The relationship of children with their parents places them in a position where their feelings for their parents influence their willingness to provide care. Indeed, a child's willingness to provide for aging parents may exceed he quality of personal care that they might receive in institutional or social care settings.
As implied, however, this is not always or necessarily the case. Many children do not have sufficient love for their parents to even enter them into an adequately equipped social care setting. Hence, not having children could result in a greater sense of well-being for aging people who feel in control of their own research and decision-making processes. In other words, before becoming so elderly that one's physical and mental processes are compromised, those without children tot help them with decisions later in life tend to provide for their own older age by means of researching care options. This could result in a powerful sense of autonomy, which means that, even when entering very old age, people who have made these decisions earlier in life are enjoying the results of decisions not made for them but rather by themselves. Hence, it is not necessarily the case that having children will increase one's life satisfaction (Hollis-Sawyer, personal communication, 2013). In many cases, this is due to individual preference; making the decision not to have children. It could also be due to the type of person one becomes during the growing and aging process. Some prefer to make their own decisions for as long as they are able. Others prefer to have the security of offspring to look after them and make decisions for them when they no longer can.
One important factor to also consider in this equation, however, is material well-being. Regardless of mental preference or well-being, it has been shown that older women who have been previously married are at risk of poverty, with more than one in five women living in poverty falling within the older age bracket, whether they have children or not. This complicates...
If there are children, the possibility of divorce or death should be taken into account, together with care giving possibilities for the future. If there are no children, married women will also have to think about the possibility of being alone in older age. Such awareness will make it possible for them to safeguard against becoming a poverty statistic. Hollis-Sawyer (personal communication, 2013) note that older people without children tend to compensate for family support by relying more heavily on community resources.
In addition to children and romantic relationships, sibling relationships also experience dynamic changes from childhood to old age. In middle age, when siblings are grown, with their own families and professional lives, the relationship tends to be less close than when they were children. In older age, however, this might change once again as older siblings begin to look to each other for support and advice regarding care. Furthermore, where an aging person is single, childless, or both, such a person might look to siblings and their younger family members for care giving help. Nephews and nieces, for example, could be sources of such assistance. While a significant percentage of baby boomers do not have children, most of them have at least one sibling (Chapter 12, p. 229). This provides a valuable source of community and social support, especially in older age where such resources become important. In addition to possible nieces and nephews who can help with the needs of elderly uncles or aunts, siblings also provide a close family bond to compensate for spousal death or divorce.
Human life is a complicated matter. Life changes such as birth, aging, and death, and all the requirements and elements that go with these, complicate it even further. As human beings, we need close relationships to help us carry the burden of everyday responsibilities. For some, children are the ideal way to ensure the future. For others, it is…
