Friendship runs deep in individuals and in humanity. It's an essential fact of life for most people, a vast collection of relationships reported to lower blood pressure and the risk of depression and provide social interaction and connection in an increasingly disconnected age. It's immortalized in songs and in its own section at Hallmark. When it works it survives bridesmaid horrors, periods of remarkable self-absorption and the collection of bumps and bruises that life gives every relationship. It can be painful and it can be glorious.
But should it be legalized?
Arguments for and against legally recognizing friendships came out this summer, first in an essay by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow in the Boston Globe and then in a response blog post from Jane Gross at the New York Times Health Blog.
Tuhus-Dubrow wrote about what she calls a "nascent movement" among scholars to give designated friends legal rights and responsibilities, from access to the Family Medical Leave Act and write-offs for certain "friend expenditures" to the right to make health-care decisions and even just ride in an ambulance or visit a hospital room should a friend get sick.
While some of her sources said that the government shouldn't be involved in everything and this kind of movement encourages too much control, others said that it's just the ticket for people who don't have a family support system for times of need.
Gross doesn't have children and has made a few arrangements with friends to serve as health-care proxies and potential roommates, but in her essay "Single, Childless and Terrified" she says that as a "single, childless woman" she lives in fear that there will be no one to care for her when she needs it the most.
But, having witnessed the “new old age’’ from a front-row seat, I’m haunted by the knowledge that there is no one who will care about me in the deepest and most loving sense of the word at the end of my life. No one who will advocate for me, not simply for adequate care but for the small and arguably inessential things that can make life worth living even in compromised health.
Gross suggests that friendship should be lifted from its "second-class status," given some clout. Reader comments are sad, hopeful, angry and resigned. Alex says a lonely old-age is what selfish people who haven't chosen to raise children get, especially if they have money left over. Jen in Astoria says she's going to be just fine regardless and doesn't appreciate Gross's "fear-mongering." Presumably a very different Alex says,
How amusing! You assume that those people with children are somehow not going to be magically stuffed into a nursing home and ignored by those children.
Hey, I get it. Single, childless, here - although not terrified, yet. And since after years of social work with seniors I'm in touch with the realities of aging - financial and daily caregiving aspects - it's crossed my mind that not having kids or a spouse removes a common layer of human beings who are both legally tied (in the case of the spouse and frequently in the case of the kids) and emotionally connected enough to make sure I don't waste away alone.
This assumes that those people in the traditional roles are there at all. Let's face it - it's often a couple of my friends now who've got my back, along with my sister, and those are the people I would trust in a serious jam. Some of my married friends know they could depend on me or another of their close friends should there be a serious problem or absence of a nuclear family. One friend who recently separated from her husband just put me down as an emergency contact at her child's school, because her family is in another state. Most of my closest friends are young enough to have living parents who are still involved with our lives, single or coupled, so we're still benefitting from that support system in a variety of ways. I'm confident I'd be writing a different response to this in 10 or 15 years. Divorces happen (and already have.) Kids move away. Older relatives die.
Increases in domestic partnerships and civil unions in recent years include rights that some quoted in Tuhus-Dubrow's article say should be allowed for friends as well.
"If the law decides to support some relationships, why not others that similarly involve care and support?" asks Washington University's Rosenbury. "What is it about marriage or marriage-like relationships - that is, relationships that are assumed to have sex in them?"
Carolyn McConnell at Rock the Cradle is in favor of legal friendship and says that it's not just for single and/or childless women.
Jane Gross in the New York Times focuses on those who are single and childless and their need for support in old age. But this isn’t only an issue that should concern single women. It’s past due time for women to consider that most of us will spend less than half our lives married to a man (see my old article in Salon on this topic). I’ve already considered that my spouse is likely to die many years before me (sorry, sweetie) and that my friends will be the support of my old age.
To put that into pop culture terms for my Gen-X brain, "I Love Lucy" didn't last into Lucy and Ricky's divorce or Fred's death, and the Lucy Show didn't count, so it's hard to say how Ethel would have had to step up to the plate if Lucy got sick and Little Ricky flaked out. I'm pretty sure she came in handy regardless, though. Tuhus-Dubrow mentions Friends and Sex in the City as influential shows that a tribe of friends as a support system - although transitional, before "real life" begins.
