To wonder if DINKs will be more lonely when older?

[Aintbaint]

Ok, so hear me out. This isn’t an US v Them thread …
I have a lot of Double Income No Kids friends - for various reasons, mostly choice.
So for most career has been their main focus, followed by their partner… Most have been very financially comfortable, travelled a lot, able to afford holiday homes, successful work wise etc basically all the benefits of no kids!

But now we’re all in our late 40s and 50s and slowed down a bit, retired early, separated or divorced, Quite a few just seem to to have lost focus, seem a bit depressed or unhappy, and don’t have the same focal point that having kids can bring.
I stupidly thought that kids would get older and we’d have our independence back but obvs kids are always there in someways - you never stop worrying or thinking about them or doing stuff with them. So still that focal point in many ways and Indaynthat as someone who does have a FT job they like and hobbies…

YABU - of course DINKs are just as happy and not lonely etc

YANBU - it’s harder as you get older when it’s just you or you+partner and work isn’t as important or you retire

Yes. I have worked in elderly care for ten years and have never met anyone who didn't regret not having kids / upset about not being able to have them. But this is 80/90 year olds I'm talking about.

At what age does this regret kick in then?

Makes me wonder if PP has only met people (women, I would bet) who always wanted children, or who felt they "should" have conformed to the sort of attitude the OP was not-so-subtly espousing, not ones who were happily childfree. I'd have to have a complete reversal of my whole personality to start saying I regretted it.

If they use their time to build their friendship and community networks, and make sure they include a wide range of ages within those, then the DINKs might very well be less lonely than those with families.

As people with children often find, adult children may not like you, may not visit you, or might just not be able to due to ill-health, or death; or they live far away or abroad... .

Makes me wonder if PP has only met people (women, I would bet) who always wanted children, or who felt they "should" have conformed to the sort of attitude the OP was not-so-subtly espousing, not ones who were happily childfree. I'd have to have a complete reversal of my whole personality to start saying I regretted it.

Right? Surely when you're old, the fact that you lived with integrity to your own wishes is something you'd be happy about, not regret?

One would think so!

Many people with children end up lonely in old age.

Many people without develop strong networks that mean they don't.

Children are often thought to reduce the likelihood of loneliness not just because of the family bond but because of the inter-generational element. If all your friends are the same age as you, chances are you'll all become infirm and start dying around a similar time, resulting in increased isolation. However, if you develop a good social group with people of varying ages, this need not happen at all.

There's an awful lot of luck involved too.

You sound just like me! I spent last Christmas totally alone for the very first time - and had a lovely day, as I knew I would. I also do a lot of things alone, and always have done. I actually lied to anyone who asked about my Christmas celebrations as I didn't want them asking me to join them! I did spend a lot of time with my (divorced) late parents, a) because I enjoyed their company and b) because I knew they weren't going to be around forever, but now they are gone I feel rather liberated. This is now my time.

As you said, we are all different. Do those of us who enjoy our own company start threads about how suffocating some family lives appear to be?? No, of course we don't, and yet there have been several threads about the supposed loneliness of the childless or single in my time on MN.

There's always this assumption that your children (or parents) are people you'd choose to socialise with, that being related means you like someone. Doesn't work like that.

@BenefitWaffle I was the one who posted that! I’m in the US, a country known for its generous Annual Leave, not!

I haven’t been taking a summer holiday and I've asked for unpaid leave. Luckily my immediate bosses completely understand that elderly parents need support.

@JennyWren87 Surely that’s mainly because their friends are dying off and they likely can’t get out and about as they used to?
It’s not a lifelong regret, it’s more that they can’t make the most of life anymore.

A bit weird to think having kids is the answer to loneliness in later life. What if your kids don't like you, or they move abroad, or they just want to get on with their lives without having their lonely mum/dad round more than once a month? It seems rather sad to rely on your adult children for company.

Even if this is true and not just you interpreting it that way, it doesn't mean they regretted it the other 80 odd years of their lives.

I cam well imagine that if a childless person was to regret not having children, it's most likely to come at the end of their lives when it's a time for looking back whether child free or not and most ppl look at what they'd do differently.

It doesn't necessarily mean if they were to live their lives again they wouldn't make the same decisions again. Child rearing for women especially can be drudgery and make you vulnerable in so many ways especially financial. There's a reason more women are remaining childless now we have more choices and why as a pp has already pointed out childless single women are found to be the happiest.

Some regret at the end of their lives doesn't seem the worse price to pay for a lifetime of what's more likely to have more freedom and choices (I accept some childless women don't have this either through infertility, other caring duties and health conditions etc).

I think many older women will think it sounds selfish if they say they are glad they never had kids.

Or they've had a lifetime of being told what selfish, unnatural creatures they are, and either they've succumbed to this poisonous message, or they're saying they regret it so as not to cop yet more crap from judgy pests. One has only to look at the MNers Without Children boards to see how much shit gets thrown at women for not wanting children.

Sadly no. It was usually when people in the nursing home had their family visiting. Especially sad around holidays. I'm now on a care of the edlerly hospital ward and especially in nights women always talk of specific regrets around not having children/not being able to have children.

Are you in the UK? That’s an unusual experience for people working in elderly care and goes against all the statistics and research into the regrets people at the end of life have. Maybe normal for other cultures though. As women are choosing not to have children more these days and, sadly, there are still those who are unable to and those who have no contact with their children becoming more common it’s likely that no matter the culture the more we will see the younger generations growing old and dying without those regrets as they will have faced less judgement and rejection and been able to maintain good relationships and lives which leave them fulfilled.

I work in elderly healthcare and do not share this experience at all. The opposite, in fact.

I'd rather be the old lady who doesn't have children, than the old lady who has children that don't visit. I know which of the two would hurt.

Yes. The UK. Three years in a nursing home, seven years in the NHS.

@JennyWren87 all research and statics goes against your experience. Lifelong single, childless women tend to be more educated, healthier and happier.

not having children isn’t usually listed in the top ten regrets of the dying - yet you are experiencing this regularly. Are you targeting childless older women (there can’t be many - in that generation less than one in five would have been childless). Are you projecting your belief system on them?

What about men? Are you okay with them being childless?

I don't think it would be a good idea to have DC on the off chance you may regret not having them when you are 80!

I had them to enjoy along the way, and I mostly have, though we have had a bumpy few years during the pandemic.

The only elderly people I've known whose children don't bother much with them are the ones who are incredibly difficult and not particularly nice people. Any older person I know who is a nice is close to their kids and grandkids.

Sometimes the parents have been unlucky in not having particularly nice children.. See it all the time on here. It’s not always down to the parents.

I wonder how many of those didn’t want to have children, but did so through social pressure/lack of choice?

People who don’t want children shouldn’t have them, for their own sake and for that of any children.

I don’t understand this fear of being seen as selfish by some, as if it’s the worst thing you could possibly do. Fuck that. Of course you should live your life in a way that makes you happy! Have children if you want them, stay childfree if you want that. There is no one route to happiness, and we don’t have to live identikit lives.

Not necessarily, not if they have each other but i guess when one of them dies it will be awful. Having said that my father passed away and my mother has become a shell. They never had any friends and were so wrapped up in each other. Didn't really show much attention to us kids or grandkids either so now she's very alone and heart broken