Kinlessness and social atomization

From Who Will Care for ‘Kinless’ Seniors? by Paula Span.  The subheading is Nearly one million Americans have no immediate family members to provide assistance if needed. The number is expected to grow.

Only a million?  I am surprised the number is that low.

Lynne Ingersoll and her cat, Jesse, spent a quiet Thanksgiving Day together in her small bungalow in Blue Island, Ill.

A retired librarian, Ms. Ingersoll never married or had children. At 77, she has outlived her parents, three partners, her two closest friends, five dogs and eight cats.

When her sister died three years ago, Ms. Ingersoll joined the ranks of older Americans considered “kinless”: without partners or spouses, children or siblings. Covid-19 has largely suspended her occasional get-togethers with friends, too. Now, she said, “my social life consists of doctors and store clerks — that’s a joke, but it’s pretty much true.”

Like many older adults, Ms. Ingersoll copes with an array of health problems: kidney disease, asthma, heart disease requiring a pacemaker, arthritis that makes walking difficult even with a cane. She’s managing, but “I can see a time when that’s not going to be true,” she said. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it.”

An estimated 6.6 percent of American adults aged 55 and older have no living spouse or biological children, according to a study published in 2017 in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. (Researchers often use this definition of kinlessness because spouses and children are the relatives most apt to serve as family caregivers.)

About 1 percent fit a narrower definition — lacking a spouse or partner, children and biological siblings. The figure rises to 3 percent among women over 75.

It is a useful article with plenty of cited research (though much of that research reaches conclusions without controlling for confounding variables.)  Regrettably, but as is expected for the NYT, there is the compulsory messaging that Women and Minorities are hardest hit.

It is a real issue and a growing one and bigger than the article's numbers indicate.  As our kids have moved out and become adults, my wife and I have become more alert to the number of friends we have with fragile social networks.  Certainly half a dozen or a dozen.  Yes, certainly those with no living spouse or partner, children or siblings.  But also those with biological kin who are either geographically distant, estranged, or already incapacitated themselves.  Further, there are those whose social ties are weak or fragile owing to frequency of moves in a lifetime, personal behavioral attributes or the like. 

It is a delicate issue.  Everyone is accountable for their own decisions and it can be difficult not to appear to fall into judgmentalism.  

It is also easy to fall into culture war crevasses without intending to do so.  As the NYT article nods towards, the rising population of kinless seniors is at least in part a consequence of evolving social standards thirty and forty years ago regarding marriage, divorce, children, family size, familial commitments, career choices, etc.  Rising kinlessness is a direct result of these changes.  It is a cost consequence of policies or changes which may perhaps have had other benefits.  As always the benefits and the costs need to be taken into account together.  

I have not particular judgment on any of this other than that the article is good example of the second order consequences (both negative and positive) which need to be taken into account whenever there are changes in public, social, or cultural norms.  Chesterton's fences are everywhere and we are baselessly blithe about them.  

There are no easy personal or policy solutions to the arising issue.  But it is certainly a harsh reminder of the unacknowledged practical benefits of older social norms which have fallen into faddish disrepute among the chattering class and yet which remain the best policies for personal long-term well-being.  

Family, friends, and countrymen - not popular among some categories of intellectuals but always the most important elements of a life well-lived.