To wonder if DINKs will be more lonely when older?

I mean, in fairness, I have several DC, no interest in whether anyone else has one, none, or ten, and this is irrelevant to the fact that I've never seen a "dog" viewing at the cinema.

Thank you for your reply. And yes, I have definitely considered that your second point could be a possibility!

@Strawberriesandpears by the time you become elderly society may have changed beyond all recognition. It might be a more human caring space that is not so nuclear-family-centric. Society may take better care of its elderly. I can but dream.

However, speaking of nuclear…putin may have blown us all up before you even get to be elderly so we’ll all be in the same boat.

Thank you for your kind reply @Senzafine I am particularly interested to hear your work involves assessing older people for care. Would you mind sharing the kind of support you see people receiving from outside their family, please? Is it close friends, close former work colleagues, people they have met through volunteering / charity work - that kind of thing.

The thing that upsets / unsettles me most, is that I feel that there is nothing I can do to 'solve' my problem. I will always have it hanging over me until I die. I have read a lot on here (and elsewhere on the internet) about older people without family - and it is really mixed. Some people say that close friends can be as good as family, whilst others say that friends always come second.

I am quite a decent person, I think. I am friendly, do things for others and although I have a quiet kind of personality, I am actually reasonably popular and well liked. For example, I have made quite a lot of friends at work who reach out to me. In fact, I am always answering little messages on Teams etc from people asking how I am. This has especially been the case recently as I have been going through a tough time with the illness of one of my parents. Is this a good sign for the future do you think? (Not that these people specifically will be there for me in my older years of course - they are all a bit older than me anyway, but that I am a likeable kind of person?).

Thank you again for your reply.

"Then wonders why it’s not happy at home alone for more than an hour… but that’s a whole other thread ."

God help us.

@Strawberriesandpears

It must be awful to have those anxieties but I mean this in the nicest way, I would perhaps look at a new counsellor. Being told to go to Dignatas I can't see is helpful to your situation.

You are only 37, you could be alive for another 50-60 years which is a lifetime to build connections or even build a life you want for yourself. Yes it's good to have plans in place for when you die, but at your age its a shame this consumes you like it should.

There's no guarantees in life. You seem to have resigned yourself to "dying alone" or being alone when you're older when you've still got so much life ahead of you! I have siblings but I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire so they won't be providing support to me! Likewise I have a child and may have more children but I'm not having them as some insurance policy to keep me company when I'm old or to prevent me dying alone. For all I know they could move halfway across the world when they are older!

Have children because you want to have them, don't be put off because there is no extended family. Equally choosing not to have childen because you don't want them is an equally valid choice.

I work with older adults assessing them for care. Families are no guarantee of anything. Support comes in all forms and from all areas in life. Just because you don't have children or are only child, it doesn't mean you are destined for a life of loneliness. Many people have can have huge families and still be incredibly lonely. I really hope you get the support to help you manage these anxieties.

@innerdesign if PP is not available there has to be some sort of plan regardless of whether needed now.

Everyone should have a plan.

I asked what that was if PP not there 🤷‍♀️

You can disagree if you want. All I have shared is the reality of my lived experience. Rather than my perception of what things might be like. This is what they were like for me and my relatives, and residents I cared for.

@Strawberriesandpears

You need urgent mental health support the way you are thinking is symptomatic of depression, and of the situation you’re dealing with with your parents.

A loving, caring, reciprocal relationship does not create a burden on either party. Work on your mental health and making connections.

NHS staff, care home staff, solicitors are paid to do their jobs.

Please see your GP.

To make matters worse, I spoke to a counsellor about my worries (as an introductory kind of chat to see if he would be able to help) and one of his suggestions was to book a ticket to Dignitas (assisted suicide) before I got old. I mean, it's an idea and it would solve my problem, but I still find the whole idea terrifying - getting on a plane on my own and flying to my own death in a foreign country. Then I would also have to work out what to do with my body as I have no family to sort that for me. Although that is an issue no matter how I meet my end. I have been investigating direct cremation lately and looking into paying for it in advance.

Thank you very much to everyone who has kindly replied to me.

I feel so much shame that I have no family and that I will be a burden on someone in my old age (should I make it that far). Whether that is NHS staff, care home staff, a friend or a solicitor. I feel a constant sense of dread and doom, and if I am honest, terror at my situation. And I have possibly decades to worry about this (I am 37 currently). I just have no idea what to do.

@Aintbaint Where we only meet at dog friendly places, incl. restaurants. Then wonders why it’s not happy at home alone for more than an hour… but that’s a whole other thread

You don't sound like much of a friend OP. Clearly you're judgemental in all aspects of your life.

@Robinni PP didn't specify that her parents were elderly, so I wondered why you asked who was with them. Turns out they actually do need support, but that wasn't a given. And yes, you are repeating yourself and I've heard it all before. I don't find it a convincing argument. You seem to not be able to understand that I hear you, but I don't agree.

@innerdesign

Please see the response from @fedupwithbeingcold - if family are not available someone has to be in place to look after elderly adults. This is a fact. I was interested in what provision was like in a different country.

What was horrible was that my relatives did not seriously look at the implications on others for their choices. If just one single person or set of DINKs it is usually manageable. But our family was so top heavy that it was harmful to younger generations.

And their close associations were largely with each other and age matched peers - what use is that when you’re 80-90… they are of no use!!

