OOPS #14: The Long View
WIGO member Penny Shepherd reflects on a lifetime spent thinking about ageing — shaped by growing up in a family where old age was always close at hand. Drawing on experiences of caring, loss, mutual support and work in social innovation, she explores why the future of ageing cannot rely on the state alone and why new forms of co-operation, technology and community will matter more than ever.
I think I’ve always been preparing for ageing. Decades ago, a friend used to say that I was the only 27-year-old she knew who was obsessed with her pension. Maybe it’s because I come from an “upside down” family, where the average age has always been over or close to retirement.
Until I was four, I lived in a four-generation matrilineal family — great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and me — plus my father and already retired grandfather. My mother was an only child. There were also two great aunts. Auntie Cis was the ideal role model for a full working life without having children — not least because she ran a local sweetshop. Auntie Ollie had two children, but both died young. Later, my brother arrived and our nuclear family moved out, though still only a mile away. He and I never had children, and he died earlier this year. Now I am the only one left.
All three women in my female line died in their 90s, all with dementia, so I work on the assumption that this may well be my fate too. The key difference between us is that they all had a daughter who looked after them as they aged, as well as a wider community, particularly through their local church. I have neither. They also had strong friendship networks but, in every case, those networks gradually shrank as friends themselves aged and died.
I feel fortunate to have seen how the current system works — first as a “remote carer” for my mother for nearly ten years, and now as an “on-site” carer for my partner. I also have experience relevant to building alternatives through an eclectic range of past work, including the development of social investment and community benefit societies, and work on the changing regulation of utilities and funeral plans.
It feels good not to have missed out on the experience of caring, while also having been able to focus on my career before retirement. There are, I think, some unrecognised benefits in providing care at the end of life rather than at the beginning — although, of course, people who made different choices may see things differently.
I am convinced that support for frailty in later life cannot simply be provided by the state. We also need to grow mutual solutions that are trustworthy without becoming over-regulated, and which are not profit-maximising or extractive. They need to be scalable or replicable too — fit for the many, not just a pioneering few.
I am increasingly interested not only in what mutuality and co-operation can deliver for us, but also in how they might combine with agentic artificial intelligence, robotics, paid employment and volunteering to help us continue living lives of purpose and meaning, even as dementia and frailty take hold.
The potential is enormous. Change is not just possible — it is essential.
