—Harry R. Moody, PhD,
Visiting Professor, Fielding Graduate School,
Retired Vice President for Academic Affairs, AARP
Harry “Rick” Moody is the author of over 100 scholarly articles, as well as numerous books on aging. Dr. Moody previously served as Executive Director of the Brookdale Center on Aging at Hunter College and was Chairman of the Board of Elderhostel (now Road Scholar).
His new book, Gerontology: The Basics, will be published by Routledge in 2017. In 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society on Aging; in 2010, Masterpiece Living honored him with the Robert Kahn Award for Successful Aging; and in 2008 he was named by Utne Reader Magazine as one of “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.”
About six years ago, I started noticing that many of my friends were spending a lot of time tending to aging parents. Those who lived nearby were needed for driving, relocation, managing medications, bringing them to doctor’s appointments. Those whose parent(s) lived further away did their caregiving long distance—by managing local caregivers or by spending a lot of time on airplanes. None of my friends had thought about this ahead of time, and neither had their parents. But suddenly mom fell or a doctor called to say that dad shouldn’t drive anymore or mom’s behavior had become worrisome.
These friends of mine, these adult children were called in to help, no matter their history of closeness or off-again on-again estrangement. They showed up. Who else would do it? If there were other siblings, they usually shared the responsibility and the tasks, those living closest carrying the lion’s share, with expenses divvied up among them as best they could be.
One day, my friend Monica told me about her recent visit with her ninety-two-year-old father-in-law. She had been flying from California to upstate New York several times a year for the past three years, staying for three to four weeks at a time. During her visits she made sure he was keeping his house in order, preparing nutritious meals for himself, and paying his bills. She talked to the neighbors, went to church with him, and restocked the pantry to reassure herself and her husband that he was healthy and safe.
However, now she was concerned. On her most recent visit, Edward was displaying some troubling behaviors. He was not keeping up with his personal hygiene, and he had started wandering through the house in the middle of the night. A couple of times, thinking it was morning, he prepared breakfast for the two of them at three in the morning. Monica and her husband decided it was time to look for a residential facility and start the difficult task of preparing him for the move. Since her husband had a full-time job, they decided Monica would stay in New York for an additional month, keeping an eye on her father-in-law and managing the “project.”
When I hung up the phone and thought about what she had just told me, I asked myself, “Who will do that for us?” The answer “No one” made me gasp.
My husband and I are in our sixties and have no children. We are professionals with a lot of education and serious careers, like many of our friends—people who used to be called “DINKs” (double income, no kids). As I dug deeper, I discovered a 2005 Pew Research study which reported that 19.4 percent of the boomer generation did not have kids (almost double the percentage of child-free women in all previous generations).1 Wow!
Who will do for us what we did for our parents?
With the natural infertility rate among women around 10 percent, it seemed odd that the baby boomer rate was so high. Then it dawned on me that there were a couple of logical reasons. Number one, the baby boomers were the first generation to arrive at adolescence after the introduction of the birth control pill. The second reason is that baby boomer women were the first truly liberated women in United States history. Higher education was available, the US legal system made it a crime to discriminate on the basis of gender, and by 1980, women had begun challenging every male stronghold. A boomer woman no longer needed a man to support her. She could remain single for life or put off marriage until her thirties or forties.
Sometime in my thirties, I made a conscious choice to NOT have children. Have I ever regretted that choice? Occasionally, but only in recent years as I listen to my friends talk about their special relationships with their grandkids. On the other hand, it’s pretty hard to conjure up a relationship with grandkids when I never had kids!
If I had it to do over again, I would make the same choices. I continue to enjoy a life enriched by a challenging and ever-changing career, wonderful friends, travel, hobbies I enjoy, continuous learning, and a solid relationship with a spouse who shares my love of music, my political leanings, and most of my food preferences. We continue to fill our lives with canine companions and good friends, many of whom are also child-free baby boomers. Some of them have close ties with nieces and nephews—and as you will see in Part III, that can be very helpful in advance planning.
I wrote this book for those who live alone or, for whatever reason, have no adult children. Whether you are married/partnered or single in the second half of life (over fifty) you will not have the safety net of that immediate younger generation to count on later in life in an emergency or even an extended illness.
I do not have children, and everything I recommend in this book I have undertaken myself. These pages include many stories of others like me (whose names have been changed) from all over the country who are blazing new trails and making creative choices appropriate to their own unique circumstances. I hope my stories, research, experience, and observations encourage you to begin the planning necessary for peace of mind as you age. The journey is not long, complicated, or unnecessarily expensive. If your financial resources are slim, you may need to be creative or ask for help. Most of all, I hope this will lead you to begin a conversation with your family and friends about what you want your future to look like and the role you would like them to play.
Chapter 2. Child-Free: Pioneers of a Generation
“Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg paved the way for me and so many other women in my generation. Their pioneering lives have created boundless possibilities for women in the law …”
—Elena Kagan, Supreme Court Justice
Congratulations! You are a pioneer of your generation. You have successfully navigated your life along an unconventional path. Most child-free adults made a deliberate choice not to have children. Although that decision was somewhat more acceptable for baby boomers than for previous generations, most boomer women—and men—continued to experience a great deal of pressure to marry and raise families. If you held fast against those pressures, you demonstrated strength in your convictions. You deserve to be proud of your accomplishments and the path you chose.
I interviewed a large number of women and a few men—all child-free—for this book. They shared their stories with me about their choice to not raise children and where their lives had taken them. Some had led conventional lives; some had cast caution to the wind and chosen more varied and exciting lifestyles. Because they did not have children dependent on them, they had had more options—changing careers on a whim, moving to a different state or country, or experimenting with alternative lifestyles.
The women I interviewed never felt compelled to be mothers; they were drawn to other occupations and interests. In the late 1970s, women who wanted to be mothers