Letter to the Editor

Old age homes are not unbiblical

I refer to the “Old Age Homes Are Not Good Enough” letter in your January issue of JOY! Yes, old age homes in African and Eastern societies are not common, because the youth make up the larger part of these populations. In India for example, more than half the population are 25 years and younger. Extended families living together provide enough carers to look after the children and elderly so that other family members can go to work or tend the subsistence farms. In these countries there is increasingly a shift especially amongst the more affluent to set up and utilise facilities that care for the aged.

In Western societies, families consist mostly of the nuclear family with both parents working and children still at school. We have a phenomenon called the sandwich family, where adult