Successfully Aging Alone

Abstract

“Who will look after you when you are old and sick” is a question that is often asked to aging single people, sometimes out of genuine concern and more often to chide them about how they missed the bus of marriage and coupledom. This question becomes more poignant during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for long-term older single people living alone. In this chapter, I will examine self-care strategies long-term single people, specifically between the ages of 40 and 50, used during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown to manage chronic illness and maintain health and well-being. The chapter uncovers how studying older single people's lives contributes to understanding diverse strategies of self-care and reconfigures caregiving issues outside the traditional family. The study provides us with a two-pronged insight, one into caregiving practices among older single people living alone, and two into successfully aging alone. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section examines the self-care practices employed by long-term single people living alone;the second section examines their social support system with regard to care and illness;and the third section theorizes care and aging from a singlehood standpoint. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Longtao He and Jagriti Gangopadhyay;individual chapters, the contributors.