Who's going to be there for me when I'm old?

Introducing Alterkin (Alternative Kinship Circles)

‘Big Hand’ (1973) by Rainer Kriester. Hakone Open Air Museum, Japan, March 2025. Photo by Jody Day. (All rights reserved).

One of the most anxiety-provoking aspects of elderhood without motherhood is thinking about who’s going to be there for us when we’re old.

Over a decade ago, as part of my work with AWOC (Ageing Without Children UK), I was at the launch of its Our Voices report. I recall being buttonholed by a helmet-haired Baroness from the House of Lords who said pointedly, ‘Well, I didn’t have my children so that they could take care of me when I’m old!’

‘Absolutely,’ I responded with a smile. ‘It wasn’t something that occurred to me when I was trying to have children.’ And I continued with an air of innocence and said, ‘It’s great that you aren’t expecting your children to take care of you. If you don’t mind, I’m curious, what sort of plans have you made instead?’

Her response was a deer-in-the-headlights look, followed by an overwhelming urge to speak to someone she’d just seen over my shoulder.

I’ve had variations of this conversation many times now, and I understand that it reveals a painful unconscious truth—most parents are relying on their adult children to be there for them should they need them to be; they just don’t like to be reminded of it. This also means that a lot of important discussions and considerations about later life remain unsaid within families; that’s unlikely to go smoothly either.

The Tightrope Generation

We hear a lot about the ‘Sandwich Generation’, those women (it’s always bloody women!) who are juggling caring for aging parents alongside their teenage children and work commitments. What we hear very little about though, is what Kirsty Woodard, the original founder of AWOC, named the tightrope generation: those one in five people without children, many of whom find themselves caring for aging or vulnerable family members or friends without anyone who might do the same for them in the future—especially as it’s more often those without children who seem to be the default carer in the family system.

And it’s often when become involved with the care of older parents that the daily, lived reality of what it might be like for us in the future without the support of adult children really hits home. And with 65%¹ of adults in the UK predicated to be carers at some point in their lifetime (usually midlife), it can be a sobering awakening.

I had the privilege of sharing a home with my mother-in-law for the last eight years of her life until her death last year, aged ninety-three. She was an independent, well-travelled, intelligent and forthright woman, and her son and I quietly took care of any tasks that she could no longer manage herself. Most of these were not what comes to mind when you think of the word ‘care’. She did her own laundry, but it was us who purchased the detergents and fixed the washing machine. She had an iPad and was very active on Facebook, but it was her son who installed and maintained the wifi connection, purchased the iPad, kept up to date with software updates, and helped her sort things out when she got scammed.

When I first knew her, she still prepared meals regularly, but over time, standing (or even sitting) to cook became too challenging for her, so I gradually took over all the meals—she slowly stopped doing even little bits of food shopping too, so we took complete responsibility for the whole thing. She was a brilliant driver, but gradually it dropped to just her weekly visit to the hairdresser, as her mobility meant she was anxious about parking near enough to things. However, it was her son who purchased, maintained and insured the car, including filling it up with petrol.

By our actions in the background, she was able to continue living as independently as possible. Without us, she would have found living alone extremely difficult, if not impossible. For example, in her last year, she fell over once and was unable to get herself up from the floor unaided. After that, understandably, she was anxious about being left alone in the house for too long.

However, it was only in the last six weeks of her life, after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, that we took care of her physical body, helping her with feeding, bathing and using the bathroom. And actually, those times with her were some of the tenderest, most intimate times in our relationship.

Because care can be a beautiful experience too.

As I sat at her feet, massaging cream into her dry shins and feet, we had some of our most candid and hilarious conversations. The physical closeness of caring for her body brought us closer than we’d ever been, and when she died, in her bed, as the dawn came up over the Atlantic, surrounded by her son, her daughter-in-law, the wonderful palliative care nurse provided by the Irish Cancer Trust, the cat and the dog, it felt like a life well lived brought to a luminous conclusion. It was a moment I will never forget. But it's not a scenario I can hope for myself.

No fantasy cushions for those ageing without children

Not having children as we age, due to choice, circumstances, bereavement, estrangement, incarceration, having children with adult care needs of their own, or other reasons, forces us to face up to the known-unknowns of aging and its potential vulnerabilities.

We don’t have the fantasy cushion of adult children who will be willing and able to be there for us in later life.

People aging without children have to face the realities of growing older and old in a fractured late-capitalist system with broken and underfinanced care and social structures, non-existent communities, fewer, geographically distanced, or no intergenerational connections, and increased isolation. And that’s even without factoring in climate collapse, systemic unravelling, social unrest and political polarisation. Miss Marple it ain’t.

