Caroline Holt was lying flat on her back in her London flat, unable to move. She had injured her hip, and the pain had become progressively worse until she was “like a starfish on the bed,” completely immobilised. “There was nobody nearby I felt comfortable calling,” she says. “So I ended up calling an ambulance. It really scared me.”
That wake-up call seven years ago launched Caroline, now 64, on a journey that culminated in something radical: she now co-owns a Georgian house in Bristol with two friends, also in their sixties. “It needs renovation but the plan is that we will have a floor each and a shared kitchen, shared living room on the ground floor,” she explains. The house is part of a crescent with a communal garden where neighbours regularly socialise and look in on each other.
“We host BYO suppers and invite neighbours to join us with whatever they want to eat. Sometimes it’s two of us, sometimes it’s 10. It’s a companionable way of being with each other without lots of hassle.”
The community serves a care function too. “One lady lost her husband a year ago. We checked in on the anniversary to make sure she was okay. Offering a cup of tea, letting her know we’re here for her.”
When I speak to Caroline I find myself saying: “This is what I dream of.” At 47, single and living alone, I’ve had my own starfish moments. For me, it wasn’t a fall but Long Covid that left me flat on my back, brain-fogged and exhausted. I was blessed with friends and neighbours who supported me – but would they be around in 20 years? After all, we have not made vows to each other. We are not blood.
This question that society keeps throwing at women like me—”Who will look after you when you’re older? —wasn’t theoretical anymore. I’m far from alone in asking it. Half of women born in 1990 remained childless by their 30th birthday. By 2045, there are projected to be 66,000 women aged 80 without children—over three times the current number. We’re not outliers anymore—we’re a growing demographic that society hasn’t planned for.
I never wanted children. I always expected that one day I’d wake up and want them, but it never happened. At 47 I have no regrets about not having them – quite the opposite – and yet I see how much my mum relies on me and my sisters and find myself wondering who I will rely on.
More of us are growing old without family support
The UK is one of many countries that have an ageing population, the result of us living longer plus a declining birthrate. Currently, family members provide 92 per cent of all informal (unpaid) care in the UK. This could be anything from doing a weekly shop to driving parents to hospital appointments, and ultimately making healthcare decisions should their health deteriorate. But what happens if you don’t have any family support?
“There’s this old age truck coming down the road,” says Fiona Harkin, director of foresight at The Future Laboratory. “I don’t think either government systems, financial institutions, or anyone who offers financial services has really got their head around it.”
Ruby Warrington, 49, author of Women Without Kids, points to another challenge: the lack of visible examples of how to navigate the later part of life without a family around you. “We don’t have many role models, or the ones that we have are few and far between,” she observes. “Often they feel like real outliers—very artistic or bohemian.”
Warrington says that when she discusses potential solutions with her child-free friend group in New York, it all feels out of reach and unrealistic. “We’re all different ages, and who knows what everyone’s situation is going to be in 20 years’ time?”
Money can’t buy the care communities can give
Jody Day, 61, author of Living the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children, calls people like us “the tightrope generation” —those caring for ageing parents without anyone who might do the same for us. Having spent years caring for her husband’s mother, Day knows what that care involves. “Money cannot do what we did,” she says. “A carer feeds and bathes, but they’re not there when you get scammed or your boiler breaks.”
She says that many of us have a fantasy of living in a commune, but planning and legal regulations make that a long road.
New Ground in London pioneered community living for women over 50. With residents aged from 58 to 94, it is the UK’s first co-housing community exclusively for older women. It includes both privately-owned and socially-rented flats. Each of the women have their own flat but there is a common room for weekly dinners and film nights. There is a buddy system that means that everyone is looked out for.
Since it opened in 2016 the group has been inundated with people wanting to join its 25 flats – showing huge demand. However, setting it up was an 18-year battle, to find suitable land, make the plans and get planning permission. Many involved in the idea at the beginning dropped out.
“A lot of people don’t own property, don’t have money, what we need to think about is what works with no money involved,” says Day. She believes that the solution lies in reimagining communities where people already live, and points to marginalised communities that have always understood this: “Queer communities created chosen families,” she says.
Could alternative kinship circles and co-housing projects be the answer?
Day is starting a movement called Alterkin — alternative kinship circles for people ageing without children. After moving the UK to West Cork with her husband seven years ago, she spent a year identifying neighbours without children, approaching them with a simple question: would they be interested in a support group?
Now a group of six to eight people, ranging from their early forties to late seventies, meets monthly. The goal isn’t friendship, exactly — it’s practical mutual aid. “Say my husband is ill and I have a hip replacement,” Day explains, “This group will share the burden – I’ll drop you to hospital, I can get the shopping, I’ll walk the dog”.
Karen Liebenguth, 57, offers another model. She lives in a shared rented Buddhist community house in East London with people ranging from their forties to seventies. “We have a commitment to practice together — we meditate together in the mornings. We share all our food and cooking,” she explains.
“It’s a deeply nourishing and joyful way to live but that doesn’t mean it’s always nice and fluffy. Living in a community is challenging because we press each other’s buttons as we do in any family setup,” Liebenguth says. When Marilyn, the 72-year-old in their house, developed health issues, “that was a big challenge. How do we do care when we all work? We realised that is part of community life. You know, we cannot all of a sudden not care because it’s too difficult or too uncomfortable.”
The wider Buddhist community rallied round: “[It] is absolutely amazing. When someone is ill or suffers or is in hospital, WhatsApp groups are set up in no time. Someone sets up a schedule and people help. We quickly had more help than we could manage.”
Communication is key to building a live with child-free friends
Holt’s group has faced practical challenges too. “The whole purchase process was very challenging, and we all had wobbles at certain points,” she says, adding that they prepared for uncertainty: “We have exit agreements around if somebody wants out”.
Their solution is ongoing communication. “What really is working is we have a weekly check-in. It’s the same time every week. We take a few minutes each to talk about what’s going on. We are very, very honest with each other.”
Holt’s group is being proactive about future care needs. The distinction she makes is crucial: “We’re not going to look after each other, but we’re going to look out for each other.” Looking after, she explains, means being someone’s carer — a role that can consume lives. Looking out for each other means “if somebody’s ill, others will check in with you, ask if you need anything, bring you a cup of tea, accompany you to a doctor’s appointment. It’s just knowing you are not on your own with it.” Rather than each person hiring individual care, they’re exploring pooling resources.
The community is also thinking intergenerationally. “My friends’ son might move in with us. He’s in his 20s, and I get on very well with him, so that would be wonderful. There’s also a flat in the basement and we’ll be looking for somebody younger to live there.”
For those inspired by these models but unsure how to begin, Day recommends starting to slowly seek out people who might be in a similar situation.
I have started talking to other child-free friends about potentially living together in the coming years. It is just a start but the conversations feel important and honest. We have already started acting as each other’s significant others — going to hospital appointments together — and committing to do this into the future is the next step.
Harkin believes we’re heading for “a bit of a reset”, as systems that no longer serve us begin to crumble. “So many old systems are just not meeting current needs,” she observes. “We don’t have to just accept things as they are.”
She imagines that multigenerational living will increase with people building cohousing projects, and developers building care homes alongside nurseries and student accommodation. “Every generation rewrites aging,” Harkin tells me.
And despite everything—the broken care system, the housing crisis, the financial precarity—that feels like a kind of freedom. The question isn’t: “Who will look after me when I’m older?” anymore. It’s “How do we look after each other?”