There's always been a perfectly reasonable implied social reciprocity in parenting where children, out of love, generally make some effort toward their parents in their parent's final years, and not necessarily taking them into their home or being nursemaids or providing for them financially. There are a lot of ways to support elderly parents. A friend of mine for example lights up around his grandson; it's a typical symbiosis where he provides some low-level child care for his daughter and son-in-law and it perks him up as he navigates the loss of his own wife.

Your mother's error was in setting expectations and demands around it, and it may be that there's a lot of ways you're not telling us about that the relationship was fraught. Your mother sounds insecure and needy and that tends to be off-putting to whoever she's being clingy with -- you, in this case. Or she may have been emotionally immature and inverted the relationship, making you in a sense her "parent", either as a child or prospectively. You haven't told us enough to say. But both her handling of it and your response are not how one would hope a parent-child relationship would evolve from childhood through adulthood and old age. It should be a mutually beneficial relationship.

You mention a cultural element to all this, and it's true that some subcultures have more explicit expectations than others. If yours is one of them, then it may be all your mother knows.

May I suggest that the answer is clear, healthy personal boundaries and open communication (if your mother will allow it). Your mother doesn't have the moral right to demand anything of you; you're an adult and your life is your business. She's also an adult, and fully responsible for her own life.

At the same time, your mother may be vulnerable through illness or decrepitude to where you can offer some reasonable level of support, from simply being present and listening and offering advice, to helping her with major decisions or fixing the occasional leaky faucet or similar practical help that you are knowledgeable and capable around. This should be up to you to offer, not up to her to demand or to guilt you into, although simply asking is okay and you saying either yes OR no is also okay.

I never had boundary issues with my parents while they were alive but have had some with my adult daughter where I've had to say "no" to bids for money or other largesse from me. Sometimes she tries to turn this subtly into a claim that I'm not "there" for her when the fact is she's a grown-ass 40 year old woman with a good professional nursing job who should have stopped that crap two decades ago and, oh, by the way, no one held a gun to her head to have four kids and to otherwise choose to live beyond her means in some ways.

This is how it is in families, sometimes you have to put your foot down and not just grouse about how unfair it all is. My daughter and I have a decent relationship and she respects me more when I'm the father figure rather than the pushover she thinks she wants me to be.

It's similar with your mother, she needs to learn to respect your independence and the integrity of your life and the irony is that when you accustom her to that, she should find you more open and generous with her because she's allowing it to flow organically rather than demanding it as a right. But it's a two-way street; you need to be appropriate and respectful to your mother and not resentful and passive-aggressive.

Of course if she's a religious nutjob and total asshat, unwilling to respect others, then it's a lost cause, unfortunately. I'm not suggesting you should put up with manipulation and gaslighting and disrespect, or that it's on you to go through therapy to straighten out a fucked up childhood so you can feel tenderly toward someone you only know as a battle-axe. I'm just laying down some ideas for what I hope is a truly salvageable situation, or at least improvable. But of course if you're being used and there's truly nothing to work with, then take care of yourself. It's still a question of healthy boundaries, even in that scenario.

Whether you had bad or good parents, there are absolutely no unselfish reasons to have a child.

I’m sorry you feel that way about your parents, it’s very sad, but although there may have been an element of having an insurance policy for their older years as a reason to conceive you, I find it hard to believe that it was the only reason. Now that you are older, and are able to think for yourself, you can see that by constantly telling you that you were expected to look after them as a duty, they have in fact alienated you from them. There have to be positives in your relationship with them, there must be some sort of filial bond that is not just due to a feeling of duty. Parents are not owed anything by their children, quite the reverse. We, as parents have a duty to care for, and love , and nurture our offspring, they do not ask to be born. Love isn’t love when it’s regarded as a duty, it should be freely given with no thought of reward or future reciprocation. Your parents seem to have lost your respect, and respect unlike love, has to be earned. No parent is due respect or looking after unless they have earned it. Duty is a poor substitute for love, but perhaps it’s not too late to have a conversation with your parents to explain how you feel about their attitude. I am a firm believer in getting everything out in the open, where feelings like the ones you have are concerned. Clear the air and see what happens, you will at least have got your feelings of resentment out in the open. You may be surprised at their response to you, it could let them see things from your perspective, it can’t make things any worse.

My experience wasn't as extreme as yours, but I did learn that all love between people comes with mixed motives. My Grandmother was delighted when I was born because after having had four boys she wanted a girl. She did love me, but she wanted me validate her life by repeating it so there was a definite element of selfishness mixed in and when it became apparent that I was not going follow her religion or lifestyle she did not hesitate use emotional blackmail try and get her way. It made me realize that everyone has an agenda, it doesn't mean that their love is a lie, but it does mean you have be aware of the mixed motives they have. It is a balance that you have achieve between giving as much respect as you can what is positive in the relationship while not allowing anyone dominate your life or use guilt manipulate you into doing what is not right for you because it is your life, not theirs.

Yes that's true