Julie Greenan
One of the main ways I see the world, is from the point of view of a childless and single woman. I’m also ‘older’ (70) but not sure how relevant that is.
I want first to give due credit to Helen, my therapist for the term ‘infrastructure’, which I hadn’t heard before in this context and which I think is perfect. And to Henrietta Copeland for expressing the ideas that have made this whole principle more real for me, and helped me to feel stronger in believing in it.
What a perfect word it is, for those of us who walk alone, to varying degrees. In my case, without a partner or children, but with some family in various parts of the world. I have siblings too, who are all now in their 80s. I don’t discount their role - how can I, when they’ve always been there? I’ve lost relationships and potential children. I’ve lived both single and partnered. I’ve lived part of my life, when I was much younger, with a full family infrastructure. Taken totally for granted. Before I became childless in the sense that we here use the term. Before I became involuntarily and enduringly single.
Some people have this infrastructure without even trying. Others have to do the hard work of making a network of support. Of creating the infrastructure, and in a world that does not yet sufficiently value or prioritise non-family and non-natalist relationships. Let alone privilege them - imagine, the very idea!
So I looked up ‘infrastructure’. Which just proved the perfection of the word to describe an absence for many of us. A lifelong grief - a process, not a finite event. An ongoing loss that can be triggered unexpectedly anywhere - a Facebook photo of a couple setting off on holiday together. A story of someone building a business with the financial - or maybe ‘only’ psychological/emotional - support of a partner. Talk of where someone is going at Christmas - doesn’t ‘family’ always come into such a conversation, one way or another? Adverts, endless adverts showing ‘happy families’. When you ask someone how they deal with their savings, or for help with a particular task online and get ‘oh I’ve no idea, my husband/partner/son/daughter/second cousin twice removed does all that. … Yep - that division of labour, that means that often any given responsibility can be shared - the load lightened just a little.
And I could go on, but you know all about it.
So, if you’d bear with me, I think it might be worth having a quick look at what I found out about infrastructure.
• Soft infrastructure refers to all the institutions that help maintain a healthy economy. These usually require extensive human capital and are service-oriented toward the population. Soft infrastructure includes all educational, health, financial, law and order, governmental systems (such as social security), and other institutions that are considered crucial to the well-being (my italics) of an economy.’
• Hard infrastructure comprises all the physical systems that are crucial to running a modern, industrialised economy. It includes transport systems such as roads and highways and telecommunication services such as telephone lines and broadband systems.
• Critical infrastructure is those infrastructure systems and assets that are so vital that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, the economy, public health, public safety, or any combination thereof.
Critical Infrastructure - this one, this is so to the point, when it comes to our lives… We know they’re really talking about physical structures and systems - water, sanitation, production and distribution of food, police etc - we saw that only too well during the pandemic.
But what about the emotional element that is vital to wellbeing …’ ? What about emotional features of our infrastructure, whose absence does weaken or destroy our security, our health, our safety’?
What then, about Emotional infrastructure - a subset of Critical infrastructure, maybe? Or a category out there on its own? An official category making clear the necessity of ‘those relationships and systems acting in the service of human flourishing, which enable those without biological or acquired others to feel emotionally safe and to access necessary support and resources to enable them to become all that they may be or wish to be’ (my definition).
All this is just leading to a really obvious idea - that we all need the emotional support of people who are in our corner. People who ‘get’ us, people we can rely on, who we trust, who we feel safe with. Who are the ones we turn to in any kind of distress or need. Knowing that they’ll be there for us, with comfort, understanding and /or practical help and support, like a meal, or advice, or the loan of something.
People about whom we say, in our gratitude to them, about them: ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you’. And your heartfelt wish is that you’ll never have to do without them.
And the crucial importance of emotional infrastructure for our well-being is not only when we are actually engaging with those other humans. It’s when we’re out there on our own, but knowing they’re back there, they exist and we can come back to them. It enables us to venture more, be more of who we are, to take risks, to explore, to wander out of sight on the beach ((1) Henri Copeland).
It’s a kind of loving, isn't it? A variety of kinds of loving. (2)
A new friend of mine, widowed, but a mother of two, recently said something that I’d long struggled to articulate. She said ‘It’s hard being single. I had a good marriage and we loved each other. And whatever happened to me out there in the world didn’t seem as bad because I knew I had someone at home who loved me’.
I haven’t been very specific in this piece. I haven’t elaborated on all the ways in which a family network, a partner and maybe their family network too, children and their connections and knowledge, support, advice, can form a huge pool or resources for a person. You know that as well as I do. And we know that having those families doesn’t automatically mean you get all those resources.
But that’s not my point. My point is, what we need matters. It’s to be spoken about, claimed as our right, for our well-being, our flourishing. To be valued and prioritised. Our friendships are as important as families are for others. Of equal standing and value in our lives. And often, more nourishing and generous.
Our crucial emotional infrastructure. As we wait for it to become recognised and official (!) let’s take it utterly seriously ourselves. It’s essential. It matters. It’s life-giving. It’s a life-support system.
(1) Henrietta Copeland Childless Collective post 2024
(2) A Kind of Loving Stan Barstow Penguin 1967