Leanna Hamill, and elder law attorney in Massachusetts, writes in her blog that single or coupled, planning is key.
It is true that those clients with children generally have an easier time choosing who to appoint as a health care proxy or power of attorney, but those childless clients who have to think about it more, and have conversations with friends about the responsibilities may be ending up with people who are more willing to serve and who know their wishes better.
Msmeta at Adventures at Midlife includes Gross's post in ruminations about a friend suffering from dementia.
But none of this is any guarantee that, when it’s time, the biological switch won’t get pushed. And so many of us will have to depend on the kindness of family and friends — and in some cases, even strangers — to guide us through those last confused years.
Candice Watters at The Boundless Line: bringing focus to the single years says that Gross's fear reflects an "unintended consequence of the cultural assault on marriage and children," that giving legal rights to friends would extend.
I think Gross has stumbled onto one of the reasons God made families...The reality of an aging, childless population is undeniable. How we care for them, however, is yet to be decided. Where some see tragedy, I see opportunity. The church is uniquely gifted to step in with compassionate care not only for the body in this life, but also for the spirit with a view toward the next.
Chronicles of Spinster isn't buying it.
I read this article today in the NYTimes and it irritated the hell out of me. I understand its a NYTimes "blog", but pllleeaaassseeee.
Although I understand the sentiment I refuse to spend the next 40 years of my life worrying or being terrified about this shit. Build strong relationships, know your rights, take care of your finances and your health as best you can, and it will be what it will be. Why do fearful women want to scare the hell out of the rest of us? There were no useful suggestions in this crappy waste of space.
Model Minority read the comments on Gross's post also and came away concerned about the "system" we live in.
What amazes me when we talk about prisons, schools or the elderly is our unwillingness to criticize the system in which we live and how it may affects our lives on a structural level.
The possibility of legalizing a relationship assumes permanence, and what wasn't addressed much in the essays or the comments was what happens if a friendship should go south? How do you know who to trust? One of the most-read posts I've ever written on here that also received the most emotional responses across the board dealt with friendship "break-ups," something I called an art and a sadness. Considering it in this context, though, it's not very different from other partnerships that, when legalized, don't always make it, or in other ways let us down.
Writing through this was tough. It's a complicated topic where the focus too easily veers back into single-peron-bashing with a side of self-pity, but it could really affect anyone. One of my mantras in working in the senior community was, "it's hard to understand because until you've been old, you haven't been old," and I still believe that's true. It's impossible to say what kind of support you'll need in your old age, or how it will be provided. My parents have already stepped up to help out married friends with terminal illnesses, and my father just turned 60.
I don't know if "legal friendship" is the answer but I do know that in a world where people often "choose their family" there are ways to designate wishes and responsibilities to those who do not share your blood, household or marital tie.
I don't know what I would choose. I don't know what kind of care I'll need tomorrow or years down the road. I don't know if I'll live thousands of miles away from my sister at that time like I do now or in the same area. I have a godson, and the one time I cracked a joke about my old age in his presence (seriously, a joke) his mother made sure to tell him that he had no responsibility for me, so that's awkwardly out. I don't know if I'll end up married or remain single, but I do know, as I've stated before, that I will not marry just for security as I'd rather deal with a stable of nursing assistants than one incompatible man in my house, so there's that.
What I do know is that I have some really great friends, and an extended family I love who love me. I can only hope that that's enough, and that beyond the boundaries of legality, a few of those people will be there for me as I know I will be there for them for the long haul, like I would be there today if they really needed me. And I'd kind of like to see someone try to keep me out of a hospital room if I felt that was where I really needed to be.
Laurie White writes at LaurieWrites.
It sounds like there are already legal structures in place to allow a person to create these kinds of arrangements with their friends, so I guess I don't see what all the controversy is about. You can give a friend legal power of attorney, etc., it just takes an explicit decision to do so in a way that isn't required in a marriage. At the same time, though, married people already have made a conscious, legalized decision to be responsible for each other. I wouldn't want friends to be assumed to have those rights and responsibilities without my permission or at least a discussion of what I'd actually want them to do, so perhaps it's best that legal friendship agreements are not some kind of default decision.
Posted by: Jen | September 16, 2008 at 08:44 AM