There is a fantasy that some of my US-based friends and colleagues have of the ‘safety nets’ that Europe’s socialized medicine system offers. Sadly, the few nets that still exist are full of very big holes, and navigating the labyrinthine access to them is often a nearly full-time job, usually undertaken by adult children on their parents’ behalf. Even in the much-vaunted Nordic countries, provision is getting worse.

With the demographic shifts towards an aging population as the Baby Boomers move into old age, and with a return to the more historically lower birth rates² that preceded that boom, societies are struggling to work out how to pay for the ‘care gaps’ that now exist. ‘Families must do more,’ is often the political rhetoric, even though since 2017 in the UK, the number of older people in need of care has outstripped the number of adult children able to provide it. (And let’s face it, ‘families’ means ‘women’, and they're all maxed out helping to keep their lives financially afloat as it is).

According to AWOC, in 2024, 23% of adults in their fifties and 22% of those in their sixties had never had children, compared with 15% of those in their seventies. And according to US Census data from 2018, more than 15 million adults, or nearly one in six Americans aged 55 and older, do not have biological children. And with both involuntary and voluntary childlessness increasing significantly amongst the rising generations, we are looking at a future where there will be many more old people without children.

‘But can’t you just pay for care if you need it?’ is capitalism’s answer. (Always). Well, even if you do have the kind of savings that could cover caring costs (and most of us don’t), think on these points:

• Who plans the care?

• Who books and pays for the carers?

• Who makes sure the care is kind, competent and appropriate?

• Who opens the door to the carers when they arrive, and knows when they don’t turn up?

Someone who knows you well, someone who cares about you, someone you trust, that’s who.

Open source human code

One of the biggest issues that many of us aging without children face is building the kind of trustworthy relationships that (ideally) parents have with their adult children. Relationships that have been, literally, a lifetime in the making.

Because, as much as this is about having people in our life who know where the spare key to our house is, and who can be trusted with financial and administrative matters, it’s also about a very human need to be deeply known.

Building this from scratch with an intergenerational group of local people who also just happen to be aging without children is daunting. But it has to be possible, because coming together around a shared need is open-source human code. It’s why, for good or ill, human beings have become the most dominant species on this planet—we know how to cooperate towards a common goal.

Because those who need each other help each other.

(A book that inspires me around this is Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Made in Hell, which shows how people turn towards, not against, each other in times of crisis.)

Industrialized modernity (and apocalyptic movies!) have convinced us that this is hard—and because so many of us are out of practice in building and sustaining community, most of us now buy (or go without) what family and community once provided. The thought of making ourselves vulnerable by—gasp—having needs fills many of us with fear.

I get it, I feel the same. However, there’s something deep in my bones that tells me there’s an alternative, and that it’s possible for us to build it—and without requiring any permission, skills or finances. Something our ancestors would have recognized.

Above is a clip from my soulful and deep conversation with Argentinian childless podcaster, Laura Bignasco, on her show ‘Happy Childless Mindset’. You can watch the full interview on YouTube here or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Alterkin: Alternative Kinship Circles

Alterkin is a word I created when I was part of AWOC, and it’s shorthand for ‘Alternative Kinship Circle’. It’s not a new concept—marginalized communities have always done this, and I’d like to offer a big shout-out to all the queer folx who have been creating chosen families forever.

Whenever I mention the Alterkin pilot project we’re engaged in here in my local rural Irish community (and where I’ve only lived for two years), like in this interview I gave to Lisa Sibbett’s excellent The Auntie Bulletin, other non-parents online can get very excited and say that this is what they want too, and how do they get it? It’s almost as if it's a product they’d like to buy—because that's the capitalist paradigm we've been conditioned in.

So when I say, ‘community is built by doing inconvenient things with inconvenient people at inconvenient times,’ that usually slows things down a notch!

Modernity is all about creating a frictionless world; community is about embracing the friction of real life.

Because community isn’t necessarily easy, nor necessarily fun. It's not about having a big gang of friends. It's slow, human-paced relationship-building. There are no shortcuts. But neither is it necessary dour and joyless either! As my local social and emotional circle enlarges through my Alterkin connections, some wonderful invitations and on-the-spot happenstances are occurring too. And interestingly, something I am noticing in my body is that it is helping me to feel more deeply rooted and connected to the land, humans and other-than-humans in my local area.

I’m feeling part of something again. And isn’t that something so many of us long for. Wasn’t that one one of the reasons I longed to have children; one of the things I grieved deeply?

