As Gen X and Boomers Age, They Confront Living Alone
Planning for the future
For many single adults, the pandemic highlights the challenges of aging.
Selman, a 55-year-old professor, was living in Terre Haute, Ind., when Covid-19 hit. Divorced for 17 years, she says she has used forced isolation to establish new habits to stave off loneliness and depression. She quit drinking and started calling a group of female friends regularly.
This year, she got a new job and moved to Normal, Ill., in part because she wanted to live in a state that better reflected her progressive politics. She met new friends at the farmers market, she said, and is happier than she was before the pandemic, although she sometimes wishes she had a romantic partner to ride a motorbike with. her or just to help carry the laundry up and down the house. Stairs of her three-bedroom house.
She regularly drives 12 hours round-trip to care for her parents near Detroit, an obligation that has convinced her to give up her dream of retirement living near the beach and one day move closer to her daughter and grandchildren. Her son, lives in Louisville, Ky.
“I don’t want my daughter to stress about me,” she said.
Viewing one’s parents’ age seems to have had a profound effect on many members of Gen X, born between 1965 and 1980, who say they doubt they can rely on the same supports as their parents. they did: long marriages, pensions, houses that sometimes skyrocketed in value.
When his mother died two years ago, Mr. Miles, the cinematographer, felt comfortable moving some of her belongings into his home in New Haven, Conn.
It was a psychological return home, he said, that allowed him to feel attached to him after decades of traveling across the country and exploring a career around the land, moving from the music business. music to teaching in high schools to producing movies for nonprofit organizations and companies.