and a solid relationship with a spouse who shares my love of music, my political leanings, and most of my food preferences. We continue to fill our lives with canine companions and good friends, many of whom are also child-free baby boomers. Some of them have close ties with nieces and nephews—and as you will see in Part III, that can be very helpful in advance planning.
I wrote this book for those who live alone or, for whatever reason, have no adult children. Whether you are married/partnered or single in the second half of life (over fifty) you will not have the safety net of that immediate younger generation to count on later in life in an emergency or even an extended illness.
I do not have children, and everything I recommend in this book I have undertaken myself. These pages include many stories of others like me (whose names have been changed) from all over the country who are blazing new trails and making creative choices appropriate to their own unique circumstances. I hope my stories, research, experience, and observations encourage you to begin the planning necessary for peace of mind as you age. The journey is not long, complicated, or unnecessarily expensive. If your financial resources are slim, you may need to be creative or ask for help. Most of all, I hope this will lead you to begin a conversation with your family and friends about what you want your future to look like and the role you would like them to play.
Chapter 2. Child-Free: Pioneers of a Generation
“Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg paved the way for me and so many other women in my generation. Their pioneering lives have created boundless possibilities for women in the law …”
—Elena Kagan, Supreme Court Justice
Congratulations! You are a pioneer of your generation. You have successfully navigated your life along an unconventional path. Most child-free adults made a deliberate choice not to have children. Although that decision was somewhat more acceptable for baby boomers than for previous generations, most boomer women—and men—continued to experience a great deal of pressure to marry and raise families. If you held fast against those pressures, you demonstrated strength in your convictions. You deserve to be proud of your accomplishments and the path you chose.
I interviewed a large number of women and a few men—all child-free—for this book. They shared their stories with me about their choice to not raise children and where their lives had taken them. Some had led conventional lives; some had cast caution to the wind and chosen more varied and exciting lifestyles. Because they did not have children dependent on them, they had had more options—changing careers on a whim, moving to a different state or country, or experimenting with alternative lifestyles.
The women I interviewed never felt compelled to be mothers; they were drawn to other occupations and interests. In the late 1970s, women who wanted to be mothers described their maternal urge as the ticking of their “biological clocks.” I never experienced that internal pressure, nor did the child-free women I interviewed.
Deborah’s story provides a good illustration of a boomer woman who chose a solo life:
Born in a suburb of Philadelphia, Deborah attended a local university, majoring in liberal arts with a minor in business, and then getting an advanced degree in organizational studies. She wanted to see more of the country and, with nothing tying her to Pennsylvania, she moved around quite a bit, seeking opportunities to have the active, outdoor lifestyle she loved. She was never particularly career-driven, but as a woman with a master’s degree in the 1970s, she had enough education to find good jobs wherever she went.
Deborah ultimately settled far away from her family. She discovered the West Coast had more accessible year-round activities, along with the arts and a diversity of people she came to appreciate. After living for short periods in Southern California, Northern California, and the Portland, Oregon, area, at age thirty-seven she settled in Seattle. By then, she had established a career in human resources and managed to find jobs in her field wherever she landed. In Seattle, she worked first for Boeing, then for the newcomer to the area, Microsoft.
Deborah never felt the urge to marry or have children. She loved being on her own, able to make her own choices, go where she wanted, when she wanted, and with whom she wanted. She had boyfriends along the way, but none of her relationships ever got serious enough to consider marriage. Her independence always came first. Over three decades in Seattle, Deborah developed a strong cadre of friends, mostly other women in her field—some single, some married—with similar interests and experiences. They shared meals, holidays, travel, career ups and downs, and the occasional heartbreak.
At age sixty-three, Deborah looks back at her life as a series of deliberate choices. She continues to enjoy success and fulfillment in her career and her social sphere. She has no immediate plans to quit working, and since becoming a human resources consultant she can now take on as many or as few clients as she chooses.
Having chosen to not have children, you are among the many baby boomer men and women who have created a very different life, one that focused more on achievement and independence than on raising a family. You chose to be an engineer, a flight attendant, a nurse, a doctor, a lawyer, an artist, a builder, or any of the hundreds of professions that were starting to open up to both men and women in the 1970s. In choosing not to be a parent, you helped write the story of those like us all over the world. As you crest midlife, you have another opportunity to be a pioneer. This time in the interest of having a safe and secure future as you move into your later decades.
“In every single thing you do, you are choosing a direction. Your life is a product of choices.”
—Dr. Kathleen Hall
Always a generation enamored with reinventing itself and the world, baby boomers are now poised to create new ways for living safe, productive, and meaningful lives. Today we are seeing the beginning of new and different community structures, innovative technologies for working when and where we want, and new technologies for living in a more connected way. These developments carry tremendous promise for leading interesting and rewarding lives in our seventies, eighties, nineties, and beyond.
Our later decades of life will differ in important ways from people who have children. We will all face issues common to aging: our own aging parents, personal health challenges, and a gradually slowing pace. However, there are benefits to getting older: we are more patient, we see things in shades of gray rather than black and white, and we are no longer novices at our work—we are the experts. And let’s not forget about those “senior” discounts. In short, for most people, getting older represents a mixed bag, and we would do well to remember the positives when we are being inundated with the negatives.
The stories of child-free baby boomers are quite varied, yet most revolve around the common themes of independence and freedom. Many of their lives have taken unique twists and turns, owing to the choices they were able to make. In the following stories, Carolyn, Glenn, and Marion are representative of millions of boomers who took full advantage of the opportunities open to them. Their stories give us additional examples of how many child-free people have led their lives:
Carolyn and Glenn are a classic baby boomer couple. Carolyn was born in 1954, the oldest of four siblings in a military family. As her father, a naval officer, moved from base to base every four years, the family accompanied him. That meant Carolyn and her siblings bounced
