The cliché is that older people without children naturally face more loneliness. However, doctoral research by Hannelore Stegen at the VUB shows that childless elderly people are not significantly lonelier. However, depending on the reason for childlessness, the risks of being lonely in old age are significantly different.
For her PhD, Stegen surveyed 543 elderly people, 255 of whom were childless for one reason or another . ‘In the group of elderly people with children, just over a quarter (28.35 per cent) suffered from loneliness more than average,’ says Stegen. ‘In the childless group, that figure was very similar (28.81 per cent). In the childless elderly group, there was a significant difference in loneliness risk, though.’ [HS1] ‘In the group of elderly people with children, the loneliness score was 28.35 per cent on a scale of 0 to 100 (with 0 no increased loneliness risk and 100 very high risk), compared to the childless group where it was 28.81, which is therefore very similar,’ says Stegen. ‘That difference is negligible, so elderly people without children are not more lonely than elderly people with children. Within the group of childless elderly, though, there was a significant difference in loneliness risk.’
For her thesis, Stegen defined different types of loneliness. People who are socially lonely lack a wider social circle in which they can feel at home. Emotionally lonely elderly people, in turn, lack an intimate connection, with a partner, with family and close friends. People suffering from existential loneliness feel that their role in society and in the world is not clear and they wonder if they matter.
‘From our survey, four categories of childless elderly people emerged,’ says Stegen. ‘People who remained childless because of a personal choice form a first group, and those in whom it simply did not happen, often as a result of important or significant events throughout their life course, are a second group. There was a third group who remained childless due to health problems in themselves or their partner, and a final group in which one of the partners wanted children, but the other partner did not want them for all sorts of reasons.’
35.3 per cent of the 255 childless elderly fell within the first group with the personal choice. In that group, loneliness risk was no higher than in childless elderly people who did not cite ‘personal choice’ as a reason. ‘In the second group with people who did not come to having children due to life events (24.3 per cent of the childless elderly), there appeared to be a higher risk of social loneliness in particular. Within this group, the score on the social loneliness scale was 37.42 (on the same scale from 0 to 100), compared to 24.46 per cent among childless elderly people not within this group. Those who remained childless for health reasons (23.1 per cent of the childless elderly) showed a higher risk of emotional loneliness (score of 40.11 out of 100) and those who had not received support from their partner in their desire to have children (21.2 per cent of the childless group in the study) struggled more with emotional (37.35 out of 100) and [HS2] existential loneliness (37.04 out of 100).’
No difference between men and women
The study further shows that loneliness risk does not differ between men and women. ‘Childless elderly people are therefore no more lonely than people with a whole brood,’ concludes Stegen. ‘However, it is important to pay attention to the reason for childlessness, because there the risks of loneliness are in some cases a lot higher.’ So the conclusion of the study is that more attention should be paid to someone's context and life story, because these are still the strongest determinants of the extent to which someone will experience feelings of loneliness.