Childlessness and Psychological Well-Being Across the Life Course as Manifested in Significant Life Events

The childless population in the United States is growing fast, accounting for approximately one fifth of population aged 65 and older. The combination of longevity, marital status changes, and childlessness has led to the projection that about 25% of the population aged 70 to 85 in 2030 will not have a living spouse or a living child. Surprisingly, there is relatively little documentation about the lives of childless elders. Childless people have been conspicuously ignored in social sciences, even in very pertinent fields such as adult development, aging, the life course, and the family. Among previous studies, two common shortcomings make results on childlessness and old-age well-being inconclusive: (a) treating childlessness as a static status and not considering possible changes in its meaning and impact felt in significant life events, and (b) focusing on negative aspect of childlessness at the exclusion of possible positive rewards. This dissertation added contextual variables and measured both negative and positive affects of psychological well-being. It adopts stress process model as a framework to study the effects of childlessness on psychological well-being in the events of caregiving in middle age, retirement in young-old age, and disability in advanced old age. This dissertation uses data from Health and Retirement Study. The findings indicate that childlessness by itself does not pose a negative threat to psychological well-being. The lack of a negative effect of childlessness on psychological well-being does not mean that children are not beneficial to parents. Rather, it suggests that taking the "deviant" path of childlessness, whether voluntarily or not, does not necessarily render childless persons at a greater disadvantage than parents in old age. However, one natural outcome of childlessness is the lack of biological grandchildren the benefits associated with grandparenthood. In this dissertation, grandchildren are found to have a positive influence on grandparents', and in particular grandfathers', transitions to retirement. The effects of childlessness were teased out from the impact of marital status. Possible interaction of gender, parental status, and marital status were tested. Childlessness and singlehood interacts in some cases. Childlessness poses different implications for men and women.

Sociology

19980