Respecting elders is the most important in all virtues. Empty Nester is an important group in the society and most of them are living under a poor quality life. Obviously, and it has become a serious issue which is easily ignored by people. The empty-nester refers those elders live by themselves and their children left away from them; they may face loneliness, poor health. Such state needs individuals and communities to pay more attention to and try to solve it. Although people in the world are under diverse social and cultural circumstances, but people from dissimilar backgrounds mostly have the same traditional, which is taking care about elders.
Therefore, from a global perspective without national boundaries, we all have the duty to pay more attention to elderly and take care of them. The main purpose of this social activity is to try out best to help those lonely elders and take care of them however little. In this essay, I will explain the causes of empty nesters exist, how does the empty nesters issue evolved over time and reasons why people have ethical responsibility to help elders. There are several reasons for the cause of empty nester. I think the major reasons are family reasons and social reasons. For the family reasons, one is that the lifestyle and values of the elderly are different from those of the young.
To avoid conflict, old parents and children may choose not to live together. Furthermore, some children under pressure due to work or their children. So they don’t have time to take care of their parents and their parents also don’t want to put more pressure on them. Therefore, they live separately. The secondary reason is the social reasons. Due to the economic development in the world, people’s living standards continued to improve.
So many children buy their own houses and live apart from the elderly. Besides, the daughter needs to leave her hometown for another place because of her marriage. The result is that elders who only daughter have become empty nester out of their daughter are married. In addition, personal reasons also caused the empty nester exist. Firstly, some elders never marry or they get married but don’t have children.
Besides, some old people may have children, but their children died due to disease or an accident. Another possibility is that some old people are deeply attached to the places they once lived. So even if their children had a new and better house, these old people would still don’t want to leave their old houses. The problem of empty nesters has existed for a long time and has gotten worse over time, and is expected to get more serious in the future if we don’t execute any solution. Since the misd-1990s to now, the numbers of lonely seniors have grown by over 50 percent.
A further 3.5 million over-65s older are living by themselves. ?Muhumed, 2011?Also, there are someone speculates that this situation will continue to worsen. Like the website gave the data of incidence of in that past and predicted data in the future in Finland lonely elderly population. They said that “According to Savikko (2008, 40-43), 39% of Finnish elderly population experience loneliness at least sometimes.” The number of people over 65 years of age is estimated to rise from present 17% (905 000 people) to 29%, which would represent 1.79 million people, by the year 2060 (Official Statistics of Finland 2009).?Muhumed, 2011?From the above data, we can see that the phenomenon of empty nesters is worsening. This is because the rise in the number of lonely elderly in one reflection of the increase in the number of empty nesters.
The reason for most old people are lonely is because they are empty nesters. Since the elderly’s children away from home, there are few people would accompany with them. The biggest reason that caused there are more empty nesters appear is due to the problem of aging becomes increasingly prominent. And the implement of one child’s policy reduces the number of the young generation.
For instance, the China executed this policy in the past 30 years, which enabled a host of families to have only one kid and enabled the proportion of youngsters to decline. Under this policy, it gives more pressure to that only child in the family and improves the rate of empty nester happen. For this reason, this issue is getting worse. However, this tradition is beginning to break down in China, due to the country’s one-child policy, rising life expectancy and an aging population.
Nursing homes are beginning to become a more socially acceptable option for elderly care. When it comes to the question why individuals have ethical responsibility to take care of the elders, here are the reasons. In the first place, the young generations get a lot of benefits from old people, so we should take care of them in return. More specifically, due to the elders live longer than we do, so we usually can learn lots of knowledge from them, like getting some life experiences. Also, we are enjoying the fruits of labor of our older citizens. (Sun, 2011) Without the hard work and ingenuity of the old man when they were young, we would not have so many convenient inventions and such a beautiful society.
For instance, our previous generation created high-speed rail that accelerated our trip. Besides, respecting elders is a traditional action from the worldwide perspective. Almost every country in the world has the idea that to respect for elders is central to the family. The website Huffpost cites many examples of countries that have the tradition of respecting the elderly, which included Western countries, India, black families and so on. Taking the ancient Chinese Confucian principle of respecting old people as an example, in this principle the writer Confucian deliver the thought that it is the root of humanity for younger members of the family have a responsibility to care for the aging members of the family.
This thought also was introduced by some countries around China and has existed until now, such as Korea, Japan. (“7 Cultures That Celebrate Aging And Respect Their Elders”, 2017) Therefore, as individuals, we also should follow this good tradition and inherit it. These are the reasons why people not only have responsibility to take care of the elders not only in our own family, but also should respect and help other elders get out of the loneliness, giving them a higher quality life. In conclusion, the empty nester has become a social issue not be ignored. It’s not just the society’s duty to take care of the elder’s, but also individuals’.
Everyone should try within own capacity to help the empty nesters by giving better understanding of the loneliness among elderly people and helping them to improve quality of life.
