Reflection on Ageing Without Children

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, 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 in 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. So 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 um informal family support and care that those people who do have adult children um 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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