Member-only story
Childfree and Dying Alone
Ooooh scary
Because I’m childfree, there is a good chance I’ll die alone. I know this because when childfree people talk about being childfree, one of the popular responses of the childed (or want-to-be-childed) is, “Aren’t you afraid you’ll die alone?”
It’s used so frequently as a way to make childfree women think just a little bit more about /scare them into having kids that I have to assume 1) not having a child will leave me a lonely old person (assuming my husband dies before I do, or that we divorce before I die and I don’t find a new boyfriend, which would be unlikely because I flirt a lot when I’m single), and 2) that many people would actually have children simply because they don’t want to die alone.
“Make no mistake. We all die alone.” — Up in the Air
As I learned when visiting a relative in ICU some years ago, having kids doesn’t guarantee someone will be by your side when you die. The nurses said most of the patients in ICU rarely had visitors. And the nursing home I once worked in wasn’t too crowded with old people’s concerned or caring children, either.
There are many places any one of us could die that aren’t in a bed surrounded by children:
In a car wreck, on a hike, in the shower, on a bike.
On an airplane, in a school, on the staircase, in a…
