15 What About Family in Retirement?
Deanna loved helping out her daughter, whose frequent illnesses complicated her own working and married life. When Deanna’s husband had suddenly passed away just a few years into retirement, Deanna knew that she would need more company. Running errands for her daughter and even helping her daughter with her daughter’s household chores kept Deanna occupied and in good company. But her daughter’s several serious problems, not only with her health but also her workplace and husband, also heavily burdened Deanna, who sometimes wondered whether she was doing too much. Deanna finally decided to back off somewhat, both to respect her daughter’s privacy and to keep her own peace of mind.
Family
The quality of your retirement, whether peaceful and enjoyable on the one hand or turbulent and contentious on the other hand, can have a lot to do with your relationship with family members. Family members can be great supporters of retirees, providing companionship, offering support, stimulating interest, and planning activities. Retirees often look forward to spending more time with family and being generous with family members, even giving top priority to serving family members. Yet family members can also have unreasonable expectations for retirees, interfere with retiree independence, and burden retirees with family strife. Just as many retirees may rank family their first priority and greatest enjoyment in retirement, many other retirees may conversely rank family as their greatest burden and irritation in retirement. In the best case, family members, especially grandchildren, are a retiree’s crowning glory. In the worst case, family members, especially rascal adult children, are a retiree’s bane. Monitor the quality of your family relationships in retirement, and make adjustments as you and your family members need.
Influence
For the best relationships with family members in retirement, recognize that you influence, if not entirely control, those relationships. Don’t take the attitude that you must succumb to whatever conditions, demands, and burdens your family members impose for your retirement. Yes, you must get along, and doing so may take negotiation, communication, and compromise. But if your family members are all emancipated rather than dependent on your guardianship and support, and as long as you remain independent, you may choose to go your own way if the negotiations over a suitable relationship don’t resolve to your satisfaction. The ideal may be to grow closer to family members in retirement. But sometimes, family members do better farther apart in relationships. If you find in retirement that you must limit contact with relatives for a time, simply for your mental health and peace of mind, then do so. They may need a break from a strain in the relationship, too. Whatever you decide about your family relationships, accept that you, not they, are responsible for your retirement peace and state of mind.
Independence
One way to balance family relationships in retirement is to maintain a perspective of independence, as long as your independence is wise and possible. Offer help to family members, and accept the help of family members, too. Frequent mutual exchanges of small and large favors with family members can strengthen and confirm the family bond, while offering closeness, interest, activity, and companionship. Yet when either you or your family member begin to depend on involvement and assistance, the happy and voluntary family relationship can devolve into an unhappy and involuntary transactional service relationship. Childcare is an example. You may love spending time with your grandchild. And you may be more than willing to provide regular childcare while your adult child works, socializes, or runs errands. But becoming a full-time daycare provider for your grandchild, on whom your adult child depends, may affect attitudes, expectations, rules, and relationships. You may still wish to do so. Just recognize that the moment you subtly shift on any issue from independence to dependence, attitudes, feelings, and relationships may change, and not always for the better.
Sharing
Voluntarily sharing time, services, support, and activities with family members, rather than depending on one another, can make for a more-stable, joyful, and stronger relationship. The time for dependence may soon come. As we age in retirement, we may need our adult children to help us manage our financial and medical affairs, and may even need our grandchildren’s support and small services. Nothing is inherently wrong with dependence. Caring for dependent family members can be a beautiful thing. You cared for your children when they were young. They may be able to care for you when you are old. Few things are so precious as that reciprocal care. Yet if you are not yet in need of your adult children’s care, then your relationship with your adult children may be stronger, healthier, and better if you decline to depend on them, even if they offer. The same may be true that if your adult children don’t need your care, given that they are adult and emancipated, then your relationship with them may be better if you don’t attempt to force your care upon them. Instead, voluntarily share activities, services, and support, without requesting, requiring, or inducing dependence. The time for dependence may soon come. Saving it for when it’s necessary may better sustain the family relationship.
