flexible work, or has always been the one who sorts things out. Gradually, an arrangement nobody quite chose becomes a responsibility nobody thinks to question.
That is one human concern beneath the BBC Business report that families in China are now supporting more older people than children, a milestone in the country’s ageing population. The supplied report does not tell us how that support is distributed within households. It does give us reason to examine what we expect the word “family” to carry.
There is something deeply valuable in being able to rely on people who know us. Few would welcome a life in which every need had to be met through a paid transaction. But affection does not settle who can leave work early, who has room at home, or whose plans can be postponed. Those are practical decisions with consequences, however lovingly they are made.
The obvious objection is that families cannot conduct a negotiation every time somebody needs help. Quite right. Illness does not wait for a convenient meeting. Sometimes we do what is necessary and work out the rest afterwards.
The difficulty comes when afterwards never arrives.
An emergency arrangement can harden into an indefinite expectation. The person receiving care may have little say in it either, spoken about as a responsibility while still having wishes, judgement and something to contribute. Counting people who need support is necessary for planning. It cannot describe the whole of their place in a family.
Perhaps the useful response to this demographic milestone begins with a conversation before the next urgent phone call. What help is actually wanted? What can each person sustain? Where does the family need help from outside?
These conversations can be awkward because they expose limits we would rather love could overcome. Yet leaving those limits unspoken does not remove them. It leaves whoever reaches theirs first to explain why they can no longer manage, often after everyone else has grown accustomed to their managing.