July 4, 2013--Protection of the Rights and Interests of Elderly People

On Monday, the Chinese government enacted a law that requires young people to tend to the "spiritual needs of the elderly." The Protection of the Rights and Interests of Elderly People statute.

Who would have thought that a country that so reveres the elderly would feel the need to pass such a law. Aren't the young already culturally oriented enough to do this without compulsion?

Apparently not.

In the law's fine print, children are required to go home "often" (this suggests that traditional families are breaking down with youth migrating to the coastal cities) and to occasionally "send them greetings" (I assume via the social media).

Unusually, the law does not proscribe any punishments or penalties if its injunctions are not followed. I suppose they will see how it works; and if children continue to ignore their parents and grandparents, who knows, maybe the young will be sent away to the countryside to be "reeducated."

Having said this, according to a report in the New York Times, parents feeling abandoned by their children have been suing them for "neglect," and winning!

Having just spent a week in South Florida, mainly among the elderly, it is clear that Florida even more than China needs this kind of legislation.

Over one dinner, for example, we heard about Sara, who lives in New York with her third husband and four children but "is so busy with her fancy friends and shopping that she never comes for a visit. And when she does, she can't wait to go home. She stays in a hotel on the beach--not with me--and can't wait to get back to the city after spending only two night in Florida."

Another dinner companion had nothing but complaints about her "good-for-nothing son."

"We scrimped and saved so Alfred could go to Cornell and then to medical school, but now what do we get in return? When I call I talk to his answering machine or when he finds a little time to work his mother into his busy schedule he puts me on the speaker phone. In the background I can hear him talking to one of his salesmen. He's not the son I raised."

When I told an 85-year-old, who had very little good to say about his grandchildren--"If they walked in the room now they wouldn't recognize me. That's how often they come to see me"--about the new law in China, even though he had spent the previous half hour complaining about Obamacare and all the money he is spending to "bring socialism to America," he very much approved of what the Chinese government had done to take care of their elderly.

"We could use some of that here," he said. "These young people have no values. All they care about is their friends, sleeping all day, and staring at their smarty phones."

When I said that the Chinese law is an example of the sort of big government he was just criticizing, telling people how to live what should be their private lives, he dismissed me with a wave. "Nothing's perfect," he said. "But I do like Chinese food."