Over the years, I've made some references here to the terrible public health situation in the former Soviet countries. For example, see the first and last pages of this forum topic:
http://tinyurl.com/m74jq82
I just had an interesting exchange of emails with an apparently quite genuine woman from a dating site. I learned that she was particularly interested in my profile because it says that I often travel to the FSU. As it turned out, she hopes to find a foreign man whose work allows him to live (nearly) full time in Russia -- because of her parents.
In the age range that interests me (late 30s), many of the women have parents in their early 60s. If you adjust for the horrible mortality curves in the FSU, this is roughly comparable to Americans of about age 80. That is, these folks -- who probably aren't even pensioners yet -- are suffering a high incidence of severe health issues, and are often in the last few years of their lives.
Taken together with the extreme lack of provision for care in declining years, this brings about a situation where these late-30s women often feel a strong obligation to take care of their parents -- or often, the one still surviving parent.
It all makes sense, but it hadn't occurred to me before that it would affect my prospects...