Does anyone else not understand familial ties?

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This is something that's bothered me for a long time. My family is very poor and my mother could make much more money and we'd all be generally better off if we moved away from where we are now. However she refuses to do so because she doesn't want to leave her father, so we continuously run the risk of not being able to pay rent just so she can stay here with him.
He's 77, drinks, and smokes so he'll probably die soon anyway but she still refuses. It's extremely frustrating to me and she just says I don't understand.
Anyone else have this problem?

Who will take care of her father if she moves away. It is common in many cultures for children to be responsible for their parents when they get old.

His sister or my uncle I assume. They're well off here. And as I said he's happy where he is and will probably die soon so what's the point in staying? I don't get it.

Your other relatives may be well off, it may be impractical for them to care for you mother's father. As you point out, he is happy in his current state. He may not be so happy if your other relatives have to support him. And he may not want them to, even if they were to offer. For instance, having your uncle be successful and on his own may be a point of pride to him--that is a sign of his success.

She probably doesn't want to be too far away from her brother and sister as well.

There's a comfort to having family near. No one knows you like your siblings.

Also there is fear of the unknown. People get comfortable with their surrounds.

People often wonder how I can move around so much because they can't imagine uprooting themselves from their friends and family, but i don't have anything much thing me down, so I just go.

Do you think his awareness and feelings have died?

What do you mean?

I'm asking if he is like a human or a vegetable. If human, this is the last time your mother would choose to betray his trust, and not repay the years when she was helpless and dependent on him.

My grandad wasn't the original point of this topic but whatever.
He isn't a vegetable he's fully functional. However he's a huge dick to my mom. All he does is tell her how she ruined everyone's life. Pretty much everyone has been sympathetic towards him and he doesn't deserve it. That's a big reason for the frustration.

It happens a lot. See "Dysfunctional Families." If you are really frustrated, you might want to go to Adult Children Anonymous and talk it out there.

Sometimes, grown children feel an obligation to look after their parents, no matter how their parents treat them. Nursing homes can be very expensive and not all adult children can afford to put their parents in those homes.

I suppose I could say that I have the same problem as you do to some extent... I can't understand why my mother bothers to keep in contact with one of her oldersisters despite the fact that they clearly don't get along. And it's not that I'm imagining it or have misunderstood something; she complains about the said sister to me everytime they've made contact. I think it's mostly about neither of them wanting to upset my grandmother or any of their siblings and that they don't want to make them "choose a side", but that's just an assumption. The other possibility is that my mom tends to avoid battles she feels she could lose; she doesn't argue and mostly keeps her mouth shut if there are many people against her opinion on something.

My half sister is even worse; I've only met her biological father once (of what I can remember) but judging from what I've heard of him from her and our mother he's a really sorry excuse for a father. I've asked my mom why she (my half sister, not my mom) keeps in contact with him and helps him around despite the things he's done and the kind of life he lives, but the only answer I get is "he is her father." So if someone is closely related to you by blood you should tolerate pretty much everything? Seriously? Well, to each their own but I aint doing something like that, ever.

Maybe it's a sense of responsibility in both cases; having been taught that one must take care of their family and all that and they don't know where the limit to loving your family goes... or maybe they do but their idea of the limit is very different from mine. Or maybe it has something to do with the "good girl syndrome" that my mother says she has. It means that she was raised to be an obedient woman who doesn't complain and while she finds her own behaviour frustating at times she doesn't have the will power to do or say what she really wants most of the time, even when keeping her mouth shut gets her in more trouble than opening it would. I guess my half sister is the same way.

How did you come up with that? It seems completely plausible, but makes no aspie logical brain sense. I kind of need to learn the trick of figuring that stuff out.

As regards the original post, I feel like I might sound condescending. Bear in mind, that I've been 14, but you have not been several times that age. I wish I understood more and got more right at this point. At 14, I thought I knew much more. Evidence suggests that in fact, lots of things went on without me noticing. The autism probably didn't help.

I have found it useful to add extra generosity to my evaluations of other people. It lets me live in a world of smarter people with better intentions than if I assumed something worse. It also helps avoid the Fundamental Attribution Error. When I assumed that other people do things deliberately, I overlooked how often my actions seem other than deliberate. To be fair, people often have a lot going on that they don't share.

I hope that makes sense.

I have had reasonable success at getting people to rise to the occasion and make the moral choice, but had to learn not to expect the same for intellectual performance. I had a friend who as a young woman, regularly walked home through a very rough neighbourhood at 2 AM. She'd watch out for idle any men watching her, and go up to the first one to ask him to walk her home safely. They all became perfect gentlemen for the duration, happy to just be seen and talk with her.

However, I'm dismayed that "Fundamental Attribution" has made it to Wikipedia. This suggests that normal people have given up on avoiding guilt through coercion. It is certainly common. Will Smith wrote about his young son, for whom he had just built and equipped a fine sandbox. The kid had been using the toys to lift and dump the sand out on the lawn, despite several admonitions. Will was getting quite enraged, and the kid was also in great distress, yelling "Ahadoo! Ahadoo!" in response. At the last moment, he realized that the kid thought he was quoting the universal excuse - "I had to." I've had to avoid many modern opportunities, but I've found a clear conscience more precious.

Your mother gave birth to you. Your father fertilized the egg your mother created.

That's the basis for "familial ties."

Now...if your parents screw this up, it'd be a real pity.