AITA for not supporting my mom in old age because her insistence on being SAHM her whole life had essentially killed my dad?

Family dynamics are sometimes complex and when it comes to interfacing with money, expectations, and generational values, it can become complicated. I have been struggling with a hard moral dilemma lately. My mother, who has never ever worked a day in her life outside the house is now seeking financial assistance on my part. However, being that her decisions had a part in my father dying at a young age, I just can not help but ask myself, am I the bad guy in saying no?

Supporting my mom in old age

I was raised in a two-siblings family that appeared to be fairly stable and middle-class. My dad had a job, my mom was a SAHM and when we were little it felt like all was good. When I was twelve everything changed. My father was fired in an economic recession period My mom was against working even though all of us were in school. She could have assisted in alleviating the pressure, however, she held on to her role as a homemaker, and said that it was the work of my dad to provide.

We fought hard and I watched the health of my father dwindle under the pressure. I remember clearly how he would cry because of the bills when I came home one day after college. In the meantime, my mother was unwilling to reduce expenditure and any recommendation to work was easily waved off with reasons that were bordering on sexist, such as, I have given him three children, the least that he can do is to support us.

A Lifetime of Pressure on My Dad

My dad never got back to the salary he used to have but the pressure to provide did not stop. He was eventually pressured by my mom into a high-stress job six hours away, where he had a small apartment and worked very long hours. He slept little, hardly ever saw his family and became more and more cut off. Three years before, he died of a heart attack that was caused by stress.

The sad thing? Later I found out that my mom even influenced him not to fly home often, saying it was to save money. That decision took away valuable family time with his father in the final months of his life. I have a feeling that he was very depressed but he was going on because he felt he was trapped in the role my mom had assigned to him.

Now the Tables Have Turned

My mother is 52 with no work history and of course, no source of income. She has been asking my siblings and I money under the pretext that she needs to be taken to. My brothers send her some money monthly but I resist. I believe that she had a lot of chances to be responsible about herself and her family when my dad was alive. Instead, she held on to the old fashioned beliefs of gender roles, even to the detriment of my dads health.

When I suggest she go back to work, she pulls the pity-card: “Do you want to see me bagging groceries?” The truthful answer is yes. There is nothing wrong with honest work and there are a lot of people her age or older, who work hard.

Am I Wrong for Saying No?

My brothers think that I am inhuman to deprive them and declare that she is mom and she must be supported. And this is where I struggle with it: is not being a parent about making sacrifices toward the children rather than the other way around? My mom was selfish in her choices and her choices took away the health, his happiness as well as his life of my dad. I am not obliged to maintain her life anymore. She is not yet too old to work, retrain or develop some independence. I would have already witnessed the outcome of the further subsidization of her in informing her that she is correct and that she may refuse to be accountable.

Other People Comments:

The comments from other people are as follows:

It is quite another thing to enable someone who is not really capable of helping himself or herself, say an elderly parent in his or her 80s. Another is someone in their early 50s who just has not assumed responsibility. Not every love is sweet love and I believe this is the case of tough love. I adored my dad and watching him endure and then die a painful death because of the cost of supporting my mothers decisions left a mark that I cannot forget. I believe the most respectful thing is that I can do to myself, to my dad and even to my mom is make a stand in the sand and say no more enabling.