To The Contrary

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There are different aspects of being alone that might be more worrisome or more problematic for some versus others.

For some who are very well off financially, it's the loneliness for those who worry about money, it is a major concern.

I mean, older adults overwhelmingly receive Social Security to help them.

(MUSIC) Hello, I'm Bonnie.

Erbe.

Welcome to To the Contrary.

A discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives.

This week.

Kinlessness, you've probably never heard the term, but Americans who are kinless are a part of a growing demographic.

The Journals of Gerontology produced a study that reports an estimated 6.6% of Americans adults, 55 plus have no living spouse or biological children.

That was in 2017.

In 2019, close to a million older Americans didn't have a spouse or partner, children or siblings.

That includes 307,000 women over the age of 75.

Joining us today is Dr. Deborah Kerr, a sociologist and researcher at Boston University.

Dr. Kerr says all the pathways to kinlessness or older singlehood have grown.

Okay.

Dr. Kerr Welcome and thank you for your time and thank you for being here.

Thank you for inviting me.

So explain what that means and why that's happened.

All of the past pathways to singlehood have grown.

Sure, we have more people growing old alone today than ever before.

And the main pathway is ah one being single for your entire life, being a lifelong single.

That's something that we have seen increasing and it's continuing to decrease increase with baby boomers and Generation X after them.

The other pathway is divorce.

We know that divorce rates rose dramatically in the 1970s.

Then they tapered off in the eighties.

But it was that cohort of baby boomers who not only divorced in their thirties, but then again when they reached their fifties.

The rates of gray divorce, meaning divorce in one fifties and older also increased.

And then that final pathway is widowhood.

And that's always been one of the main pathways to being alone in time periods when people married in large numbers.

And that's something that's persisted, certainly during COVID, and especially for women, because men are more likely to die younger or to die first in the couple leaving women on their own.

How much more likely are men to die first than women?

Much more likely.

If you look at the population of people age 65 and older.

There are about three women for every two men.

If you look at the population, 85 plus, as you'll see, visiting a nursing home, there are three women for every one man.

So it's really quite disproportionate.

Men do die younger of heart disease and a range of other illnesses, which means leaving their wives often through long periods of time on their own.

We also know that young men die in motorcycle wrecks and car wrecks in, you know, dangerous activities using weapons way more than young women.

So if you take out the cohort of men dying under the age of 30 or even just men dying accidental deaths, is it still that striated?

Is it still that much that women way outlive men?

Women still do outlive men even in older age.

But you're right that men have higher rates of death than women at every stage.

Even in infancy, baby boys die younger because they have weaker cardiopulmonary systems.

In their teenage years, The boys have more accidents, right?

More car accidents, more firearm deaths.

So at every single age, the women are outpacing men.

But then, even if you look at the population, 65 plus men do have higher mortality rates than women, although it's absolutely starts to converge more so than it would have earlier in life.

So what's the first piece of advice you offer to a 35 year old woman now about how to prepare for and one would hope, avoid kinlessness in old age?

One thing we need to do is change the narrative that being alone and feeling alone are not the same thing.

There are, in fact some women who do not have a spouse.

They do not have children.

And that is absolutely fine with them.

They have their friends.

They have their romantic partners.

They have hobbies and work colleagues.

And most of the evidence shows that they age very well.

Thank you.

More so if they have education and income, which gives them that financial cushion as they age.

So we don't want it to be entirely doom and gloom because we don't want 35 year old women to marry hastily or capriciously just so they're not on their own.

But there are real issues for being alone.

Having one source of income rather than two means less economies of scale.

And that's a major reason why women are far more likely than men to live in poverty in old age.

Being alone means fewer helpers if one needs care with medication or care getting to the doctor or, God forbid, there's a natural disaster assistance with relocation, right.

Or evacuation.

So having another person in your midst, whether it's a spouse or a child or a niece, nicer nephew, really becomes all the more important as people age.

So one piece of advice is round out your social network in a way that works for you because you're going to need those social ties.

There was an article in the New York Times about this a couple of months ago, which was the genesis of our interest in interviewing you and doing a show about it.

But also, I am married to a longtime married to a man six years older than I am.

And your surv... and because of injuries, I, I have a lifelong passion with horseback riding.

And so it was showing I had some serious injuries.

So I'm a lot more incapacitated than I expected I would be in old age.

Stuff happens, you know.