I love the expression I learned from a colleague I met via Emily Kenway’s work, and popularized by adrienne maree brown—moving at the speed of trust.³ Because building local community is just about the opposite pace to the online speed of modernity. And it’s taken (and is taking) me time to allow myself to slow down and accept that.

So, in our Alterkin Circle, we’re feeling our way slowly, and with great delicacy. Unlike an online community, where you can just log off, or even an urban-based group where you might leave and never bump into anyone from the group again, we live locally to each other in a rural area.

We cannot blunder into each other’s lives without consequence. That feels both incredibly scary and beautifully precious.

However, I don’t want to discount how helpful online support can be—it was a lifesaver for me whilst grieving my involuntary childlessness—but that’s not going to cut it when you need to be picked up from a medical proceedure, can’t take your dog for a walk, or just need someone to sit and have a chat with over a cup of tea with when you need company.

There are currently around eight of us in our Alterkin Circle, all aging without children for various reasons, a mixture of unpartnered and partnered, and mostly women. All of us are either within walking distance or a maximum twenty-minute drive away from each other. We meet monthly, rotating through each other’s homes, and have a WhatsApp group. That’s it. We’re aiming to keep it as low tech as possible.

We range in age from early forties to late seventies, and the intergenerational aspect is vital too. A lack of easy and sustained intergenerational connections can be a very big deal for those aging without children (and thus without grandchildren too), and can contribute to a feeling of cultural disconnection and loneliness.

Like the 12-Step Movement, two of the principles our Alterkin Circle has adopted are anonymity and confidentiality. So I have permission from the Circle to write about the Alterkin project in general ways, but without revealing any personal stories.

As our pilot project progresses, I hope to share more of the principles we’re developing, and a flavour of the way we are gradually becoming part of each other’s lives. I’ll also share more about the books, people, projects and resources I’ve been consulting for the last few years in preparation for this moment.

Because Alterkin is, at its heart, a practice in relearning what it is to be a human being, not just a human doing. This is ancient human technology.

In time, I hope we will produce some guidelines so that others might learn from our experience, and that independent, interconnected Alterkin Circles might spring up, like mushrooms, from the deep web of our shared humanity.

As my mother said to me from her dementia-honest brain before she died. ‘You’ve always been creating other families.’

Looks like I’m not done yet, mum.

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Update: But how do I get started?

Wow! This has struck a chord with so many of us, and quite a few have asked me how you can get such a group going in your own area.

Well, step one: you need to find your people.

For me, finding people to take part in this project has involved a slow, deliberate process over about 18 months of keeping my eye out for anyone in my local rural area who didn’t seem to have children, and then approaching them, one-on-one, to see if they’d be ‘open to discussing the idea of creating a local support group for people ageing wihtout children’. Often that first ‘ask’ has been by a text or WhatsApp message. I found the answer was usually a very clear YES or a slightly more reserved ‘maybe’ (or a very Irish polite non-response by changing the topic!) This then led to several in-depth one-on-one chats over coffee, in the pub, on the phone, etc. It was (and still is) a delicate process and can’t be rushed: ‘moving at the speed of trust’ means not forcing it.

In my 15 years of experience creating in-person groups as part of my work with Gateway Women, I’ve found that many of us without children (and maybe those with too?) have become rather nervous about groups. We may have had negative experiences of ‘groups’ at school, at work, in our communities and social lives, and of course, in that very first group, our family. And thus as we age without a tight network of families/friends near and around us, and without the looser networks that arise between the parents of children (not always fun either!), many of us have become hyper-independent, of necessity. We hate asking for anything!

However, in creating this Alterkin Circle, I’ve found that once I plucked up the courage (eek!) to speak to people I often only knew as neighbours or on slight acquaintance, it’s been easier than perhaps trying to create a new friendship might have been, because the ‘ask’ is much clearer. And, if aging without children is on their mind too, they can usually immediately see the benefit of making time for a more in-depth discussion about it.

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Below are some related essays/interviews you might be interested in:

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What We Worry About is Not Death, It’s Vulnerability

1. As quoted by Victoria in her ‘Carer Mentor’ Substack, a report by Dr Yanan Zhang and Dr Matthew R. Bennett, University of Birmingham (UK). ‘The likelihood of being a carer in adult life.’

2. History professor Dr. Rachel Chrastil writes of this in her excellent modern & historical exploration of non-parenthood, How to Be Childless: A History and Philosophy of Life Without Children. (Oxford University Press: 2019).

3. adrienne maree brown (AK Press, 2017). Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. Footnote on p42. ‘This is communication strategist Mervyn Marcano’s remix of Stephen Coveny’s ‘speed of trust’ concept.’