Report transcript in: Reflection on Ageing Without Children

Please Report the Errrors?

My name's Jane and I'm a,

I'm an age friendly communities officer in Lincolnshire.

And what that means is that I work with local older residents and organisations

to ensure that

we are being as age friendly as we possibly can be,

so that's outside spaces,

um.

Inside public buildings,

local businesses,

it's the services that older people

need to access.

It's a journey of improvement,

um,

it's about sort of reviewing things and and doing the best we can.

But

today I want to reflect a little bit on some of my own learning

around um.

A portion of

our older community,

and that is the group of people who are ageing without children,

um,

sometimes referred to as Ewoks,

AWOC um not Ewoks,

Star Wars fame.

Um,

and

it's,

it's something that I'm sure we all know.

We know there are older people

in our communities that either by choice or circumstance

have not had children.

Um,

we know there are older people in our communities that maybe

have children,

but they have special needs,

and therefore they

may consider themselves part of this AWOC group because

they

are parents with children that they need to look after for all of that child's life,

and the child is not gonna be in a position to advocate for them or support them.

It can also be people um who have lost all touch

with any children they might have had.

So it's quite a wide ranging group of people.

um,

and

I first started to reflect upon

the

experiences of Awoks,

and I will continue to call them Awoks,

er,

sometimes they would refer to themselves as ageing alone.

Um,

Back in COVID time,

so in 2020,

so I've been doing this work since 2019.

But in 2020,

um,

as COVID was kind of well underway,

and we were going into the autumn,

and you may recall that all of the media were hyping up whether

or not we would be able to visit our extended families at Christmas.

There was lots of imagery in the press

of grandparents hugging grandchildren,

um,

lots and lots of discussion.

And I was approached in my role

by a member of the community called Trish,

who

is an AOC and was um quite rightly very frustrated and angry

about the situation and feeling doubly isolated

because of this dialogue that was going on,

um,

across,

you know,

the press and media

around the need for people to engage with

um.

Their,

their grandparents,

their grandchildren,

all those sorts of things.

Now,

if I reflect back on my own childhood,

I actually,

uh,

grew up in a family where my dad was the youngest,

uh,

child,

big family,

Irish Italian.

Um,

and he had 4.

Um,

unmarried,

um.

Without children,

sisters.

So,

um,

I had 4 maiden spinster unchilded aunts,

for want of a better

description.

And they were just my aunts,

and I never even

needed to or reflected upon,

um,

you know.

Who would be there for them as they grow older,

because in our family we we supported each other.

Um,

and so as

my parents and my aunts aged,

um,

between my parents and my sister and I,

we supported

each of those aunts,

um.

To the end of their life,

we advocated for them if they needed it,

and as,

um,

particularly the last one,

she did

live to a very old age

and needed some help and personal care.

There was no question that my sister and I would be there.

So that's

my background if you like,

I hadn't really had to think about this in any depth.

When Trish approached me.

Um,

I suddenly was faced with reflecting upon this and what,

and I listened to,

um,

her story.

Uh,

she is not only,

um,

somebody that's not had children,

she's also somebody whose partner had died some years before.

Um,

she was an only child herself,

so she didn't have siblings.

She was in her 70s,

her parents had died.

She didn't have any close extended family relatives that she had um.

Um,

you know,

a kind of connection with.

And so

during COVID,

she had felt completely isolated.

She had,

prior to COVID,

as a very proactive woman,

a retired businesswoman,

um,

uh,

you know,

computers literate,

drove,

she had engaged in lots of community activities,

she'd been parts of groups and things like that.

But obviously as COVID shut everything down.

Um,

lots of us became isolated,

but people like Trish became even more isolated,

and it was

a strange revelation to me as I started to look into this and to realise

how our,

um,

society is geared towards,

um.

Family and state and individual all working

tandem with each other,

so it's like a sort of triangle.

So our health and social care system

is really based upon

the individual being able to look after themselves as much as possible,

the extended family

offering

that sort of advocacy and support,

and then the state stepping in

when

needed.

So um.

