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By: Richard Caro | Posted: January 12, 2015 | Updated: April 5, 2023
Over the last 18 months I have talked with literally hundreds of people who have realized they now have an extra “job” that they were not expecting: engaging one way or another in looking out for an aging parent. Many of them wanted a “guide” to Caring for Aging Parents, and asked for recommendations.
Sure enough, there are a number of books on Aging Parents on Amazon. I decided I wanted to find the most popular, and then read them and see whether I could identify a handful of them to recommend next time someone asks for a “Guide”.
This article is the first installment in my journey and focuses on which are the top selling books in this category (presumably the ones others have found most relevant). The second installment, in which I review the books after reading them, is here: Caring for & Dealing with Elderly Parents.
Parenting the Parents
In some cases “parenting the parents” takes the form of actually caring for that elderly parent. But in other cases it is more subtle. The parent is still active and functioning well, but due to loss of a spouse, or progression of the slow but insidious aging process, needs a bit of help or even a bit of guidance or oversight.
It’s almost as if there is a role reversal going on in which the adult children start to slowly take on some of the characteristics of a “parent” for their parents.
A Guide to Aging Parents
A number of times I have been in a discussion and someone said “You know, there really needs to be a guide to parenting the parents, or a guide to what you do when you have aging parents”.
And it’s easy to imagine what might be in such a guide. There would be an introductory chapter describing the whole process of role reversal, and how and why it is likely to manifest itself.
Then there would be a chapter about the top areas in which an aging parent is likely to need help. These would likely include some help managing investments and finances. Some help getting various legal documents in order (wills, durable powers of atorney, health powers and the like). And much more.
Chapter 3 might talk about the emotional and psychological challenges for the adult child who is suddenly faced with the need to learn this new skill set while most likely also in the midst of parenting her own children and maybe working full time as well.
You get the idea.
Books on Aging Parents: Exploring Amazon
In the past, this might have involved a trip to the bookstore and asking for some advice. Or even the friendly librarian. These days, Amazon is the first stop.
Sure enough, the term “aging parents” leads to 480 books in the Kindle store alone. [I focused on e-Books because that is so much simpler these days than buying an actual book!]
The next step in my detective story was to hunt through this list, do some additional searches under other relevant terms, and come up with a “short list” of interesting and relevant seeming books relating to aging parents, or the concept of “parenting the parents”. This not-very-scientific process netted me a list with about 50 books on it.
If I believed in judging the book by its cover, I could have stopped there. But I decided I wanted to see which of these books were selling the best. Now the Amazon search does not rank solely on sales. So I needed another tool to figure out sales rank for each of my 50 book titles. I used Novel Rank. You can see the results below.
Most Popular Books on Aging Parents.
Here is a list of the top ten books (by sales rank) taken from my short list (that was a subset of a much larger list I found on Amazon, with rather subjective criteria used to narrow it down). The best seller is at the top, with each lower row in the table selling progressively less in quantity.
Note: If you click on the title links, you will be taken to Amazon where you can read more about each book and buy them if you want. [Disclosure: If you end up buying one after clicking on these links, Amazon gives us a few pennies from their revenues.]
The Top Ten List (by Sales Jan. 8 2015).
What I Learned
Update: I have read the books on this list now. You can see some of my analysis and criticism in the next installment here: Caring for & Dealing with Elderly Parents.
More about this topic
If you want to read more of our work on the topic of caring for aging parents,
See all our content in the category of Helping Elderly Parents
*Disclosure: The research and opinions in this article are those of the author, and may or may not reflect the official views of Tech-enhanced Life.
If you use the links on this website when you buy products we write about, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate or other affiliate program participant. This does not affect the price you pay. We use the (modest) income to help fund our research.
In some cases, when we evaluate products and services, we ask the vendor to loan us the products we review (so we don’t need to buy them). Beyond the above, Tech-enhanced Life has no financial interest in any products or services discussed here, and this article is not sponsored by the vendor or any third party. See How we Fund our Work.
Author
Richard Caro
Scientist turned entrepreneur. Strategic adviser to emerging growth companies. Occasional angel investor. Oxford D.Phil. (Physics). Co-founder: Tech-enhanced Life.
