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Perhaps the poster who said that single people will die alone, without children, doesn't understand that having children is no guarantee that they will take care of you in your old age. (Childless married people hear this all the time.)
I knew a number of single and/or childless people who lived into their eighties and nineties, in some cases long outliving their partners, spouses, and family members, and they did not die alone--far from it. They died surrounded by longtime friends from ages twenty-five to eighty. They lived amazing lives that I would kill to have (one was present at the Yalta conference in 1945). And I'm tearing up remembering some of them now, dammit.
If you're the sort of person who thinks that all you need for company in your old age are your children and grandchildren, you are pretty sad, man.
