The wife's mother is, however, often enough a member of the household the husband leaves behind to give some point to the coarse and often unjust jokes concerning the mother-in-law.
Where the feeling is right, and both generations reasonable and just, there are still many problems of adjustment arising from an attempt to bring either or both parents of the married couple into the same household.

The first problem is that of the financial support.

It ought not to be the case that any aged couple or any widowed father or mother should be left wholly dependent upon their children.

The demand for better economic provision for the aged is one of the most vital and pressing of social needs.

The difficulty of taking care of the father and mother when the children are coming on with pressing needs of their own is felt acutely in cases of narrow income.