How old is too old to try to have a kid? This assumes the female in question is still solidly pre-menopausal. Almost put this in GQ, but figured this is a bit more on the opinion side of the spectrum, tho the views of trained obstetricians would certainly be appreciated.
I would never pass a law or anything, but I’m a little uncomfortable with 47-year old Halle Barry having a kid, if for no other reason than that there is a good chance the mom will be dead by the time the kid is 25. And their kids never have grandparents.
I’d love to see a chart of disabilities of the children based on maternal age.
I don’t believe in absolutes, certainly not in this case.
I’d say it depends upon when menopause hits, plus perhaps how many children the mother’s already had, and maybe also how many she wants.
(Caveat: I’m a youngish adult with no kids.)
I know it’s not quite the same thing, because I’m the father, but my son was born when I was 47, and my parents are still alive and in good health. My son knows his grandparents well, at least for now.
How old is your son?
My youngest sister was born when my mother was 44, and she had both maternal grandparents until she was 15. The average life expectancy of a 47 year old woman is about another 37 years, so a healthy rich 47 year old female is fairly unlikely to be dead by the time her kid is 25.
I’m tempted to agree with your general principle in answering the OP’s question, i.e. someone shouldn’t have children if there’s a relatively high chance they will die before the child reaches adulthood. There wouldn’t be an absolute age for that, because it would vary from person to person. On the other hand, would you tell someone who was in remission from cancer, for example, that they shouldn’t live their life to the fullest and have a child, especially if their spouse was prepared to raise the child on their own if necessary?
my mother was 42 when she had me, my dad 47.
I really wish I had never been born between health issues and growing up knowing everyone I loved would leave be behind at an early age, that odds were I could wind up an orphan
In the modern world a healthy 50 year old woman is highly likely to see a child grow to adulthood. Plenty of grandmothers have raised their grandchildren so it’s not impossible. I’m not recommending it at all, but there are many worse conditions where people are commonly having children and if I was going to object to people having children then older women wouldn’t make the top ten list.
I really think it depends on the overall health and vitality of the parents in question.
My mother was 39 when she had me (unplanned). My father was 42. They were not in the greatest health, mostly relating to weight problems and being heavy smokers. By the time I turned 20, they were both dead.
I think 40 is pushing it, but obviously there’s some bias there. If a 47 year old like Halle Barry, who is in perfect health (AFAIK), active, and energetic wants to have a baby, I see nothing wrong with it.
Ideally, to me, the mother would be in her mid-to-late thirties. But my grandmother had her fourth and last child at forty and took it in stride. (They used to be called “change-of-life” babies.) She was in her early nineties when she died.
I say ideally because when I saw that Steve Martin and his wife had just had his first, and he’s 67 I think, all I could think was—you know that kid is not going to have “regular” memories of his short time with his father. (Probably. I don’t really know.)
But really older parents just aren’t going to be around as long. And aren’t likely to have as much energy as they would like while their kids are small. I don’t think there’s an absolute cut-off but at some point you have to know that somebody else is going end up having to take over the parental role.
But love, and circumstances, are funny. That’s what keeps life interesting.
sidhechaos a nun told me this in the hospital: when your last parent dies, I don’t care how old you are—you become an orphan.
I think that’s when we start learning how to mother ourselves.
Nature dictates that a woman is too old when she no longer produces eggs.
Unfortunately, there is nothing to stop a man at any age having children, but we were never designed to live past 60 or 70, and in the past would probably have been dead at 40.
Yeah, Nature is pretty good at setting the limt for a woman’s age at becoming a mother but significantly less good at setting a limit for men. So, I think a focus on men is the more interesting conversation.
I would love to have kids, but I have pretty much decided I won’t.
If I achieved financial stability tomorrow, and I met the love of my life tomorrow, and we gave ourselves three years to develop a foundation for a strong partnership, then I’d like to have kids. That would be: me (a man) having his first kid at age 41.
If I don’t achieve financial stability tomorrow and I don’t meet the love of my life tomorrow, then I can only see allowing myself another 4 years plus 3 years to grow the relationship with the mystery woman. That would put me at 45.
63 at high school graduation which, for me, is the absolute top end of the spectrum in terms of what I’d consider.
I’ve always loved kids, have always seen myself having kids, have for the past 4 years been helping my best friend raise her kids. But, at this point, I’m pretty much resolved that it is not going to happen for me.
P.S. I think everyone is misinterpreting Sateryn76’s comment:
I’m quite sure Sateryn76’s saying it is unlikely that the children of the children of the 47 year old are unlikely to know their grandmother. ie Halle Berry’s baby starts a family at age 30 at which time Halle Berry is 78 and will then have to live healthily into her 90s if her grandbaby is going to grow up knowing a grandmother.
Don’t underestimate the impact you can have on a child. They don’t have to spring from your loins to spring from your arms out into the world. Your time, effort and reliabilty may be among the best memories of their lives.
I don’t see how this is really relevant- I never knew either of my grandmothers, can’t say it did me any harm. My mother was still in her 20s when she had me, and my Dad was only early 30s.
Are we saying orphans or those estranged from their parents shouldn’t have children?
My parents were “average” age at my birth. But one grandfather died within a week of my death & the other was long deceased. My father died when I was four & I rarely met his mother, since I was raised in another part of the country. Yes, it would be cozy & symmetrical if everybody had two parents & four grandparents for many years–but that’s never been the case. Also, let’s stop having wars that let people meet & fall in love with non-neighbors–& kill off parents early…
The timing of children is up to the parents. (Although there’s also chance–one grandmother’s youngest was a surprise!) Good health, prosperity & a supportive family definitely help. Of course, parents can also be too young–or, at least, too immature…
What’s the basis for this question? Is there an underlying assumption that there is some horrible aspect to life with older parents? If so, I submit that it ain’t necessarily so.
Some kids grow up without ever knowing their grandparents. Some kids lose their parents in one way or another and become wards of the state, typically raised in foster homes. Some kids never experience doing certain things with their parents. Yet any number of people who had childhoods devoid of this, that, or the other grow up to be functional adults with reasonably happy/productive/fulfilling/whatever lives. Kids are remarkably resilient and adaptable.
My concern wouldn’t be kids who have old parents, or even no parents. My concern is kids who have lousy parents. I suspect there are more adults with significantly troubled lives who had toxic parenting than who had old or missing parents.
I don’t see how one could even contempate an absolute age limit on becoming parents that could be shown to reasonably apply to all people and all situations. Whatever the concern is here, there’s probably a much better question to ask than how old is too old to have a child.
No, most people who lived to adulthood have always lived well past 40, and there have always been some who made it into their late 70s or 80s (although death rates do start to spike upwards in the mid-60s or so). The reason why historical life expectancies are so low is that there were huge numbers of people who died in infancy or early childhood, plus a fair number of women who died from childbirth complications, and people of both sexes who died in epidemics. The average 40-year-old certainly wouldn’t have been expecting to drop dead at any moment – and many of them were still having children, it would just have been their eighth or tenth child instead of their first or second.
For maternal age, I’d say 45 makes me uncomfortable, 50 is the absolute limit. (I’m not crazy about Tony Randall fathering a child at whatever age he was, but, as unfair as it is, there IS a difference.)
Personal opinion only - I think 35 should be the cutoff age.