Support
That said, retirees are often in a position to provide their family members, especially their adult children, with various forms of support. Your family members may likewise be in a good position to provide you with various forms of support in retirement. Your advantages over your younger family members are generally in terms of time, wisdom, and perhaps also discretionary finances. You may, for instance, have the time to run an errand for your working daughter or son, while they are at work. You may also have the skill to fix their lawnmower or snowblower and the spare cash to pay on your own for the parts. Your adult children’s advantage over you may be in their strength and mobility. They may, for their part, be glad to move your sofa for you and get a ladder out to clean the gutters on your roof. These kindnesses may bless both you and your adult children, especially if they are voluntary rather than demanded and expected. Make mutual voluntary support a foundation for your family relationships. The blessings that you share with family members can substantially improve the quality of your retirement.
Contention
Expect contention with family members to arise at times, even with the best of intentions on both sides. You and your adult children may have lived largely or entirely apart for many years, before you drew closer to them in retirement. That distance may have been necessary, such as if your children moved to another area for marriage and careers, and to raise children. That distance was also likely appropriate. You each had lives to live. But you may have had the opportunity and made the choice in retirement to move closer to your adult children, with their encouragement. Your new proximity, though, can take working out new relationships. Don’t assume that your relationship with your adult child will be the same in retirement as it was decades earlier when your child first left your home or even as it was more recently, before you retired and moved closer. Your adult child may need you to recognize their maturity and authority, particularly over their own children, your grandchildren. Again, expect some small disagreements. When contention arises, though, don’t let it devolve into conflict. Respect your adult children’s authority within their own sphere, especially as to their children (your grandchildren), while expecting them to respect your authority within your own.
Spouse
If you are married at retirement, your most-significant family relationship in retirement is with your spouse. Expect some adaptations, if not outright changes, in your relationship with your spouse, occasioned by your retirement. Recognize that your spouse has routines and responsibilities. You may have abundant new time to help your spouse with household chores and activities that your spouse previously performed alone. Your spouse may expect you to help. But your spouse may also not want your help or may want your help only to a certain degree, after a certain fashion, or in a certain form. Don’t force your spouse to change routines, and don’t take offense at your spouse’s resistance to letting you do so. Imagine if your spouse had suddenly shown up at work to tell you how to do what you’d been doing on your own just fine for years. Back off in those situations. Find and arrange spaces in the home for each of you where you can be comfortably apart and another space where you can be comfortably together. In time, and with patience, you’ll do just fine. If, instead, you find that the two of you are struggling, then communicate civilly about your struggles, getting the help of a pastor, family counselor, or other outsider as necessary and appropriate. Don’t let hard feelings grow into bitterness. Make retirement years a time of peace and contentment, especially in your relationship with your spouse.
Children
Your relationship with your adult child or children in retirement can certainly be special and rewarding. It can also present challenges. An above paragraph has already mentioned your need to respect your adult child’s maturity and authority, especially over grandchildren. You raised your child. You are not raising your grandchildren. Your child is raising your grandchildren. Keeping that truth in mind can reduce contention. Unless your child asks for your advice, hesitate to offer it, especially as to how to raise your grandchildren. Financial support can also be an issue in your relationship with children. You may have the means to bless your children financially. You may choose to do so through annual gifts up to the limit at which federal law would begin to impose a gift tax. But that would be your choice, not your children’s expectation, requirement, or demand. Financial gifts inevitably change relationships. They can also foster dependency and expectations. If you don’t want your relationship with your children to change because of your financial gifts, then provide instead for them in your estate plan.
