Rapid fertility declines and improved longevity are now shifting the
overall balance of population towards older ages in many parts of the
world. Within this growing population of older people there are many
groups with particular needs about which relatively little is known.
This collection focuses on one such sub-population, the elderly without
children. Few would deny that childlessness poses potential human and
welfare problems for older people without them. What is less well known
is that comparative anthropological and historical demographic research
indicates that childlessness is a recurring social phenomenon that has
affected 1 in 5 older women in many cultures and historical periods.
High levels of childlessness arise not solely or primarily from
biological factors like primary sterility, but from a combination of
actors. Many, like non-marriage, delayed childbearing, and pathological
sterility, reflect the interaction of social and biological influences.
Also of major importance are factors that remove the support of children
from elders' lives: migration, mortality, divorce, remarriage, family
enmity, social mobility, and the pressing demands of family and career
on younger generations. The papers collected in this volume employ a
mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods to define and
characterize the experience of ageing without children.