Navigating on Your Own: Why More Seniors Are Facing the Challenges of Solo Aging
October 2024
Issue 16: October 2024
In This Issue: The unique challenges faced by people aging without family nearby is shaping the future of elder care. In part one of our three-part solo aging series, we explore why the number of people in this important demographic is rising.
Navigating on Your Own: Why More Seniors Are Facing the Challenges of Solo Aging
I have a new client who has lived her whole life with a disability. This disability didn’t hold her back, but it did impact her life; she has above-average intelligence, she had a career, and she had a life. One effect of her disability was that she has always had difficulty using her hands. She was able to cope—in fact, she had a fierce independent streak—but now, in her late 70s, her lack of dexterity has become more of a problem, but not in the way she would have anticipated.
As with many of us, her healthcare providers communicate mainly using web-based portals. Other health communication comes via text messaging and email—reminders of appointments, prescription refills, and so forth. And she finds these technologies hard to use. She can’t type well enough to text and has no email address. When she tried voice transcription, she found it too difficult to use so she gave up on having a computer. She doesn’t have a smartphone, either. She’s becoming increasingly frustrated when her healthcare providers keep pushing her to use the portal. Why can’t they just call her for Pete’s sake? When she explains her situation, doctors’ offices promise to call her but are inconsistent and unreliable.
Of course, many people struggle with technology. However, this client suffers from an additional issue: she has no young person to help her. When many of us would call our children or grandchildren, to draw on their Gen Z or millennial expertise with smartphones, computers, and the internet, this client of mine is a single, childless woman without willing younger people in her orbit.
In this newsletter, I have mentioned what doctors and gerontologists call “solo aging” before—it’s the growing demographic of aging people who don’t have immediate support from a partner or child. Helping this client made me realize that it’s time to dive deeper and ask: Why is solo aging becoming a bigger and bigger issue?
The increase in solo agers is partly because the Baby Boomer generation is getting older. According to the AARP, every day in the U.S., 10,000 people turn 65, and the number of older adults will more than double over the next several decades to top 88 million people and represent over 20 percent of the population by 2050. We call it the “silver tsunami.”
In a sense, solo aging is inevitable. There have always been widows and widowers; in every couple, somebody will die first, leaving the other without a partner. But many factors have changed the situation of solo aging in the United States. This essay is the first of a three-part series, on Solo Aging.
When looking at the causes of the growing number of solo agers, beyond the obvious Boomer population bubble, the first is the changing culture of adulthood and marriage. More people never marry, and it has become more socially acceptable, especially for women, to live alone. In the mid-1980s, only 13 percent of American households were led by a single person, but today, that number is closer to 30 percent.
After marriage, divorces peaked when the oldest child turned 13. In the past, divorce was rare later in life. Now, silver splitters are bucking the general trend of fewer divorces. Baby Boomers have the highest divorce rate in US history, with many of those divorces happening later in life.
Second, the birth rate is going down. In 1958, there were 3.6 births per woman; in 1968 it was 2.6, and by 2018, it was 1.7 births per woman. Baby Boomers had fewer children than their parents, and their children (who could be producing today’s grandchildren) are having even fewer kids. Older people are now less likely to have a child or grandchild to help them, and less likely to have the support of multiple younger people.
I’m typical. Several of my high school and college friends didn’t have children, and among the group of us that had kids, most of us share the “I’m still waiting for grandchildren” lament.
Third, people who lose their partner may live longer in their widowhood than in previous generations. There will be more and more people widowed at, say, 70 and living not five more years, or ten more years, but twenty more years, into their nineties. Some of these super-agers will even outlive their children. I’ve had the experience of being introduced to the child of a high-need 95-year-old patient and meeting a 70-something-year-old person clearly struggling with their own aging issues.
Finally, as people are more mobile than ever, we are less likely to live near lifelong friends and close relatives. A widow with three or four children, common a couple of generations ago, could count on at least one of those children living nearby. Today, a widow may have one child living a thousand miles away, and she can’t rely on that son or daughter for a trip to the physical therapist or the pharmacy. There are fewer multi-generational households and fewer close friends who stay put. People relocate to Florida or Arizona, the old bridge or poker game disperses, and somebody is left without support.
For Solo Agers, there are fixes and strategies that help. My client, the one with limited use of her hands, hired a professional organizer to get her house and documents in order. The organizer, noting that she was having difficulty communicating with her doctors and becoming angry about her medical care, called me in to help.
There are real costs to being on your own, including real adverse effects on one’s health. And those will be the topic of another newsletter. After we discuss health in the second part of the Solo Aging series, the third essay on Solo Aging will discuss options and solutions.
Email me with your questions, comments, or subscription requests at gm@mymdadvisor.com. I’d love to hear from you.
Wishing you peace and understanding in your healthcare journey,
Gerda Maissel, MD, BCPA
Dr. Gerda Maissel, Author
Dr. Maissel is a Board-Certified Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation physician and a Board-Certified Patient Advocate.