News RoundupsDiscussions of social safety net programs for older adults tend to evoke images of some exemplary past, where things like Social Security and Medicare weren’t needed because adult children lovingly took care of aging parents, multigenerational households were so common that no one even bothered labeling them that, and sick seniors never got carted off to nursing homes. But “such accounts often draw on a deeply sentimental view of the past,” writes history professor and author Hendrik Hartog. And today’s caregiving situation might actually be preferable.