Childless women - who will look after you in old age?

[boatyface2]

If you are childless (by choice or not) or even if you have children, what's your view on this?

I've seen several threads from mums hating it and saying they wish they didn't have kids. Surely it's all good when you're young but who will look after you when you're old?

I wonder if that is why mums complain how much they hate it, yet go on to have a second and third child? And if old age wasn't a concern, why did you have children if you don't enjoy it?

Did the Op not address why this question had not been levelled at men?

I'm now even more convinced I don't want children, seeing as most of you parents with kids don't think they're much use for old age care (not that they should be)
Children are a net cost to the individual...I would be much wealthier and less stressed if I didn't have them!
However if everyone looked at things that way there would be no one to look after me when I'm in a care home!

So other people's children will look after the childless when they're old
other people's children will design the algorithms or software or robots that help elderly people to live independently

Imagine being such a self-centred creature that your reason for having kids - individuals who grow up to have their own lives, oddly enough - to "look after you when you are old". How unbelievably selfish.

I read this and it got me thinking...
One one hand yes nobody should have to be forced to look after elderly parents. I most certainly wouldn't force my children to do this.
On the other, isn't it part of our society / welfare system that each generation is " looked after" by their children?
And if so, we are in for a big shock... aging population, empty coffers, sub standard care homes... Maybe having family to look out when you are less mobile, have multiple ailments and no partner for company is a lovely warm and fuzzy kind of thought.

Children are a net cost to the individual...I would be much wealthier and less stressed if I didn't have them!
However if everyone looked at things that way there would be no one to look after me when I'm in a care home!

If I inflicted parenthood on myself I think I'd need a care home an awful lot sooner... I am, however, more than happy to pay taxes to support other people's kids.

No one can count on it that their kids will look after them in old age. Ideally they will - my parents are elderly and infirm now and I help them out a lot - but they have friends whose children both upped and emigrated to the other side of the world, they are in ill health now but their children hardly ever even come back to visit. It's sad.

I'm childless by choice myself, but had I chosen to have kids, I wouldn't necessarily have assumed they'd look after me in my old age.

Having seen all the stress I've been under with my elderly parents DS has already informed me that he's not going to look after me - 'I'll find you a nice home though mom '