Why So Many Older Divorced Men Face Aging With No One to Call

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One man told researchers he had gone years without so much as a phone call from his children, not on his birthday, not on a holiday, not once. He is not alone. A new study of older divorced and separated people in Spain found that many fathers who split from their wives decades ago have drifted completely out of their children’s lives, leaving them to face old age with almost no family support to lean on.

Women in that same study showed something close to the opposite. Those who raised their kids alone after their marriages ended, often working jobs for the first time while juggling childcare, tended to build far closer bonds with their children that lasted into old age.

Researchers interviewed older adults in Spain who are separated or divorced and now live by themselves, a group they report has been almost completely ignored by sociologists. Writing in the journal Revista Internacional de Sociología, they point out that Spain only legalized divorce in 1981, one of the last countries in Europe to do so, yet the number of people over 65 who are separated or divorced has grown from about 93,000 in 2001 to nearly 495,000 by 2021. Despite that growth, almost nothing was known about how these decades-old breakups still shape people’s lives as they age.

How Researchers Studied Divorced Fathers and Mothers Living Alone

Researchers built this work on a larger project about older people living alone. Rather than using surveys, they conducted open-ended interviews with 102 older adults total, and 20 of those conversations, split evenly between men and women, form the basis of this particular study. Everyone interviewed was over 65, living alone, and either separated or divorced.

Average age across the group was 74.7, ranging from 65 to 90. Most had ended their marriages long before the interviews, on average 28.8 years earlier, though some had been apart for as little as three years and others for more than half a century. About 70 percent divorced or separated before age 50, while the remaining 30 percent went through what’s sometimes called “gray divorce,” meaning the marriage ended after age 50. The interviews took place across towns and cities in Andalusia between May 2021 and December 2022, in people’s homes or community centers, after participants agreed to be recorded.

Instead of asking a fixed list of questions, the researchers let conversations unfold naturally around money, health, family, and loneliness. They then looked for patterns in what people said rather than testing a theory they’d set out with beforehand. Three themes emerged: how the marriage ended and reshaped each person’s path forward, how those early choices affected relationships with adult children years later, and what daily problems people face now that they live alone.

Why So Many Divorced Fathers Lose Contact With Their Kids

One finding stood out clearly. All the men interviewed were fathers, and many described taking the initiative to end their marriages, whether due to constant arguments, interference from in-laws, or simply falling out of love. In many cases, what followed was a quiet but lasting retreat from their children’s lives. Some moved to other towns to start over, putting real distance between themselves and the kids they left behind. Over time, that physical distance often hardened into emotional distance.

One 85-year-old man, who divorced 45 years ago, told researchers he hadn’t seen his children since 2013. “That’s hard, but what can I do?” he said, noting that they no longer call him. Another man, now 81, who separated decades earlier, described being pushed out of his children’s lives after his in-laws turned them against him. “I have insisted, and they don’t answer the phone,” he said. A third man kept his son’s number on hand only in an emergency, reasoning that if something happened to him, “the police will look for it,” and his children would be notified only after the fact rather than staying in touch beforehand.

Women described an almost opposite path. Most of the mothers interviewed had taken on full responsibility for raising their children after their marriages ended, often without any financial help from their ex-husbands and without prior work experience outside the home. They described years of physically demanding labor, juggling jobs with childcare while also recovering emotionally from the breakup itself. That sacrifice often paid off later in life: women generally reported closer, warmer relationships with their adult children, including regular visits, daily phone calls, and mutual support.

Earlier research outside Spain backs up part of this pattern. Studies in the Netherlands have found that divorced men over 50 are far more likely than divorced women to have little or no contact with their adult children; one such study found 12 percent of divorced men in that age group had no contact at all, compared to 7 percent of women. The Spanish interviews help explain this gap, tracing it back to decisions made at the time of the breakup, long before anyone involved thought about old age.

Costs That Surface Decades Later

When family ties frayed, the consequences didn’t stay in the past. Men who described losing touch with their children also tended to describe facing old age with no one to call for help, whether that meant getting to a doctor’s appointment, managing a chronic illness, or simply having someone to talk to. Several said they had made peace with the idea of eventually entering a nursing home, since they didn’t expect their children to step in.

Women’s struggles looked different. Many had worked for decades but hadn’t paid enough into Spain’s pension system to receive a livable retirement income, leaving them unable to pay for in-home help even when they needed it. Several described managing serious health conditions largely on their own, partly out of necessity and partly because they didn’t want to burden their children, even when those relationships remained close.

Loneliness also showed up differently by gender. It affected men more often, in line with their weaker family ties, but when women did experience conflict with their children, the emotional toll appeared to hit harder. One woman described the holidays as almost unbearable, saying people kept asking if her children were visiting, not realizing how painful the question was. Women with strained family relationships described far more acute distress than men in similar situations, even though this kind of conflict was less common for women overall.

A Long-Ignored Problem for Divorced Fathers and Mothers Alike

This research matters because it goes beyond individual sad stories. It points to a pattern tied directly to gender and to choices made decades earlier, one that leaves a growing number of older Spaniards without the support they need as they age. The researchers argue that fathers and mothers in this situation need different kinds of help, not generic elder care, because their struggles come from very different histories. A divorce that happened thirty years ago still shapes who shows up, and who doesn’t, when these men and women need help the most.

Disclaimer: This article describes a qualitative study based on in-depth interviews with 20 older separated or divorced adults living alone in southern Spain. Its findings capture patterns and personal experiences, not statistical rates, and cannot be generalized to all divorced parents or used to establish cause and effect. Individual circumstances vary widely.