Background

A narrative has developed in recent years to link ageing without children to support needs in later life. Social care has long been viewed as a private, familial responsibility, whilst health care is a societal, public good. Childlessness is framed negatively in terms of increased demands on care services and wider family networks.

As governments tackle the issue of how to fund and deliver an equitable and sustainable long-term care sector, this paper aims to argue that it is more critical than ever to evaluate views of childlessness in the context of ageing.

Methods

Policy-oriented commentary paper.

Results

If the focus on childlessness and ageing is through a lens of a potential care deficit, this continues to frame ageing without children as a risk and does little to challenge increasing reliance on unpaid care.

Conclusion

Research and policy need to explore how to make access to social care more equitable and reduce expectations of unpaid care. They also need to increasingly emphasise exploration of aspects of later life beyond the issue of care, for example, by more of a focus on communities, what matters to people to age well and lives that extend beyond traditional views of nuclear families.

Full publication

Constructions of childlessness and ageing: legitimising dependency on unpaid care? (Quality in Ageing and Older Adults)

Date

October 2022

Related