A complete family

As far as first part of your discussion is concerned, I completely buy your arguments. It generally happens that if there are more than two brothers, parents stay with either of them and their respective daughters-in-law does not appreicate it. People are becoming self-centred and do not want to be disturbed by the presence of elderly in-laws. They prefer nuclear families and they forget what are the benefits of staying in a Joint family with in-laws or parents. They forget that one day they would also grow old and when their sons and daughters-in-law would part company with them, how would they feel. Compassion is dying down slowly but steadily for old and elderly people, which is very sorry state of affairs. I am really sorry to note that you lost your husband when your daughter was just 8 years old. Hopefully, God would have given you enough strength and courage to come out of the irrepairable loss.

Hi Dear Mayka really sorry to hear all about ur parents and ur hubby, but i am sure u r giving all the love to ur daughter as Mother and father too, as u r really a nice Lady. Here in Pakistan, culture, customs are same as of your side, either elder son, or youngest one take care of parents, only they are living as Nuclear family. if they are living in Joint family then sure its more Fun. In my case, i am lucky that we are still living with our parents, i mean we three brothers who are married, while 4th one is in UK. but sure he will come back here. Father is decesion maker and i am glad so far their is no problem and i hope and pray that it will goon like this Take care

seems like everybody here can't wait to leave their parents home. i know i could't.i think they were as glad as me for me to leave. inever did get along w/them that well. they were not happy w/each other & my sister & i paid for that.i married young just toget away from them.my mother is gone now but our relstioship never did improve that much.my dad is still living & is in bad healt,i am not close to him either. i would have doneforeither of thembut mother didn't want me to.she latched on to my older sonbecause i never did please her w/anything i did.my dad had a son by another marriage so he never needed me either. just the way things go.

Yes dear i fully agre in our country still kids are responsible to take care of their aging parents but this is also dying tradition...i see my own grandmother she has 7 children all are well settled 4 daughters and 3 sons..she is 96 years old...my uncle left my bedridden grandmother alone in the village and went away on a vacation without giving a thought about her well being or making any other alternate arrangement all the children have retired and my dad is the only one still working his last two years before he retires from his job...surprisingly someone was needed to go and look after the mother all daughters and sons refused to take her and said put her in old age home my dad was very furious took leave flew down hired an ambulance and got her home and now my mom and dad look after her everyday....so you see we can consider ourselves lucky if our children look after us when we are old..

Here in America, most kids move out of their parents home when they get married. I got married and never lived with my parents again, except for a 6 month period when my husband was sent overseas with the Air Force. That was long before we had our children. Both my kids have homes of their own. My daughter did live with us for about a year when she was divorced, before she remarried. But she would never want to live with us all the time. I think married couples do need to be out on their own. And, older parents sometimes live with a family member, if they are by themselves and disabled. But more and more opt to go to an assisted living place where they have the ability to have their own place, but also someone is around to be company and also to help them, if they do need help.

I am a college student so im in a transitional stage from leaving my house to living on my own. I'm quite an independent person so I was more than eager to take the steps to living on my own. Although I will still spend time at my parents house and stay there for a weekend on ocassion, I definently enjoy living on my own much more because of the freedom. Generally the tradition in my family is to live at home until about 18 and then slowly transition into living on your own while in college. In America, I think this is the typical scenario for most families.

It's not common that parents live with their kids in Holland, but it happens occaissonaly. There are pretty good alternatives for elderly to live in houses that have a special bell with which they can ring someone for help but is entirely independant. There are also carehomes for the elderly allthough there are bad rumours about them it doesn't have to be a bad place if there are enough people to visit and you like to do activities with other people; it's not suitable for anyone. My grandma lived with us untill she passed away. My mom never moved out, my dad merely moved in and it has been like that forever. It was nice to have here around that much and I feel that it's a great thing. My mom doesn't want to live with me and my boyriend because she has experienced the impact on her life caring for het mother who needed quite a lot of medical attention and she could never leave the house when she pleased and allways needed to look out for her first. She did this with love but it has had a great impact on her and she doesn't want me to have the same thing. Both my mom and my dad are people who love activiteit, my mom would be one of the old grannies knitting and sowing and talking to anyone and everyone; making herself a good time rather then sitting around. But then again; everyone's different. If I had to I'd take her in a heartbeat and my dad aswell but she doesn't want it herself and my dad neither.

we live with our in-laws.although we get enough of love from them,there is lot of interference which is making our life a hell.

I grew up and left home, came back to live while I was trying to save some money and now I am living with my wife's parents who live on the same property as Wife's sister. What a bizarre twist of fate. But I am trying to step back out on our own by purchasing a new home.

For us we live separately. My mother lives in the countryside alone with a househelp while all of us kids live in the city in separate houses. My husband's parents live and work in the city and they are living separately with his two sisters who are not married yet. Parents can go visiting their children and vice versa but living together depends if they are not well or not working and its not a must they live with us. IN African tradition once a child is 18 years old they move out of parents house and live nearby until they marry thats when they can move further and start there own families. Personaly I dont find living together with parents in-laws or my parents a bother/hinderance............infact its a blessing because they can guide us when we go wrong.

My parents want us to carry on a separate life after marriage,My parents also lived like that but,always took care of my grand parents too,they often went to see them and we have a happy big family.My parents just love to be alone and spend their time relaxing,They consider husband and wife as a another family so does my grand parents.I know some families live together with their brothers and sisters and having many problems in their families.cheers..

Here in the Philippines we also have a tradition to take good care of our parents when they need assistance. Most often the daughters are the ones giving good care of the old and sick parents because the Son, or men are not good at that and we can't rely of the daughter's in-law. Most daughter's in law are not good with their parent's in-law. There is always conflict when it comes to taking care of the old folks if you trust it to the in=laws. So then, most often the daughters whether she has her own family or not are the once looking after the old folks.

We don't have specific tradition when it comes to family, but I guess most asian countries are patriarchal which means in the family the guy should be the boss and the dominant one. But I didn't grow up this way, [well, because my mom and dad almost have equal say to almost everything] although I have so much respect with my father, I think that men should be more powerful than women. I'm not putting myself down coz I'm a female, but I think men should be more responsible,stronger, flexible and so on. so whenever I see men depending on women, it's a total turn off. How do I define family? sticking together through thick and thin, I am so proud of Filipino families because no matter what happen, whether they have food to eat or none, they're still together, they believe that being complete makes them survive the poverty, will make them happy. so Family means ONE.

[i]We have different situation in life as far as family ties is concern. In our country mostly when the son/daughter was married,they are still in their parents position care.We have close and intimate relationship with our parents. [/i]

Dear friend, there was a time when all family members were living to gather, my father and his siblings were living to gather, then as situation arise all siblings departed, now I and my brother's family living togather but new generation, nowadays no new generation like to live togather as family, so I can't say about my brother's sons and his family !! because todays time is very complicated !