Rachel Chrastil

“By the late Middle Ages, as couples married at an older age and set up their own separate households, parents no longer counted on their children for care in their old age. To ensure that they would be cared for, many aged adults wrote up contracts, including with their children, in medieval England. Whether or not they had grown children, widows often paid others to care for them. A study of rural England between 1599 and 1796 found that only 49 percent of men and 37 percent of women aged sixty-five and older lived with a child. The urban figures were a tad higher.”
― Rachel Chrastil, How to Be Childless: A History and Philosophy of Life Without Children