And I have a sister whom I love and I'm close to over the phone, but we don't we live hundreds of miles away from each other.

We've never talked about living together again in old age.

So this whole issue of kinlessness struck home with me.

Now.

one difference is I have been I don't know why, but from my teens twenties, I was petrified of being a single woman or widowed woman alone and poor and older.

And so I started saving literally when I was making $15,000 a year as a local news reporter in Tampa, Florida, in the seventies.

I started socking away small bills and the power of compound interest, which is the cliche, but it's true.

You know, 40, 50 years later, I have a very nice nest egg.

That still doesn't make me unafraid of losing my spouse and living by myself.

So what do you what do you say to women?

I think you raise a really important point that people have.

There are different aspects of being alone that might be more worrisome or more problematic for some versus others, for some who are very well off financially.

It's the loneliness.

It's the not having someone to go places with.

It's not having a medical decision maker.

If that's the case, then the advice would be a quite different pathway would be really to invest in friendships or even legal relationships.

Appointing a health care proxy, for instance, who is a lawyer or a health care provider.

For those who worry about money, it is a major concern.

I mean, older adults overwhelmingly receive Social Security to help them.

But we know even though Social Security benefits have been increasing, they're still modest.

They're not enough to pay for everything that an older person needs, especially with inflation and especially with rising rates of health care.

So people need another source of income, and the main source of income is a private pension.

It's a luxury to have a private pension.

But for anybody who has the opportunity to have a pension at their job, the recommendation is to put as much money in as you can, provided you don't need it to make those kind of current day purchases.

Right.

Rent another savings, kind of save money to the extent that you can invest wisely, invest wisely, and then living frugally is never a bad thing.

You know, those of us who had depression era parents or grandparents learned at a young ages how to sock away and how to buy things in a frugal manner, how to pare down.

Right.

It's good for the environment and it's good for our wallet.

So really being mindful and not feeling any great need to keep up with the Joneses in terms of consumption patterns is something else that I think younger generations today really should heed as an important life lesson.

Exactly, and how do you avoid I mean, aside from the obvious advice of don't let your circle get smaller, but it's kind of hard not to.

Again, from personal experience, if you if just by being physically disabled to a to an a limited extent but still disabled and not going out as much.

And I remember when I was working, I had 30 good friends and now that I'm heading into retirement and much spent much more time at home because of my disabilities, what do you do?

Join Zoom clubs or something for older people?

Friends?

I don't know.

And you're right, it's easier said than done.

You can't just tell someone, Go make a friend.

Okay, I'll make a friend.

And we know for people who don't have children, that's all the more difficult, especially at midlife, right?

You have to kind of forge these networks on your own.

And I think it really comes down to identifying what your needs are and trying to figure out who in your circle can meet that.

So emotional needs.

For instance, having someone to talk to about your problems or feelings or bounce ideas around that kind of relationship absolutely can be handled through Zoom, through telephone, through letter writing or text for those who are so inclined.

So emotional needs can be met through these virtual ties.

If someone is comfortable with the technology in terms of practical assistance, there's something to be said for the fact that your Facebook friends, your 300 Facebook friends are going to bring you chicken soup when you're sick.

So identifying people, even if it's one or two people who are proximate, who can be a helper in terms of helping, again, with errands, helping you get up the stairs if you take a fall and hurt yourself.

I think finding one or two people who can be a helper, whether it's a niece, whether it's a neighbor or former coworker, that one feels comfortable with and trusts, that's really important.

So much older adults kind of they lose a little bit of their capacity to have that edge.

And so some do trust people who are harmed, harmful to them.

The other is sometimes there are institutional structures.

Geriatric social workers, Meals on Wheels is actually a really fantastic program, not just because of the food, because it's someone to check in on a daily basis, on a weekly basis to make sure someone's doing okay.

Some regions have villages programs, if you're familiar with the villages, it's a way that you stay in your own home.

You pay a small sum each year and then maybe you will help your neighbors with the Internet and they may cook dinner and another person will work on your garden.

So the Villages are the really fantastic program that the costs of paying to participate are not that high.

So sometimes if we really feel there's no one in our immediate midst, we can reach out a little bit more and rely on these structures that are actually quite good and that are growing in number.

You mentioned Zoom calls and that sort of thing.

Are there any Web sites that are really good for seniors who see their circle of contact and and friends shrinking as they get older where they can?

I mean, is it that they certainly have romance hookup websites.

What about friendships?

