Thank you to World Childless Week for adding this to this year's list of topics. This is a topic that I have given a lot of thought to as mentioned in my #RedefiningmyPlanA post earlier this year.
While living through this global pandemic, I felt the gravity of this topic as my husband and I both fell ill with some symptoms of Covid19 in late July. I’m fortunate to say that we tested negative (we did the right thing and got tested within a few hours of experiencing the symptoms) but during the 36 excruciating hours till we got our results, my biggest question was “Who will look after our furbabies if we got hospitalised or were incapacitated from being able to look after them or worse yet, if I died from this virus, who would take them in”?
I started doing my own research on this topic last year and I look forward to seeing what our #childlessnotbychoice community has to say about #AgeingWithoutChildren.
In October 2019, I was doing research on what I wanted my future as childless person could be like. I wrote a post about a book I came across called ”Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers” (by Sara Zeff Geber, PhD) that offered practical options for both single and childless adults.
One of my challenges for trying to decide what the future looks like for me is because I am childless, but my husband has a young adult daughter who will most likely go on to have children and I'm not sure I would necessarily be considered a (step)grandmother. My immediate family is just my mum and a younger brother who is childless by circumstances, so I have no nieces or nephews that are blood-related who might have looked out for me.
My husband has worked in aged care for almost 15 years. When he talks about the residents (and those with families who visit), I keep asking myself these questions about my future:
How long can I safely live in my own home?
What will happen to me when I am no longer able to look after myself?
Who would take me to get medical care if I am unable to drive myself even though I’m able to live alone?
Who will spend time with me when I am old(er) and have no children or grandchildren or even nieces/nephews to look after me or visit me?
Who can or should I leave my things to? I have a huge collection of CDs and DVDs that I have been cultivating since my twenties as well as a lot of great household items thanks to my joy of cooking and entertaining family and friends.
Will there by anyone to visit me when I have to live in an aged care facility?
When I think about how I want my life as an aged person to be, I keep thinking about how I could make it a positive experience. One of the ideas that keeps popping up in my head is creating a community living arrangement, with options for both retirees and those needing more care, that is solely for our #childlessnotbychoice community. I know that I don't want to be living in aged care when days like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Grandparents’ Day or other festivities like Christmas or Easter that are focused on people who have children.
What I’d like is that the life I am currently blessed with to continue as I get older: a) Being a #Labramummy to two beautiful yellow Labradors, furbabies Chewie and Lucy.
b) Spending time with family and friends, either cooking for them at my house or going out for drinks, meals, concerts, travel etc.
c) Enjoying #selfcare options such as trips to hair and beauty salons to get treatments from head to toe that help me manage my anxiety and I see as a reward for a tough week at work. If you’ve ever watched the Netflix show “Grace and Frankie”, you know that Grace often espouses the lifestyle of independently taking care of herself (rather than worrying about her kids and grandkids).
So, what does my utopian aged care world look like for our #childlessnotbychoice community?
I would love to live in a place where our community gets to enjoy every possible thing that a childless life offers us e.g.
a) being able to have our furbabies live with us and having staff (or volunteers) who would help us take them for exercise or to the vet
b) being able to have entertainment options on site such as bars, cafes and restaurants, live music
c) having quiet places to escape to for reading, knitting, craftwork etc
d) having a space for exercise run by people who understand how “older” bodies work (or do not work!)
e) having regular “book clubs” where we can get together and have a laugh or discussion
f) having hair and beauty salons run by people who know how to make us feel better physically and emotionally through decadent head and body treatments
g) regular activities planned where we have fun without having to talk about (not having) children or grandchildren.
Basically, I would love a resort-type lifestyle for every day of the rest of our lives where there are no little people underfoot or having to be catered to! And it would be great for this place to be staffed by people who know to never ask the question “Do you have kids” and all the rubbish questions/comments that usually follow.
That doesn’t sound too bad, don’t you agree? All I know that is that I want to feel that I have options in my senior years where I can continue to enjoy the benefits of the childless life I currently lead. There’s a lot of great work being done in the UK and I hope that together with other childless community members in Australia, we can change government policy and programs to consider our needs for ageing without children.