I left my first job at Taco Bell on Aurora Avenue North in 1970 because my boss said the people shot at Kent State got what they deserved. My second job was at DJ’s Sound City at Northgate in Seattle but my boss had an eye for another employee and when the business began to fail, she was the only one not laid off. In 1972, the University of Washington’s University Book Store hired me for the Music Department, a job for which I was eminently unqualified. Think bins of LPs and a scattering of cassettes tapes—that long ago. I would work there for most of the next four years while completing two studio art degrees. Despite having abandoned guitar, I learned a lot about music during those years.

And I met an old woman named Florence.

Florence is an androgynous French and English given name. It is derived from the French version of (Saint) Florentia, a Roman martyr under Diocletian. The Latin florens, florentius means “blossoming”, verb floreo, meaning “I blossom / I flower / I flourish”.

—Wikipedia

By the time I met her, the Florence I knew was old by my teenage reconning, certainly of retirement age. She was probably close to the age I am now. Perhaps that’s why I think of her.

She was slender and taller than me, and wore plain skirts in dull colors. She made up her face as even modest women of her generation did. She dyed her wavy shoulder-length hair a flamboyant red, the sole sign of her individuality and strength. She was partially deaf and her hearing aid was imperfect. (Perhaps she read lips. Gary thinks she did.) I worked with Florence in the Music Department on occasion and often saw her in other departments where she filled in.

We talked.

During World War Two, Florence worked as an engineer for Boeing. (I think, but perhaps some other aeronautics manufacturer.) But when the war ended, the men came home and her job went to a man. She continued living at home where she cared for her elderly parents until they died. And there she was, an old woman herself with no pension or much Social Security, supporting herself as best she could manage.

The Book Store only allowed her part time employment with lower pay and completely at the mercy of management for hours. I worked part time too and was similarly poorly paid. We received a 15% discount on store purchases and no benefits. My rent was $35/month because Gary and I managed the decrepit building. Florence lived in a brick apartment building around the corner from the bookstore. I don’t remember now whether she had any other family, but no one was supporting her even after decades of her supporting others.

The previous summer I had met two women in similar circumstances while driving across country with my grandfather’s widow Genevieve. We stayed one night in a tiny small-town home in Iowa with aunts of hers. The sisters were aged on either side of 80, and like Florence they had lived at home and cared for their parents throughout their adult lives. Unlike her, they had never worked outside the home. Their narrow lot was given over to flowers in the front and entirely to vegetables in the back. They made a tiny income through decorative work on linens. One of the women was going blind. Genevieve said they did “not accept charity.” I used some of my limited cash to purchase handkerchiefs with beautiful pulled work and stitching. I do not know when they passed, but I felt then that their circumstances were tragic and unjust.

Like Florence, whom I would meet in the following year.

A friend once said she had read that to have a well supported old age, a woman needed three daughters. Like me, she had no daughters. Maybe I am thinking about all this because of my age? Maybe I am thinking about all this because in Portland we visit with our neighbors and at the coast most of them have died? Maybe I am thinking about all this because of watching Korean television?

While Americans give lip service to being family oriented, Koreans have a long tradition of elders living with family. This was the duty of the eldest son. In 1995, almost 75% of Korean households included at least two generations. The percentage in the US at that time was less than 15%. The percentage of such households was going down in Korea, but up in the US in that year. The percentage of Korean elders in elder-only households went from just 7% in 1975 to more than 50% just twenty years later. Today, most of those in a multi-generational household live with daughters rather than with their eldest son, as tradition dictates.

In the US, Pew defines multigenerational families as those including two or more adult generations, parent/their parents or grandparents/grandchildren. “The share of the U.S. population living in multigenerational households in 2021 was 18%.” Almost 30% of Americans live entirely alone.

Which brings me back to Florence. I do not recall with certainty whether she had other family. I think maybe she did, but like most older people in American today, she was on her own. It is our Euro-American “tradition” that is not typical of other ethnicities in our country.

“I think many of us come from cultures where putting family and community before yourself is highly valued.”

NBC News

In a high school Social Studies, fellow students and I were asked how responsible we felt about caring for our parents in the future. I am certain I said “not much.” I don’t think most of my classmates agreed. But Gary and I sent money to his mother, and we cared for my own mother daily for years. My attitude as a teenager is likely more common these days.

I think about Florence.

There is a great deal of talk about a coming crisis as the Baby-Boom generation of Americans age. Mine is likely the last generation to grow, but our working-age population is supported by immigration, literally supported by families who believe the elderly should be supported by family. Euro-Americans who arrived here more than a century ago believed the same thing. (I wonder if there was a generational disconnection as people moved from Europe to “begin a new life” on this continent? Or is it all down to putting the self first over everything?)

But this might be changing.

This increase in multigenerational living has been fed by social forces that include rapid growth of the U.S. Asian and Hispanic populations who, along with Black Americans, each are more likely than White Americans to live with extended family, especially if they are immigrants. By age, the highest share in this living arrangement is among young adults, a group that compared with prior generations when they were young generally stays in school longer, postpones or forgoes marriage and delays forming their own households. Among young adults ages 25 to 29, nearly a third (31%) live in multigenerational households, often in their parents’ home. Nearly four-in-ten young men in this age group (37%) are in multigenerational households, as are 26% of similarly aged young women.

Pew Research Center

How we live and who we are as a species have been experiencing a dramatic disconnect over the past couple of centuries. This was driven largely by European powers, by the powerful men in Europe, I think. Business and profit. Wars are not a new notion, but depending on a central power for employment and safety and elder-care is new to us as a species. We were not designed to be so selfish. We did not evolved to consume what is found in the supermarket. (For all the fuss about diet and cutting gluten and grains, sugar and dairy, I wonder why everyone is not vegan? No animal product found in a supermarket is from an animal untainted by 19th and 20th century breeding programs—our ancient forebears did not consume what we now call beef or pork. Though humans have been cooking their food—especially grains—for perhaps 40 thousand years, our ancestors would not even recognize much of what we put on our plates. But that is another rant.)

We did not evolve to live alone or without elderly family members or in subdivisions or even in what we now call cities. We are a gathering species, omnivorous, collaborative, and cooperative. We flourish together. Where did we go wrong?

I used to share an Atlantic essay with my students: “The Selfless Gene” by Olivia Judson documents altruistic behavior not only in human beings but in species as “primitive” as ameba. (Email me and I can send it to you.)

It’s easy to see how evolution can account for the dark streaks in human nature—the violence, treachery, and cruelty. But how does it produce kindness, generosity, and heroism?

—Olivia Judson

Olivia P. Judson is a British evolutionary biologist and science writer educated at Stanford and Oxford. She is a former journalist for The Economist, a former online columnist for The New York Times and has published in a number of other publications, including National Geographic, The Atlantic, and the Financial Times.