Personal Perspective: Elders without grandkids can have more in common with their friends who are childless and childfree.
Grown children who aren't having kids of their own can affect their parents' elder years.With the gulf between parents and non-parents seemingly widening these days, I’ve been listening more closely to what people in each situation say about the other. Finally, I think I have an insight into the genesis of our gulf.
Competing perspectives try to assign value to having kids or not. Parents, they say, are doing their part for our future social security by having kids. They also help the economy with all the purchases they make to raise the kids. The kids and grandkids also figure largely in parents’ conversations, without drawing out topics that engage non-parents, too.
The other day a friend of mine with four adult kids voiced her sorrow that no one is likely to give her grandkids. Even though she’d love to be a grandmother, she accepts her kids’ situations and doesn’t pressure them. What she shares next astonishes me.“Being grandchildless,” she says, “makes my life more similar to yours than to my friends who have grandkids.”
My friend and her partner are designing their elder years without the generational anchor most of her other friends enjoy. My friend and I built a new bridge to traverse together.A few years back I cohosted an event with a childfree woman profiled in my book. During the Q&A her mother stood up to say she was delighted she wouldn’t have grandchildren to thwartof her “golden years.” She’s now in her seventies, traveling the world, visiting friends, and creating new memories.
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