Grandchildren
Relationships with grandchildren can be easier to manage in retirement than relationships with adult children. Depending on the grandchild’s age, your role tends to be all love and encouragement, with little responsibility, expectation, and advice. Time and attention with grandchildren is the main thing. A parent may love a child very deeply but, with other children, household tasks, and work demands, may not have the bandwidth to give the child substantial devoted time and attention. That time and attention can be your role. Blessing your grandchildren financially can also be a good substitute for financial gifts to your adult children. Depending on their age, grandchildren may not have the needs, expectations, and understanding for your gifts to affect your relationship with them. Yet your gifts to grandchildren may relieve your children of certain obligations to them, such as if your gifts help fund a grandchild’s college education. If you have the means and desire, then consider establishing a trust account in your grandchild’s favor, with annual gifts up to the federal gift-tax limit that their parents manage. Or gift funds to your adult child to place in the grandchild’s tax-favored college education account. Bless and enjoy your grandchildren. Doing so can leave a special legacy.
Siblings
Your relationship with your siblings and cousins can also contribute to a good retirement. Siblings and cousins are not always close. Life for each tends to take them their own way. Yet retirement can give you the time and means to reconnect with siblings and cousins. If you live in different regions, a road trip for a visit can be a good way to reconnect. But even if getting together in person is not convenient or possible, simply staying in closer touch can be a good substitute. Take a greater interest in the health, welfare, interests, and lives of your siblings and cousins. You may find that by doing so, you stimulate your own memories of childhood experiences, family members, and family events and relationships. Recovering a long-lost relationship with a sibling, cousin, or other remote family member can lend depth and richness to retirement years. You may even find occasion to arrange reunions and celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and other milestones. In doing so, you may enrich the lives of your own children and grandchildren with family history, connections, and memories.
Help
Family relationships can present enough challenges, even in retirement, to need help with their management. If you find that a relationship with a family member is unduly interfering with your mental health, peace of mind, and retirement responsibilities and routines, first try modifying your own communications, actions, and practices. We are often the cause of our own concerns. If your problems continue, then communicate sensitively, humbly, and gently with the family member whose words or actions are adversely affecting you. Avoid blaming. Instead, take responsibility. Be clear with specifics about what you need to relieve your concern, while being ready to hear and support the family member’s own concerns. If your problems continue, then enlist the mediation of another wise and trusted family member. If your problems persist, then seek the counsel of a pastor, psychologist, family counselor, or other professional. Do not gossip among other family members about the family member whose words or actions are adversely affecting you. Do not stir up your whole family with your own issues, dividing your family into factions. Be the sound and wise leader whom your family respects.
Reflection
With which family members do you get along best? Which family members are, conversely, potential sources of contention? Do you manage your family relationships well enough to recognize disagreements and respect roles but avoid conflict? Do you need to speak confidentially with a family member who is adversely affecting you? Do you need to enlist the help of another family member to mediate or intercede? Are you maintaining sufficient independence from family members, drawing appropriate boundaries and letting other family members lead their own lives? Do you share support without forcing it on other family members or letting it become an obligation and expectation? Do you likewise accept support without letting it become an expectation and obligation? Are you giving your spouse enough space and distance to continue comforting routines? Are you, conversely, helping your spouse enough, without interfering or directing? Do you respect your adult child’s parenting of your grandchildren? Do you keep financial support voluntary, without fostering dependence and expectation? Are you giving grandchildren appropriate time and attention? Are you maintaining a relationship with siblings or other remote family members, in ways that enrich your life and their lives? To whom would you turn for help with family relationships, if you couldn’t resolve issues on your own?
Key Points
The quality of relationships with family members affects retirement.
Your attitude and actions influence the quality of family relationships.
Maintaining your independence from family members can help.
Sharing support voluntarily rather than by requirement can also help.
Support to and from family members can take several helpful forms.
Don’t let natural contentions devolve into outright family conflicts.
Respect your spouse’s routines and responsibilities while helping.
Respect your children’s authority and spheres while enjoying them.
Engage grandchildren with your time, attention, and gifts.
Reconnecting with siblings and cousins can enrich retirement years.
Get help from wise and skilled individuals to resolve family conflict.