Dear LPG, 

At my age I can call myself a well-established pensioner with a message even though I am also a child.  I live with my mother who is well nearing her nineties and I still spend a lot of time answering my mother’s questions with the phrase, ‘Yes mum’.

I remember being taught something way back when I was at school during my sociology lessons.  And that was about the fact that every one of us play many different rolls in life.  When you are young a lot of what you are taught gets put in your notebooks so that you can pass the exam, but the realities get taught so much more literally as you grow up.

We have all experienced being a pupil at school, and a child living under what we usually think of as unfair rules at the time, and many of us have done motherhood or fatherhood with the hassles and responsibilities entailed.  A lot of the problems come out of the fact that this is usually a role that you cannot take on exclusively.  Trying to be a good parent is usually mixed in with trying to continue a career, or at least work for enough money to afford the life you want for the children you produce.  There are lots of other roles that we, often unknowingly, take on during a lifetime but I want to talk about that of parenthood for a bit longer.  

Have you noticed how many younger ladies actively choose to put off motherhood if possible, or not to have children at all these days?  It seems to be a conscious decision that some make.  When I look at my own family there is one couple who have tried and not been blessed in that way, but I also have a nephew who is married and now in his mid-forties, and who tells us that he and his wife don’t have the time to be parents.  I often think that it is difficult to tell if that is a defence mechanism kicking in because it has not happened for them yet and time is getting short, or if they really want to avoid the disruption it would cause in their lives.  

Another worry is one of my grandchildren who has decided that she will never entertain being a parent.  She is quite young and married to a like-minded husband, and they have equally demanding and successful careers now.  I know that age often changes minds and accidents often happen, but I wonder if the young have a habit of not seeing the end game.

I can think of a few friends of my age who are now regretting the decision to not have any.  The older ones don’t all care enough to be there when you are old enough to really need their help, and some move too far away to be there for you, while some of them can exploit the situation (I like to think that I and my brothers don’t in my Mum’s case).

During a rather large video calling session with a few of my older friends recently, we got talking about the whole subject of children.  One lady admitted to having made a positive decision not to have a child when she could have, while one couple just never got around to it, and another said they tried but it never happened.   I talked about the good and bad things that I find with my two and another, a mum of three had similar things to offer.

But all those who had none, agree that it would be nice to have had a couple of children who might perhaps visit and help with so many issues that they have now that they are older. 

As we talked we agreed on one point that I feel needs to be passed on to our younger reluctant grandchildren and that is that children are hard work when they are young, and some are hard work when they are older too.  Many might also see them as equally hard work as they grow up, but not having them if you can when you are young enough, could possibly add to your loneliness when you are older. 

Perhaps it is a conversation that we older parents and grandparents who have had little ones, should drop into those conversations we sometimes have with our younger relations of a certain age who keep putting it off…

  EB, Lee