老龄化社会中的失独老年人：监护选择困境与社会孤岛效应

Elderly Individuals Who Have Lost Their Only Child in an Aging Society: The Dilemma of Guardianship Selection and the Social Isolation Effect

摘要: 在快速老龄化的中国社会，失独老年人群体面临独特的监护选择困境。失去唯一子女后，传统家庭监护链条断裂，而意定监护等社会化监护途径在实践中难以有效覆盖这一群体。失独老年人监护选择中的“社会孤岛”效应表现为三重维度——关系孤岛、制度孤岛与信任孤岛。关系孤岛源于家庭支持网络的不可逆断裂及关系重建的结构性障碍；制度孤岛体现为意定监护在信息获取、操作成本和信任建立方面的可及性障碍；信任孤岛则反映为失独老年人社会信任资本的耗竭与“泛化性不信任”的形成。这三重孤岛相互强化，使失独老年人陷入“既无家庭监护可依，又难用社会监护替代”的困境。走出社会孤岛的关键在于建构失独群体内部互助网络，并辅以社区支持系统的嵌入与政策资源的配套。老龄化社会的监护体系建设不能仅依赖法律制度的完善，更需要在社会层面培育信任资源、重建社会支持网络。

Abstract: In the rapidly aging Chinese society, the group of elderly people who have lost their only child faces unique dilemmas in guardianship choices. After losing their only child, the traditional family guardianship chain breaks, and socialized guardianship approaches such as designated guardianship struggle to effectively cover this group in practice. The “social island” effect in the guardianship choices of elderly people who have lost their only child manifests in three dimensions: relational island, institutional island, and trust island. The relational island stems from the irreversible break of family support networks and structural barriers to relationship reconstruction; the institutional island is reflected in the accessibility barriers of designated guardianship in terms of information acquisition, operational costs, and trust establishment; and the trust island reflects the depletion of social trust capital and the formation of “generalized distrust” among elderly people who have lost their only child. These three islands reinforce each other, trapping elderly people who have lost their only child in a dilemma of “having no family guardianship to rely on and finding it difficult to replace it with social guardianship”. The key to escaping the social island lies in constructing an internal mutual aid network among the elderly people who have lost their only child, supplemented by the embedding of community support systems and supporting policy resources. The construction of a guardianship system in an aging society cannot rely solely on the improvement of legal systems; it also requires cultivating trust resources and rebuilding social support networks at the social level.