Dear LPG, 

Every now and then I read the LPG article of the day and then take a look at some of the past articles.  I saw one recently about the fact that young people these days are finding so many reasons to postpone having children.  

Perhaps the pensioners of today are among the first generation of people who had the privilege to choose when it came to family planning.   Did you know that we have only had access to serious birth control since the 1960’s?   And now, as EB pointed out (►►►) the youngsters are often not looking far enough into the future when they put off experiencing the patter of tiny feet. They have not the hindsight to realise just how quickly that patter disappears before you know it and the cost has to be another reason that puts so many off.   Geography is leaving a lot of pensioners on their own too… 

I think that so many more of our children live further away these days that they can’t just pop in as often or be there anywhere near as quickly as they used to be able to.  By the time we retire and become pensioners, many of them have reached the stage in their lives where they are so caught up with their work and their own families that there seems to never be enough time to visit as often as they would because it is just not a case of popping down the road anymore.   There are those children who would visit more but for the fact that it now costs them £12.50 in ULEZ fees just to get to your front door, or they have to double their travel time on public transport.

It is so easy to lose track of those that you don’t see every day and, while the telephone does take the sting out of the tail to some extent, I think that you really have to be able to spend a bit of time with those you want to stay close with.

I often wish that my children were closer to me geographically but so many of us oldies can remember when we were that age, and we don’t want to be the ones to get in the way.  After all life is for living and we remember how chaotic life was when we were their age.

The other thing is that, in general, our generation started having our children in our twenties which meant that, by the time we got to our seventies, they were approaching their mid-fifties and at least beginning to appreciate what retirement might look like.  Those people who are waiting till their late thirties are going to be looking to much younger children who are still busy with their party-going and what have you, leaving less time for remembering the oldies. 

So, I have decided that, having children is not necessarily the definitive answer to making sure you are not lonely in later life.  I suppose I am stating the obvious when I take note that having a large family does is not the answer to avoiding a lonely old age either. 

ES, Rushey Green