The actress Hilary Swank has said that a woman can be maternal without being a mother – she’s 46 and doesn’t have children – and I totally agree with her. No female educated in convent school harbours the notion that women can only be fulfilled by biological motherhood. Every convent schoolgirl has known nuns who were entirely fulfilled by their vocations outside of marriage and motherhood. A schoolfriend of mine often recalls how one of her nun-teachers sat up all night making a special costume so the pupil could perform in a musical drama in which she suddenly got a role. That’s maternal solicitude! Yet there is concern among demographic experts that so many women – one in five – of the generation born in the 1960s have not had children. Some did not want to be mothers; others postponed it too long and left it too late; some never met Mr Right (and perhaps rebuffed Mr Nearly Right); some encountered infertility. What surprised me about the report was the disclosure that even in advanced societies like Britain, older people rely on their offspring for much “informal” care. The National Health Service was founded to address health issues, often numerous for the old, but there isn’t really a national caring service, as the Covid pandemic has revealed. Even when older people are in a care home because of their health problems, they often depend on contact, visits and general cheering-up from their adult children and grandchildren. The Office for National Statistics put it bluntly: the generation born in the 1960s will face old age without sons or daughters to look after them. Actually, most of us, even from previous generations, don’t want to be a burden on our grown children. Nevertheless, it is great to have that connection, of taking an interest in their lives, problems, achievements, struggles. So it will be tough for many of the 1960s-born cohort if there isn’t that sense of continuity and life going on into the future. Women certainly can be fulfilled without being biological mothers. But I would suggest to any young woman pondering the motherhood question: don’t ask yourself, “Do I want to be a mother?” but “Do I want to be a grandmother?” That will provide a longer future perspective.