And
@Clifton comment: "not helped by a phone call from my mother who tells me she has just started seeing someone 21 years her junior...I'm happy for her if she's happy but need to check the dude out! Dad passed 6 years ago and was 10 years her senior - so she's gone the other way!"
Spoiler Alert! Here's the other side of the coin.
I've often wondered why all the haters for step parents and suspicion for new partners of parents? I blame Disney myself, all those fairy tales about the wicked step-mother. Even the much loved "The Sound Of Music" had an element of step-mother hate. What's wrong with a mature adult
with all their faculties in their latter years finding love again? With a younger or older person? Who's to judge? Why do children believe they know better than their adult
consenting parent? Don't people want their parent to be happy?
Why are children, themselves often grown adult children settled with families of their own so opposed to it? Would they rather their widowed or divorced parent live alone and in misery for the rest of their natural lives, while they happily live their own lives? Is it about inheritance? Surely if a parent finds company again, is happy and frees their adult children from looking after them or being carers or having their own lives interrupted, that's a good thing?
In the UK we like to use care homes for our elderly parents, but elsewhere and on the continent like Southern Europe it's not unusual to see three or four generations living under the same roof or next door to each other. Some on here live with their elderly parent, which I admire. I wish I could still live with my lovely mum, now sadly deceased. Can't have it both ways. Why can't we just be kind, supportive and loving? Just saying.
