How will we handle “until death do us part” if we live 150 years or more?
Recently, National Geographic had a startling cover — a picture of a baby and a headline declaring, “This Baby Will Live To Be 120.”
Thanks in part to technological advances as well as ever-increasing life expectancy, others say we could live to be 1,000 years old although much more believe an average life span of 150 years — with most of those years healthy and productive — is probably much more likely. And it will happen soon.
While a recent Pew study indicates most of us don’t want to live that long, we think other people might. So, it seems likely that in the not-too-distant future, we will be faced with some interesting dilemmas as more of us are centenarians “— not just related to things like overpopulation and dwindling resources or work and retirement issues, but how living longer will impact dating, marriage, and families.
Consider:
- How will we handle until death do us part if we live 150 years or more?
- Will greater advances in reproductive technology lead to first-time parents in their 60s and 70s?
- Will older men still favor younger women, with 120-year-olds wanting to marry 70- or 80-year olds? (And will that upset us as much as today’s 60- and 70-year olds marrying women in their 20s and 30s?)
- If we continue to be serial monogamists, marrying, divorcing and marrying again, will we see siblings and half-siblings born decades apart?
It boggles the mind. Actually, it all seems somewhat horrifying to me, perhaps because I’ve spent so much time the past few years hanging around my dad’s nursing home, so I’m a bit thankful I probably won’t be around to see it (and based on what I observe in nursing homes, maybe we should focus on keeping men alive longer so women, after caretaking for so many years, might have someone to look after them in their old age).
But, never mind me. In Sonia Aronson‘s book 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith, she doubts most men will marry women decades younger. “Historically we don’t,” she writes, and citing data from New Jersey (why, I don’t know) states, “10.1 percent of marriages involved a man ten years older than his spouse and only 2.3 percent of marriages involved a woman at least ten years older than her spouse.”
(To which I say, gals, it’s time to catch up!)
But the push is on to radically extend life, and with Google’s new initiative to do so, Calico, Aronson acknowledges the realities of living longer (emphasis mine):
In her 79 fabulous years, actress Elizabeth Taylor was married eight times to seven husbands. If she had lived a longer and healthier life, that number might have been even higher. While it’s true Taylor was an anomaly, it turns out that as more time becomes available, mating behaviors do begin to shift. In 1950, the average age at first marriage was 23 for men and 20 for women. Today, with longer life expectancies, the average age at first marriage is 28 for men and 26 for women. Those numbers will likely climb higher as women gain more control over their fertility with reproductive technologies such as IVF, egg freezing, and ovary and embryo transplants. The ability to have children at many later ages means that it will be possible for siblings to be separated by many decades. A woman might have one child when she is 22 and another when she is 62, and the relationship between those siblings might be less like traditional siblings and more like that between an uncle and nephew.
I loved sci-fi as a kid. Still, the flying cars and household robots that books and shows like The Jetsons promised me haven’t quite materialized (although we may be pretty close to living — and perhaps even loving and having sex — with robots). So, maybe I shouldn’t be so concerned.