AARP has a lot of different platforms.

They launched a dating site that did kind of extraordinarily well for people age 55 plus.

I'm not aware of any nationals because that is really difficult to maintain, but there are plenty that are interest specific, right?

It's not like all of a sudden someone turns 65 and they all develop a passion for mahjong.

No, those people who like rock and roll at 17 years old or classical music or mystery novels, they can find their own groups.

So one way to do that is at the local level.

Look at one's local church or synagogue or Department of Elderly Affairs, sometimes has lists of online activities or even online programing, right?

They might have a weekly Pilates class online, a weekly book group online, and that could transfer into a live interactions.

But AARP does have things like dance parties online for people to stay engaged.

So kind of know your interest and then follow that trail to find like minded people.

Then finally, kind of sadly, there are support groups for very specific things.

Loss of a child, loss of a spouse, managing dementia, managing prostate cancer.

So there are interest specific groups that with a little bit of legwork, people can find kindred spirits online.

Tell me about other interesting data nuggets that have come out of your study.

One important one is that loneliness and being alone are not the same thing.

And in fact, this is kind of a sad fact.

But about a third of older adults who are married report feeling lonely, and that proportion is even higher for married people at younger ages.

So marriage is not a panacea.

And in fact, we want to make sure that those who are in marriages are either stable emotionally or that have taken a turn because one has a major health problem or depression, that they're not providing that support, that those people also feel that they should seek out emotional support.

A spouse cannot be everything to someone as that stat of 30% most certainly conveys.

So I think that's another important point.

I mean, it's really often counterproductive for either spouse to look to each other as, you know, constant companion, best friend, all, you know, you run out of things to talk about.

When you're only interacting with one person, you're limiting yourself in So many ways.

It's not it's just not a healthy human behavior.

And yet especially I see older women doing that.

Another thing is grandchildren.

You know, there are so many older people.

My my I saw my stepmother do it.

She when my father died, she moved a couple hours away to be close to my sister and her then who you know now finishing college, then small child dot granddaughter.

And I talked to my ex sister in law recently.

She lives in the L.A. area.

That's where she raised her two daughters, my nieces.

They're both up in the Pacific Northwest now.

And my sister in law said, I think, you know, and again, in a couple of years, I'm going to be moving to the Pacific Northwest.

I think a lot of people do that.

And then the grand to be with grandchildren, the grandchildren grow up and move on.

Yeah, they don't you know, they're very few teenagers who want to hang out with grandma and grandpa or even pre-teens.

It just becomes uncool, you know, You want to be out there with your friends.

And that's an important part of psychological development and the ability to take care of yourself.

In this dog eat dog world.

There's a clear thread through between what you've said both about spouses and about children and grandchildren, and it has to do with this, which is manage expectations.

No one relationship can or should be everything to one person.

And especially we know that relationships change over time.

So marriages, even if your best friends, once you're retired, you have fewer things to talk about, right?

Your lives all become much more similar.

And so it really is wise to have some activities on one's own or new shared activities together so you have something to talk about rather than rehashing something that happened in 1985 that's become kind of a tired story.

And the same is true for children.

Children leave the nest, grandchildren kind of strike out on their own and in many cases they may indeed enjoy their grandparents company.

Right?

Many of us love being with our grandparents, but for some, you're absolutely right.

They don't want to spend all their time together and we're not going to change your routine.

I think that's something really important.

Just because an older adult might choose to go live with a child or grandchild doesn't mean that they're going to put their life on hold.

They have their jobs, they have their friends, they have their routines.

And if they're good kind people, they would try to incorporate their parent or grandparent in that routine.

But we cannot expect anybody to do a complete transition of their own lives to accommodate someone else.

And that's especially the case if it wasn't a good relationship.

I think that's something we need to talk about that many of us are lucky to have wonderful families, but there is a good number of older adult who have strained relationship with their children who are estranged from their children, and that's not magically going to become a lovely relationship just because one of them has a change of heart about reestablishing it.

I also think in the case of grandkids, it's important for grandparents to recognize that it's healthy for their grandkids to take off and build their own lives.

It's kind of unhealthy to want to smother them with your constant company after they reach a certain age, because part of teenage rebellion is because adolescence.

So it's ingrained emotionally that they need to leave the cocoon of the home, the parents, the grandparents, and strike out on this on their own to establish their own lives.

And if they grow up totally dependent on a relative that's not healthy.

