Do People Get Lazier As They Get Older Or Just Want An Easy Life Or Something Else

[bednobs]

When I was growing up 30 ish years ago my parents made all our food from scratch and my mum used to set aside half a day the weekends for cleaning. I am currently staying with them and have noticed that they eat a lot more of convenience food eg microwave potatoes, boil in the bag rice and so on. Their house is spotless but I notice they use packaged wipes clean things. Do you reckon it's just because these things exist now, or people just want an easier life as they get older?

[maggiebee]

Don't think they are lazier, just realizing that there's more to life than cooking and cleaning.

[237SJ]

A bit of both, probably. Sometimes people lose the enthusiasm for cooking when the family have left home. My Mum never cooked a convenience meal in her life until my Dad died but now she can`t be bothered to cook very often and I bring her around to my house to make sure she eats good food.

[2sp_]

I think in the case of my 90 year old granny, she's just had enough of cooking and cleaning for the last 80ish years.

[FredPuli43]

It's because those things were not available to them before. My mother was delighted to get rid of the kitchen range; all the Zebrite blacking; and to have a machine to polish the floors; all that Mansion wax and kneeling with a cloth. If there's a new, easier way to do something, she , and your parents too, wanted it.

But the older generation who were brought up to such labour, never lose the idea that work is better than idleness. There are people in their 80s and 90s in this village who don't think twice about digging potatoes,or repairing a shed and hulking timber about. They were working on farms as boys, and the work habit has never left them.

[vakayu]

No I don't think so,it's as other abers were saying,convenience now that was not available earlier in life,plus lack of enthusiasm as we lose someone close,plus unable to do things now due to ill health etc which one did before.

[sunny-dave]

As I get older I find that I just can't be arsed ...

[paddywak]

I don't think it's a matter of getting lazier it's just how it is. Trish and I are both in our sixties and have medical problems and jobs that used to take an hour would now take all day if we did then ourselves so we go for the easiest options.

[Brenden]

237sj I am rowing the same boat as your mum, cannot believe myself that I am eating micro meals as I cooked a meal from scratch throughout the whole of my marriage - perhaps with a bit more time I will revert back to healthier food - but at least I am putting on some of the 2 stone in weight I have lost.

[ummmm]

I don't think they get lazier. If it gives them extra time to actually enjoy their hard work doing, well, more enjoyable things.

[gness]

Not lazier, Bednobs...speaking for myself and my friends in our mid to late sixties.

We just fill our time with more enjoyable things to do. Perhaps my generation has more money, better health and more opportunities to do things other than shelling peas and blacking the grate.

[BlueToffee]

And they can probably afford convenience products more now than they could when you were growing up, priorities change.

[Prudie]

I don't think it has anything to do with age, surely all generations are using convenience foods and easy clean products now just because they exist.

[andy-hughes]

I would agree with the previous responses.

Our parents and grandparents were brought up with a 'work ethic' that has largely gone now, coupled with the much simpler ways of completing domestic chores like cooking and cleaning.

As I get older, I am a firm believer in enjoying life and having more fun than work, and I plan to increase that ratio the older I get until by the time I peg it, I will have a huge smile on my face because I will be doing nothing but the things that give me great pleasure - or at least those I can still manage!

[seadogg]

You don't actually need to buy the factory produced stuff to make cooking easier. At 77 I love long walks with the dog so the meals have to be planned to minimise cooking times and each one starts with fresh meat and veg. Unfortunately the O.H. is no longer able to cook. Luckily we both enjoy home made Indian and Chinese and the wok gets a hammering.

[Canary42]

Keeping up with technology isn't the preserve of the young.

[seadogg]

Well said canary!

[chrissa1]

I can remember when I was growing up in the 60's, my mother had a Thor Washing Machine. It was the the bee's knees back then but Monday was washing day because it took that long to do it.
Not anymore.

[FredPuli43]

And as technology gets better, so we think "However did we manage before?". My mother's first washing machine, in c1952, was a Bendix, single drum machine, front loader. It took ages to wash anything, and had to be bolted to the floor. There were intervening machines but her last was also an American design. It needed a computer operator to program it, took enough laundry for a hotel, but washed a load in about ten minutes. And she said "However did I manage before!"

[boxtops]

Certainly not lazier, life has changed. It's not laziness, it's "availing yourself of modern technology" - I used to write a lot of letters, now I email.