However much women with unchosen childlessness can move past their grief and feel that they’ve lived a meaningful and fulfilled life despite their childlessness, there are some sobering realities which come with aging for them and which it will be difficult for most to avoid. As someone in my sixties I’ve had 20 odd years to come to terms with my childlessness through circumstance and although this no longer causes me the pain it used to, I do find as I age, that the weight of the sense of aloneness this childlessness brings only seems to get worse. Having children brings a ready-made network of close human contact which, as I see it, in most cases continues throughout one’s life as the children become adults. This often means that the year is punctuated by family gatherings, maybe including grandchildren, and contact of one sort or another. So, as a childless woman moving on in years, I’m deprived of any such interaction and that way of giving eventfulness and meaning to my life, making things seem incredibly monotonous and lonely without them.
Also, these days I find myself thinking more and more about what the final years of my life could be like and dreading the prospect of having to accept help for everyday life and infirmities etc. from virtually unknown individuals with whom I can’t imagine there’ll be the same instinctive emotional and therefore caring tie as there most probably would have been with any offspring. Even if children of mine had been unable to look after me on a daily basis it would still have been reassuring to know that they would most probably, as is invariably the case, been looking out for me and making sure that I was getting the right kind of care.
In some cases, of course, childless women may still have an able partner who can care for them or have been able to forge strong bonds with nieces and nephews or others of a younger generation who could be there in times of need. But this is not the case for everyone, myself being an example. I’ve lived abroad, in France, for most of my adult life coming here primarily for my career, then marrying a Frenchman and finally, after my divorce, staying in what was now my “home”. Had I been able to see my brothers and sisters back in England more often I may have been able to have a closer involvement with my nieces and nephews but sadly therefore this wasn’t possible.
And then there’s the very frightening prospect of dying completely on my own! If death isn’t sudden, children are generally present or in contact, in most cases, when the death of a parent is imminent. Without children therefore one is forced to accept this chilling reality unless one happens, as said, to have very close ties with anyone else.
Ultimately it seems so strange that despite there being billions of people on this planet, women in this situation often have very little choice other than to live in such isolation in their old age. And I find this so terribly sad.
Karen P
Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash