Claire Tomalin

Essentially, I spent most of my childhood with my mother and my older sister, and I suppose I had rather a romantic vision of how things might be if there were men around; I saw myself in a country house with six children and a garden. That has never been achieved - and I still regret it.

On the other end of the spectrum, these women who do live long enough to collect Social Security face the challenge of being disproportionately dependent on the Social Security system for retirement income.