It’s bad enough disappointing one parent without willingly subjecting yourself to further opprobrium. You’d think that after years of negative feedback and unfavourable reviews, your average thirty-something would be glad of a bit of peace, glad to be away from the withering put-downs and sniping comments.

However, as its population ages at an even more alarming rate than our own, China has developed a unique way to provide solace and companionship to those entering their golden years.

For a competitive price, Chinese pensioners can ‘rent’ an adult child. For as little as €25 an elderly man or woman can hire out a young adult (usually in their 20s or 30s) for up to three hours. Unlike home help or medical assistants, these companions aren’t expected to tend to the physical needs of their ‘clients’, instead they busy themselves with chats, chores, and effectively mimicking the son/daughter these people never had.

Given its history, and a government policy which restricted parents from having more than one child between the years of 1979-2015, it’s not wholly surprising that the some 224 million Chinese people over the age of 65 are in need of friendship, in need of a connection of any type.

From an Irish perspective, it’s clear we are trending in the same way. According to figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) last week, 16 pc of our population are over the age of 65. Meanwhile, birth rates continue to fall, with the number of Irish people under the age of 14 at its lowest in 12 years.

When I was growing up, my grandmother operated an open-door policy at her home; you just went round the side and in the back-door. She wouldn’t know who she had until you stood there before her in the living-room (although even then she might reel off the names of several, inferior grandchildren before she finally clocked it was me).

With 13 children, 30-odd grandchildren, and an array of other friends and associates, she was best served leaving the latch off the door – at her age, with her arthritis, she would have been worn out going back and forth to let everyone in.

Yet, those 13 children inevitably had smaller families, none of them straying anywhere near double-digits and, in turn, the grandchildren have done the same. Now those children peer hopefully out the window when they hear a car pulling into the avenue, sinking back into their chairs when they realise it’s going somewhere else.

And, as the generations pass, the children of the children who went before will be lucky to have any visitors, to welcome anyone over the threshold for a chat about nothing in particular.

It may sound like I’m working my way towards advertising my own wares, using this platform to inform the older men of Ireland (the Chinese operate a strictly same-sex system) that I’m ready for chats about the hurling and trips to Tesco for a pre-agreed fee. But nothing could be the further from the truth.

I would be a terrible companion. If there were a star-rating system I would receive consecutive one-star reviews until the agency politely advised me to pursue a different career, one where I didn’t have to pretend to be sociable.

However, if there’s an elderly man out there who enjoys the company of grumpy, opinionated, impatient, irrational, feckless men in their 40s then please contact my editor for further details. This is far too important a role for someone like me – I can’t be entrusted with my own mental wellbeing, never mind that of a man scourged with loneliness.

No, I’m planning ahead. Towards my own dotage. In 30, 40 years time I’m going to need one of these polite, helpful adult children to listen to my irrational opinions, to smile pleasantly as I grumble through the topics of the day, and irritably search for the set of keys that “I had just a second ago”.

But will we embrace this new form of assistance? Or, more likely, will we be all Irish about it and refuse to accept we’re feeling lonely and isolated?

By then, the pubs will be gone completely, so that source of socialising will be obsolete. We’ll be too old and hideous to go into coffee shops and the security at the local gym will turn us away lest we distract the young people from their exertions. Obviously, we’ll all be childless; the cost of raising a person in this country proving prohibitive. Our friends will all be living in Australia and America. Our third cousin, who we saw at the last of the funerals a few years previous, might ring us once a fortnight, and our neighbours might call in occasionally, but, for the most part, we’ll live a solitary existence.

Pay for an adult to come and visit us, though? Pay for human interaction, for the joy of conversation and companionship? We would rather die of loneliness. Which, coincidentally, is probably what will happen.

If this doesn’t scare you, and if you’ve still got time on your side, then there is a surefire way to avoid this sombre demise. Forget about your rent, your mortgage, the cost of fuel, the cost of living, the slow, stalking fear of ending up homeless and penniless. Just get to procreating.

Nanny Bourke is the prime example of how effective a measure this is – although, it should be stated that she, and women like her, had little choice when it came to accumulating enough children to field a soccer team with two subs – that woman never spent a lonely day in her life.

It’s a bit different nowadays, you have to bring children to activities, talk to them, make sure their feelings are okay, but if you skimp and save on the drama classes, the ballet, and the Cúl Camps, let them play outside on their own on the weekends, there’s a possibility they might reach working age without being claimed by the social services.

And sure once they start earning all you have to do is post up in the living-room, stick the telly on, take the latch off the back door, and enjoy the company.