My Parents and I Have a Particular Arrangement That Works for Us. My Husband Keeps Butting In.

Care and Feeding Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by repinanatoly/Getty Images Plus. Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here. Dear Care and Feeding, My husband and I have three children. Our youngest, “Nelly,” was born with a debilitating health condition that almost killed her. She spent over a year in the hospital and requires regular visits to her specialist care team at least once a month. We had to move to be closer to her hospital, and luckily, we found a place in a nice town with a good school. I can no longer work because because Nelly needs care all day. The loss of my income, combined with our rent and health expenses, make it impossible to build up savings. Luckily, an arrangement with my parents means we have a plan for the future. My parents are much better off financially. They’re in their late 70s and finding it harder to manage on their own, so they sold their large house and bought a more modest one in the same neighborhood as our rental. We came up with an arrangement where I help when they need it with shopping, driving them to appointments, and housework, and in return they will give us their house (which is already paid off in full) when they are ready to go into assisted living. I’m completely happy with this. I’m already home all day with Nelly, and fitting my parents’ needs into my schedule has been easier than I expected. I’m very busy, but it’s not unmanageable or exhausting for me. But my husband complains about my parents endlessly. He claims that they are too demanding. When I’m helping them with digital appointments or online banking, he says that they should have figured it out already. When he sees their groceries in the car alongside ours, he complains about how much longer it must have taken. Nothing has changed for him and his time except having dinner at their house once a week—I’m the one doing all the work here. When I talk to him about this, he says that yes, being given a fully paid house in 5 to 10 years is going to make a huge difference for us. He grudgingly admits that his gripes are pointless, but he still complains just to complain. It’s driving me crazy. The other day I hid my parents’ groceries in the footwells of the car under a blanket so he wouldn’t see them when he opened the trunk, and then I realized how stupid that is. I moved them back to the trunk to deliver them to my parents, and we got into an argument about it. I don’t understand why my husband is so bothered and he either can’t tell me, or won’t. I’ve taken on extra work to make everything easier for us all, and he complains about having pizza at their house on Friday night. —Helper Needs Help Dear Helper, I think your husband should be able to understand that, special arrangements and individual family needs aside, this is often what it looks like when parents get older and require more practical support. Many adult children (and their partners) assume some sort of support/caregiving role with aging parents and don’t get a house out of it. It can be hard, and it’s fine to say so—and it is also life, meaning that it’s not something you or your parents are doing to your husband. Of course I can’t really know what’s bothering him if you don’t. Maybe he’s stressed to suddenly be living in the same neighborhood as his in-laws and seeing them all the time. Maybe he’s doing a little more parenting and other domestic labor at home while you’re helping your parents—more than he used to, if still less than you, given that you’re the parent who’s usually at home—and he resents it. Maybe he’s being very immature and lashing out to try to get more of your attention, because your parents are taking up more of it. Or maybe (to take a marginally more generous view) he feels legitimately overwhelmed at the thought of you becoming more and more responsible for your parents’ day-to-day maintenance, and instead of dealing with that anxiety in an appropriate way, he is taking it out on you. Even in the best of cases, stepping up to provide ongoing practical support to a sick or aging parent represents a change in our lives. Change can always be challenging and stressful. Supporting parents and elders can also require time or energy, emotional labor, and/or other resources from the spouse who’s not directly providing support. (When my parents needed more help and attention, I was mostly the one who gave it, while my husband, who already did a lot, took on even more at home to care for our kids and support me.) To be clear, I don’t think your husband’s behavior toward you makes much sense, whatever his problem(s) may be. It’s fair for him to have feelings about the arrangement with your parents—or want it to change, assuming that’s even possible. But if that’s the case, he needs to grow up and have a real conversation with you about it, or you’ll never be able to understand what’s going on, let alone address it. In the meantime, you shouldn’t have to deal with constant attacks. If you keep trying to convince him to talk with you about what’s really going on and getting nowhere, you might think about seeking outside help—perhaps a therapist, or another professional with experience supporting families dealing with elder care needs. The two of you need to be able to have an honest, respectful conversation about your parents, and it’s better to do it now, while their needs are still straightforward and relatively manageable. —Nicole Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. More Parenting Advice From Slate My younger child “Lisa” is 14. Lisa has always been very shy. She has anxiety. She is very nerdy. She likes board games and Dungeons and Dragons. She has worn glasses since she was a toddler. Her best friend from a young age, and her only friend in elementary school, was a boy named “Liam.” She has always been ambivalent about wearing skirts. All these traits are what my ex-wife Linda has used to conclude that Lisa is lesbian. She decided this by the time Lisa was 8. 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