To have, or ... have not?

What does it really mean that today's generation will have less means, a lower standard of living, than our parents' generation?

For me, now, it means worrying over how to care for my widowed mother, make sure that her savings go as far as possible, now that she cannot do much for herself. It means discarding, one after another, the millions of photographs of places that she and my dad went on vacations, to Europe and exotic locations, that I'll never see. It means knowing that I have quite a lot, really -- I am comfortably well-off -- and yet not really being able to gauge my life against those of my parents.

I'm an amateur at family history and I notice more and more how my childhood was a very fortunate one. I was raised in homes that my parents owned. I got to do just about any activity I wanted, after school, or during vacations, within reason. I didn't HAVE to get a job each summer until I was able to drive myself there, and I got to keep all of my earnings for school books and so on. In contrast, when they were young, my own parents lived in homes that were rented. They began working when they were pretty young. My dad had an easier time because he was the only child, but, my parents' parents did not enjoy a retirement that resembled a spa vacation. Until they began to have health challenges, I remember my dad and mom really being free to do whatever they chose, from the time they retired from working.

Now I look at my children and gosh, they have already worked ten times longer hours and harder than I used to. THEIR children are always worrying about either a book report or a game or a schedule of some sort or other. Do children always seem this wise-beyond-their-years to adults?

My grandparents died at home, or after blessedly short hospital stays. In contrast, my own parents have had to face a barrage of medications and treatments, a few of which served no real purpose in easing either life or death. I am trying to shield my own mother against a life which holds no more joy or surprise for her - and I am not at all sure we have made progress as a society in any of this.