Muslims, parents and nursing homes

A black and white picture of a smiling elderly white woman with white hair looking at a smiling younger white woman with dark hair.

The last couple of days there has been a big row on “Muslim Twitter” about people putting their elderly parents in nursing homes and whether that makes them bad Muslims or ungrateful children or whatever. A couple of the female contributors actually work in nursing homes and have dealt with people with dementia; a lot of the male contributors haven’t, and have turned to blaming people’s backgrounds (often being western converts) for their being unwilling to look after their parents. I’ve also seen some fool suggest that a man who sympathises with them is actually a woman; usual “Muslim Twitter” stupidity in other words.

Years ago I went to a seminar on Syria which was held in London somewhere a couple of years after Bashar al-Assad took power after his father died. This was a time when the country appeared to be liberalising and people were still able to blame an “old guard” for the slowness of reforms. But we were told a story of a Syrian who had lived in the USA and decided to open an old people’s home when he returned, and years later some of the beds had never been occupied. Syrians looked after their parents; it was considered shameful to “put them in a home”. I have heard it claimed that doctors in hospitals in Saudi Arabia hardly ever come across dementia and this was down to the local diet or some such thing. I don’t know what happens when someone develops dementia so bad that they can’t be easily cared for at home, such that they are prone to running off and getting lost, or cannot look after themselves and resist being physically cared for, or that they do not know who their children or grandchildren are. Some elderly relatives were abusive when the adults expected to care for them in old age were children and some did not actually look after them. I am not convinced that Muslim societies just don’t have these problems; modern-day Saudi Arabia and Syria are neither paradise nor Prophetic-era Madinah; there are countless cases of people who are mentally-ill or have learning disabilities being confined to cages at their parents’ homes, or to long-stay hospital wards, in many countries around the world, including Muslim countries such as Indonesia and Nigeria. I don’t doubt that people with dementia are among them.

It’s assumed that people whose parents have to be admitted to nursing homes wanted to do it, or that they abandon them. Neither of these things are true. Many will have looked after them, or supported them to live in their own homes, as long as they could. (Not all elderly people want to live with their adult children; another thing people forget when discussing this.) Many, if not most, visit their relatives regularly and keep a watch on their condition, make sure they are being looked after and that they remain healthy. We hear from time to time of people who put secret cameras in their relatives’ rooms (disguised in alarm clocks and the like) to catch out suspected abusive carers; we also heard, during the early parts of the Covid-19 pandemic, of relatives being shut out of the lives of people in nursing and care homes because their visits had become an infection risk. The first of these things would not happen, and the second would not have arisen, if people whose relatives are in nursing and care homes are there because they are abandoned.

It’s also assumed that looking after elderly parents always falls to children, or that this issue is only about the elderly. It’s often the spouse, when one becomes infirm before the other, and they were in that position because they had wanted to live together for life. Another large group of people who are often admitted to nursing and care homes are disabled people who could otherwise live in their own homes if there was the support available; in this case, there is no moral argument made that anyone (such as their parents or a sibling) has a duty to house and care for them, nor is the “they paid their taxes all their lives” argument available to them. While the law is often on their side, there is often the struggle to secure support and even then, it could be withdrawn or drastically reduced because local authorities seek to save money. These were also some of the people who were denied access to their relatives for prolonged periods during and after the peaks of the Covid pandemic.

People should not be so quick to condemn others over something they know nothing much about. There is a difference between a merely elderly and infirm person, who could be looked after by a relative, and someone with a condition like Alzheimer’s who needs specialist care and might not be safe to have at home (it is against the law in the UK, for example, to lock anyone in a room or a building or otherwise deprive them of liberty without court authorisation). Caring for an infirm adult who may be heavier and possibly stronger than you (a distinct likelihood if the carer is a woman, and they usually are — these men pontificating about duty are unlikely to be the ones doing much of the actual work, rather their wives and sisters will) is a physically demanding job which carries risks. Nobody wants to have to put a relative they love in a home, but sometimes there is no option, which is why we need well-regulated nursing and care homes with well-paid and well-trained staff.

Possibly Related Posts:


Share

You may also like...