So that's kind of where this started,

it started in late 2020,

uh,

in the middle of COVID.

And with Trish,

who,

um,

you know,

I still am in contact with and still work with on this topic.

Um,

I supported her to develop a blog

and we set up an online a work social group,

and I talked to more people who were ageing without children

and really developed um

this kind of uh

understanding.

Now I will state I am somebody who has children,

I had them very young,

so I've never had to consider that situation,

but I do have a couple of friends who are.

Um,

in their middle years or older who

maybe haven't considered what their older years will be,

but they don't have,

um,

children themselves,

and since I've talked about this,

they've sort of

maybe had a think themselves,

um.

Where we are now

is that in East Lindsay,

where I work

we have done some work on supporting people who are ageing without children.

Um,

we have been linked up with a national group.

There is a national UK ageing With Children group

who lobby government

and,

um,

with limited success,

and also,

um,

do a certain amount of support in local areas to sort of

set up these AWOC groups and have a a Facebook group,

there's a Facebook group as well,

so that people who are ageing without children can,

you know,

share their.

Their life experiences,

their frustrations,

um,

they can get advice on maybe some of the things that

they can put in place for themselves in the future.

Um,

in East Lindsay,

our group has,

um,

ceased to exist because the members decided that they didn't want to.

Some of them

went off into a couple of other friendship groups,

um,

and stayed in touch,

you know,

made some friendships,

but at the moment in East Lindsay,

we don't have an AOC support group.

In other work,

we have been working with um other

colleagues in different organisations and Lincoln University

to um try and raise awareness of adults ageing alone or ageing without children

and um we're hoping to do a public lecture with the Lincoln University on

what

the experiences are of people ageing alone.

Um,

and there are various themes that go through that.

There are the themes,

you know,

there are people who have

got to deal with the grief of

wanting children but not being able to have children.

Um,

there are people who

have made conscious choices not to have children

and feel very,

you know,

positive about that choice,

but also very frustrated maybe about how the system doesn't

support them.

One of the other things to consider about um Awoks is at the minute,

there are a large number of people ageing without children in the UK.

But the pre predicted um data profiles

is that there will be even more.

Um,

so,

you know,

due to choice,

so a lot of people are choosing

not to have children.

Um,

so maybe for professional reasons or,

um,

maybe they just

don't want to have children and

in society now,

it's perfectly acceptable for

women in particular not to have children and to make choices to have their career.

Um,

but also there are other things going on,

so fertility rates are reducing,

um,

women are waiting till later on to choose to have children

and then finding maybe that they're not able to have children.

So there's quite a lot of factors going on in this,

um,

but one of the things that is really important is that

when our public sector services and voluntary sector support services

are

looking at future planning,

they need to take into consideration

that there will be even more um.

Older adults ageing alone without

that kind of

informal

family support and care

that

those people who do have adult children

and extended family,

but usually adult children.

That are around and able to advocate them.

So this is a big issue,

it's one that is um continuing to evolve.

There are um you know,

lots of people doing sort of

research on this and trying to promote this,

but it's one thing that's not really talked about very much,

um,

amongst the community,

and I think it's a really important topic for us to consider.

And there are things that people ageing without children can put in place

for themselves,

um,

you know,

they,

they can.

Look to

close friends for things like powers of attorney,

um,

they can

contact organisations like the Cinnamon Trust,

who are a a charity that

um will look after pets

of people who are,

you know,

have nobody else to look after them,

so if somebody

who isn't AOC needs an operation in hospital.

Um,

there,

there hopefully will be a Cinnamon Trust volunteer that

maybe could look after their dog or their cat.

So there are things that could be put in place,

but I think what I would like people to do is just consider

some of the things that those people with adult children or with close family

um.

Don't have to consider,

so if you don't have children and you don't have

anybody around you that you consider family,

who is your next of kin?

Who is going to be your power of attorney if you need that?

Um,

who is gonna advocate for you if you need that in your later life.

So I think I would just leave you with that,

is just,

just consider

that there are people who are in the situation

where they have to think and plan for

um these things.

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Posted By

Author

JBerni

Post date

01/04/2025