A 19-year-old took to Reddit this week to ask the internet's advice over her recent decision to not take care of her mother whose health is declining.
On the thread, "Am I The A**hole," a woman who wrote from the username @imsodone777 said that she and her mother have always had a frayed relationship.
"When i turned 16, her gift to me was a list of jobs i can apply to, to 'pay for my expenses' even though my dad was giving her child support," she wrote in the post that has been voted on more than 10,500 times. "Then at 17 she kicked me out because i wasn't willing to pay more than $400 rent while my brothers didn't even work."
She shared that she is the youngest of five and her mother has always preferred her older brothers.
"She dotes on them and made it very very clear she never wanted to and didn't like having a daughter," she wrote.
She wrote that the behavior worsened when her father left.
Recently, her mother asked her to meet for lunch and told her she had been sick. The mother then asked her daughter if when the time comes that she becomes too weak to take care of herself if her daughter would come to take care of her. She said she did not want men or a stranger to be the one to do it.
"I told her no, i won't care for her and she should start looking for someone she knows who'd be willing to because i'm not," user @imsodone777 said.
In an analysis published in 2017 by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, researchers found that 12 percent of adults aged 70 and older whose parents are alive serve as caregivers. The report also showed that adult children in that age category who were caring for older parents did so for almost 100 hours per month. For ages 20-29 about 3 percent care for older parents.
Other Redditors jumped in to show the woman support saying that given the mother's history, the responsibility to care for her should not fall on the daughter.
"You don't owe her anything. She has four children she has invested in, you aren't one of them. She can have her return on her investment through her precious boys," one commenter wrote.
Redditor @imsodone777 shared that after declining her mother's request her mother took to Facebook to tell her friends that her daughter did not care about her. Since then, she's received "nasty" messages from her mom's friends.
"She can apply for home care or move into a nursing home or in with one of your golden brothers," another commenter wrote. "The fact that she blasted you publicly on social media shows even more how difficult it would be for you to be around her."
User @imsodone777 wrote in an addition to the post that while she blames her father for not sticking up for her at the time, he and other members of the family on his side are now standing by her.
Newsweek reached out to @imsodone777 for comment.
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