People ageing without family (LBC0114)

Hadley, Robin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4254-7648 (2020) People ageing without family (LBC0114). House of Lords, UK Parliament, London.

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Abstract

This submission makes the case for institutional recognition of those ageing without children and/or family to support them. In the Western world, on average, childlessness affects and one in four men (Präg et al., 2017) and one woman in five over 45 years old (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2015; Archetti, 2019). Dykstra and Hagestad (2007, p. 1288) argue that the older childless are seen as vulnerable ‘a group at risk of social isolation, loneliness, depression, ill health, and increased mortality’ compared to the ‘social support, health and well-being’ formed by the intergenerational parent-child family alliance. Children are a bridge to a wide range of informal and formal social communities. Recently, the Office for National Statistics (2020) report, ‘Living longer: implications of childlessness among tomorrow's older population’ forecast a tripling of older childless women aged 80 by 2045. The report heavily emphasised the impact the increase this in the number of childless older people on health and social care services. Nonetheless, the ONS (2020) report is fundamentally flawed: there are no accurate figures for the 49% of the population that is male. This is because only women’s fertility history is collected at the registration of a birth. Although this terrible method of data collection is widespread across the world, it is a national disgrace and benefits no one.