I repeat - all lived in suitable accomodation, they all had cleaners, gardeners, every possible convenience you could think of to maintain independence. Pots of money.

It made no difference, most did not die suddenly, each went through a period of decline lasting 18m-3yrs, no sooner had we buried one the next was heading downhill, some overlap as well, we have still not managed to wade our way through sorting out all of their effects.

No matter what solicitors they’d instructed, the medics and care home staff etc always come looking for a family member to handle things…. And solicitors can not do a lot of the stuff like spending the afternoon shopping in M&S for clothing or running to some favourite cake shop to bring them a bit of joy.

Where family or close capable friend doesn’t show up there is a lot of suffering and unmet need (no matter how much money you have and how many solicitors you instruct)…. We aren’t assholes and wouldn’t have abandoned them to suffer in their final years when so vulnerable.

@fedupwithbeingcold

This sounds like they are being well taken care of, absolutely worlds away from U.K. home care. I’m glad for you that this is in place. Thanks for responding (I just wondered how things were being managed and what provision was like elsewhere).

@Robinni, for many years they were alone, and now they have a private carer who comes 6 hours a day, plus a visiting carer who comes a couple of afternoons a week

And I apologise if my post feels like a pile-on. I hate pile-ons. I can see that my tone might give that impression, though.

So why is your friend being child free an issue that you have to mention? It’s a bit boring tbh.

That your friend is childfree can’t be the most significant thing about her in your eyes, can it?

They're grown adults, they don't need supervision? Your attitude is so odd.

It’s very sad when I look at photos of them now visiting the Taj Mahal and doing fabulous things for themselves in their 30s-50s I just burst into tears because in simplistic terms their decision to prioritise this for themselves over family life, meant very negative consequences for me during my 30s

This was a horrible post too. Your relatives had no responsibility to have children to save you a job. Equally you had no responsibility to look after them in their old age, but it sounds like you feel you did.

Sneering at childless people treating their dogs as if they were a substitute for human children - such as by taking them to cinemas etc - is a done to death thing on here, OP. That's why people assume your sudden switch to describing your DINKWAD friend's invite was yet another dog whistle. (After all, it has no relevance whatsoever to your thread.)

But I'm sure you'll say you were unaware of that narrative as well.

Agree. Dog ownership is predominantly associated with the family unit, "kids wanted a puppy" etc.

Interestingly, my childless/free friends tend to have more low-maintenance pets or they have lifestyle-centred animals like horses, or small farm animals. None have dogs!

@fedupwithbeingcold who’s with them then?

Having children is no guarantee of having company. Both my sister and I left our birth country so my parents have lived without us near them for 40 years. My sister and I can't go back to our birth place except for holidays.

I've had quite a few elderly relatives pass away now and with or without children, none of them were content with their lives or proactive about improving their situation.

I think there has always been a lot of shame and stigma around aging and mental health, so when the time to make plans for the elder years has arrived so many people have traditionally stuck their heads in the sand and left it up to their children or other female family members (because let's face it, unpaid care usually falls on the woman). Even if you love this person deeply and would do anything for them, it's a lot to juggle and not everyone is going to be mentally, emotionally or practically equipped for it. It can feel unfair to be piled on to just one person's shoulders.

I think it's a widespread social issue around aging in general rather than something to blame on those without children. We have a system entirely based on having good family around you and this leaves people who don't have that, often through circumstance and no fault of their own, out in the cold. It doesn't foster any kind of wider community. Elderly people become invisible in society and are often ignored and left out; of course they're going to feel vulnerable and depressed. Particularly when they become less mobile and can't do the things they used to. My mother in law is very depressed because of this and it's so stressful for my husband because she's made poor choices and never addressed her mental health issues. He can't fix her brain for her. She needs community, friends, activity and purpose in her life, which is more than just one or two people can provide.

So I think if we assume that attitudes don't change and base our predictions solely on how previous generations have handled things then yeah, elderly people will be increasingly lonely. I'm rather more optimistic about it though and think that increasing numbers of people without children could turn the tide on social care and encourage more positivity in how we approach aging. There's more focus and information out there than ever before on healthy living and the importance of managing our mental health. Gen X and Millennials are going to be the first generations to have really started to focus on this. We're also the first ones to be really active online... It's going to be impossible to ignore old people in such numbers and I'm actually pretty excited to see how people will use social media to advocate for elder issues. I think we can choose to be there for each other and connect in a way that older people just couldn't in the past

Supply will meet demand too. I predict that we'll start seeing more businesses centred on advocating for and providing social support and services for elderly people, because there's going be money to be made from it. This can be both good and bad I think.

In my opinion, the top things to get sorted before becoming very old are to sort out a will, a statement of wishes and to appoint a financial power of attorney in case you lose capacity. I like the idea of using a solicitor for power of attorney because it's a lot of work, plus I think it helps protect you from people who might come sniffing around for money if you start to lose cognition. I've seen it happen and it's awful. If your financial affairs are overseen by a solicitor I think unscrupulous types are more likely to not bother you, or at least get caught out pretty early on.

Power of attorney for your welfare is important too but currently I have no idea who I would look to for that. I wouldn't want to ask it of my nieces and nephews and they're all scattered about anyway. My long term aim is to improve my mental health to a point that I can be consistently more sociable and make some good, lifelong (slightly younger, lol) friends who might be close enough to care. A long term project over the next three decades or so. 😉