‘It's most of my life – going to the pub or the group’: the social networks of involuntarily childless older men

摘要: The social networks of older people are a significant influence on their health and wellbeing. Adult children an important element in parent's network provide the majority informal care. morphology personal alters with age, employment, gender relationships. Not having automatically reduces both vertical familial structure affects wider formal links that can bring. Childless men missing from gerontological, reproduction, sociological psychological research. These fields have all mainly focused family women. This paper reports auto/biographical qualitative study framed by biographical, feminist, gerontological lifecourse approaches. Data were gathered semi-structured biographical interviews 14 self-defined involuntarily childless aged between 49 82 years old. A latent thematic analysis highlighted complex intersections childlessness individual agency, relationships socio-cultural structures. impact major events non-events had implications for how perform view self-identity. I argue involuntary social, emotional relational aspects men's lived experience across lifecourse.