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Key points
- Interviews with older single lesbian and bisexual women revealed that most were happily single.
- They had people they could count on and people who counted on them.
Who do you think counts as family in the lives of older single women who are lesbian or bisexual? If your first thought is that family consists of married heterosexual parents and their kids, then you might be tempted to assume that they have no family at all. Even if you realize, after thinking about it for more than a moment, that families are formed in many ways, you might still wonder whether these people are isolated and alone. After all, they are at risk of being devalued and dismissed for at least four reasons—they are single, they are women, they are old, and they are members of sexual and gender minorities.
To find out who counts as family, it is important not to go by conventional wisdom but instead talk to people about their actual life experiences. That’s what Erin S. Lavender-Stott and Katherine Allen did. They conducted intensive interviews with 13 women in the U.S. from the cohort born between 1946 and 1964 (often described as baby boomers), recruited from organizations serving relevant groups such as single people and LGBTQ+ adults. Their findings were published earlier this year in “Not alone: Family experiences across the life course of single, baby boom sexual-minority women,” in Family Relations.
All of the women had been single for at least five years, not legally married, and not in a long-term romantic partnership. They ranged in age from 53 to 72 and lived most of their adult lives before same-sex marriage was legalized in the US. Seven of them had been in heterosexual marriages before divorcing and forming same-sex relationships. The others had only same-sex relationships in the past. Nine of the women identified as lesbian, three as bisexual, and one as queer.
How They Felt About Being Single
Most of the women were happily single. Echoing themes I have heard during decades of studying single people of all gender and sexual identities, including older single people, they described their single lives as happy, satisfying, freeing, and psychologically rich. Only two of the women disliked being single. Eight of them said they were open to a romantic relationship but were not taking any active steps to unsingle themselves (for example, by dating or seeking a romantic relationship).
I always wonder about the people who say that they are open to a romantic relationship but not doing anything to find such a relationship. Maybe what they are saying is that it is just not that important to them. What concerns me is another possibility: Maybe they don’t think it is okay not to want a romantic relationship. Maybe they think that it is normal and natural to want to be coupled and that being coupled is superior to being single. (That’s the couple norm, which is part of the conventional wisdom in many places, and which creates “compulsory coupling”). Maybe they don’t realize that it is just as normal and natural to want to stay single, not just temporarily but for good. Maybe they have never heard that for some people, such as the Single at Heart, single life is their best life. Trying to fit themselves into a coupled mold would be no more satisfying than it is for people who are not heterosexual to try to be heterosexual. Anyone trying to be someone they are not is losing out on living their most authentic, meaningful, and fulfilling life.
Who Did They Describe as Family?
The stereotypical belief about people who are single in later life is that they don’t have anyone and that if anything happened to them, no one would help them. That’s not what the researchers found. Instead:
“Everyone named several individuals to whom they were close, to whom they had been connected for years, to whom they anticipated would be in their lives for a long time, and on whom they could rely.”
In response to questions such as “Who would you say is your family now?” the women named a number of different kinds of people who were important to them. In no particular order, they included:
Friends. The women thought about family in big, open-hearted ways. They did not restrict themselves to naming people who are conventionally regarded as family. In keeping with a long tradition in queer communities of creating “families of choice,” they named many kinds of people as family, or like family. All the women named close friends. Some had friendships that had lasted for decades.
Family of origin. Although previous research suggested that queer women of their generation (born between 1946 and 1964) were sometimes rejected by their families, 11 of the 13 women in this study had more positive experiences. They stayed connected to members of their families of origin, such as siblings.
Exes. It was not unusual for the women to have deep connections with ex-husbands, ex-partners, and even ex-in-laws. Five said they considered their exes to be family.
Young people. Six of the women had children and three had grandchildren; nearly all included their children as part of their closest circle. Others were close to nieces, nephews, and other children such as a neighbor’s kids.
The People Who Need to Know What These Women Already Understand
The women in this study all have important people in their lives—people who will be there for them when they are in need, and who they will show up for when needed. Those people are, in important ways, like family. But many of them, such as their friends, are not recognized by laws and policies, and practices. As Lavender-Stott and Allen noted:
“It is also important for lawyers, formal caregivers, social workers, and other human service professionals to know and understand how people define family… Additionally, who is considered family will have legal and policy implications, especially as individuals plan for end-of-life and consider who will provide care and handle execution of the will or inheritance.”