Individuation is just such an important thing for adolescents to kind of establishing who they are.

I think there is a way for them to do that while still maintain these ties with their grandparents.

And I think one thing we want to do is make sure that, you know, great children are perpetuating ageism.

Right?

It's very easy to say these people are older, they're boring, they don't understand me.

But most older adults can and do learn.

During the pandemic, older people got online in great numbers.

They started using telehealth, and older adults have stories.

They have passed.

They use drugs.

At some point, they had sexual relations.

At some point, they're not these squares that sometimes the younger generation thinks grandchildren can learn about family history from their parents or grandparents.

They love hearing stories about what it was like in the olden days.

And likewise, you know, children have things they can teach their grandparents about technology or about pop culture.

So I think whatever can be done to have kind of a balanced relationship where one isn't the giver and one's that giving can really help those relationships to thrive and flourish.

And let me just be clear, I'm talking about when a grandchild is 7 to 12 years old, the grandparent gets used to seeing them for the whole evening every day when they come home or going to school, picking them up, bringing them home, cooking dinner, spending the whole evening together.

And while the 14 year old may want to do that for an hour.

Yeah.

Its healthy for him or her not to want to do it anymore for all their free time, which is afterschool.

For grandparents, if they can kind of think back to their own child milestones right when they wanted to kind of do things on their own that can be helpful template for the grandchildren as well.

But you talked about the numbers of men dying sooner and younger on average than women.

Theres this whole Cougar Syndrome, which I'm sure happens throughout history of older single women taking on younger boyfriends, especially if they have a bit of financial stability.

And then, as a la.... some retirees actually do have.

And that would also help widen your circle of connections with other friends, with neighbors, with what have you, with the relatives of that of the person you get together with.

How is that a growing trend?

I don't know if it's a growing trend.

I think it's definitely something that happens.

Most of the data on remarriage for the most part, shows that still the men who are partnering with women considerably younger than themselves in larger numbers than vice versa.

But it certainly happens and it can happen for a variety of reasons.

Women today in men, for that matter, take a really good care of themselves, both physically and in terms of health.

So a woman who is 65 may well look closer to 40.

She might be able to run marathons.

There's absolutely no reason why she can't keep up with a man 20 years her junior, just as men have kept up with female partners, 20 years their junior for a long time period.

And then women who have a lot of economic resources, they don't need to rely on a new partner for financial security.

So that gives them much more latitude of who to date.

And it could be dating younger.

I also think for some older women, they feel it's a desirable option.

And I take this for important reason.

Oftentimes when a woman becomes widowed, there's some evidence that she doesn't go out with the old friendship circles anymore.

And this is kind of a dated notion, but it still sort of happens that she doesn't want to be the fifth wheel of all the couples or she doesn't want to be seen as the one kind of hitting on other people's husbands.

So sometimes just reestablish an entirely new circle does work for some women.

Not all right.

It's it's a minority.

But that is something that you do see.

Right, and I've also heard some women describe it as, you know, all of a sudden, my friends kind of treated me like widowhood was contagious, Like for the still married couples.

Didn't want to hang around with a single woman because, oh, my God, what if what happened to her happens to me as if as if it were some kind of thing that you could pass from person to person like a disease.

And it does bring up people's worst fears.

We know that fear of death is something that's very common.

And I also know is a bit remember researcher.

People don't know what to do or say.

When someone dies, they become flummoxed.

They don't know what to say.

They think it's going to be depressing if they talk to a widow or widower about their former spouse.

So sometimes people do nothing at all and they don't reach out.

Not to be cruel, but just becaus that awkwardness or discomfort is something that they're just not ready to grapple with.

So that's another reason why sometimes widowed older adults and especially women might be kind of subtly edged out of their social circles.

Hmm interesting.

And that's right.

There is another good reason to join a support group of contemporaries because you'll they will be in a position to understand completely what you're going through and maybe even how to handle it, you know, and be more certainly be way more sensitized to the mood that you're in and helpful about how to deal with that.

All those complex feelings and a way to make new connections.

Peer support is so helpful.

There are groups called Widowed Widow.

The worst thing that you can say to a bereavement person is I know how you feel when you have not been through their experience.

That's one of the worst things to say.

But the other women or men in these peer support groups do know what you're going through and they can give kind of concrete advice or insights based on that shared experience that both have.

Thank you so much, Dr. Deborah Carr.

This has been terrific and very enlightening.

That's it for this edition.

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