Loneliness is a very modern curse – and it needs our children to lift it

Doing your duty to look after elderly parents can be far more rewarding than a life of selfishness

Asurvey earlier this week revealed that a quarter of those people over 55 who say they are unhappy cite lack of an active sex life as one of the reasons. That is unfortunate, of course, and it’s no surprise that the word “sex” got into the headline. But the same survey revealed that loneliness was a far more important cause of unhappiness. It is more serious and undermining, especially if it lasts a long time.

Many of us quite like to be alone some of the time. But to be lonely is to suffer, and the grim fact is that more than a quarter of people over 65 who live alone are lonely.

None of us can be complacent about this. Nearly all of us will live to be over 65, if we have not passed that mark already. And the incidence of all people – not just older people – living alone is increasing. So the vast majority of us have a real chance of ending up lonely. That is the modern way. And many people will assume this is normal or has always been the case. But that is not true.

It is a new phenomenon. For most of human history, in most societies, the elderly have not been left alone. They have lived with or near their grown-up children. The dry statistics tell us this and so does our literature. In Jane Austen’s Emma, the climax of the story comes when, after all the ups and downs in their relationship, George Knightley finally proposes to Emma Woodhouse. Many people will have forgotten that she initially refuses him. Why? She loves Knightley who is, among his many attributes, charmingly rich. But she refuses him because, “while her dear father lived, any change of condition must be impossible for her”. She believes she has an absolute, unbreakable obligation to stay living with her lone, elderly father.

The problem is overcome when Knightley offers to come to live with her at her father’s home after they marry. So all is resolved to make a lovely Austenesque happy ending. But it is a reflection of the culture at that time that Knightley does not question for a moment Emma’s insistence of staying with her father. It was considered normal and right.

The same assumption runs through the novels of Dickens and other authors, too. In Great Expectations, two minor characters, Clara Barley and John Wemmick, look after their respective, elderly parents. Clara Barley, like Emma, refuses a suitor because she must care for her old father.

Now, all that has changed. Many older people live in residential care, nursing homes or simply alone. It is rare these days to come across a family where an elderly parent is living with one of their adult children. For women aged 65 and over without a partner, only about 13 per cent are living with their children. That is tiny compared with some other countries. In Portugal, Spain and Italy the figure is more than 50 per cent. Britain is in the middle of the range in the willingness of families to look after their elderly. Near the other end of the spectrum is the Netherlands, where only about 6 per cent do so. And that is a clue to what is really going on – why the norm has changed so much.

In the Netherlands and some other countries, residential care for the elderly is part of the social security system. You pay for your residential care as part of your social insurance contributions during your lifetime. So the government has made it normal for the state to look after the elderly instead of families. At the very extreme is Denmark, where only 2 per cent are living with their children.

Some people may think that Scandinavian countries have always been like that, but that is not true either. Caring for one’s elderly was part of life there a century ago just as much as anywhere else. Detailed studies of records from the 19th century in Sweden, for example, demonstrate this. In fact, care for one’s elderly parents was considered so right and proper in Sweden in years past that the obligation was legally enforceable right up until 1956.

This big worldwide shift towards the elderly living alone or in institutions has caused one of the greatest increases in unhappiness the world has ever seen. Those elderly people living alone are three times as likely to feel lonely as others. They are also more likely to suffer declining health and mental abilities. Consequently they are more likely to enter nursing homes.

Residential care is no panacea, either. One of the most depressing figures I have come across in all my researches for various books was a study of the elderly in residential care in England and Wales. It found that 21 per cent of residents in care homes were so depressed that they wished they were dead. Those of us who have visited people in residential homes will not find this figure so hard to believe, but it is a wake-up call to those children who tell themselves: “Oh, granny will be perfectly happy in a home.”

Sometimes, of course, widows or widowers will genuinely want to live alone. In other cases, they may not want to impose on the children. They feel: “Oh, they must live their lives. I would get in the way.” And it is true that elderly parents can cramp the style of their children.

But I would like to suggest that the misery of loneliness is one case where the old-fashioned Mediterranean countries have got it right and progressive Scandinavian countries are in denial. I believe that children have a duty to look after their elderly parents to the best of their ability. The way will vary according to each individual case. It could mean just living nearby and dropping in frequently. It could mean setting up a special bedroom on the ground floor which has facilities to make life easier for a parent who is disabled.

Such an effort may come as a shocking idea to some people brought up with the idea that their “selfactualisation” is the top priority in life. But doing your duty by your parents can be part of a far more profound self-actualisation than a life of selfishness.

Governments should bring it into their thinking that family care is a wonderful thing which should, at the least, not be discouraged by their policies. But the first responsibility to make it happen lies with the children.