Robin Hadley a world expert on male childlessness and ageing, a researcher, speaker, teacher, and writer. Robin’s area of research concerns the impact of male involuntary childlessness across the lifecourse.
Also, having completed a Project Titled: Survey Of Men And Women’s Feelings Around Parenthood And Childlessness
Which Examines If Childlessness Effected the Happiness of Older People, their Wellbeing, Mental And Physical Health Compared To the Equivalent of their peers Who Were Parents And/Or Grandparents.
For many people, being a parent is an important marker of adulthood and considered central to the normal, expectable life-cycle. However, both childlessness and longevity have increased substantially across many Western countries in recent decades. Although the socio-psychological consequences of childlessness for women have been thoroughly explored, there is a lack of research on the impact of childlessness on the experience of men.
This study examined how parenthood or childlessness affected the happiness,
health and wellbeing of men and women, aged 50 years and over. The study used a cross-sectional survey of 394 men and women aged over 50 years old, stratified by geographical UK region from a research panel, and analysed using hierarchical logistic regression. Validated measures of childhood attachment and other psychological and demographic factors were used.
The main finding was that, independent of the impact of other variables (age, sex, education level, marital status, life stress, health related quality of life, mental positivity, and avoidant attachment style), people who were childless scored significantly higher on a measure of anxious childhood attachment.
This study highlights the importance of healthy bonding in childhood, and is the first to identify a potentially significant link between anxious childhood attachment and the likelihood of producing children in one’s lifetime.
“The more we have these conversation, the more these conversations can have had.”
~ Alison Jaye