I dont think there should be a number where its wrong. The most important thing is the stability of the couple having the child, will they be lovimg stable parents and provide a good environment for the child. I knew someone in grade school, his parents were in their mid twenties when they had him and when he was about ten,his dad passed away of leukemia. I knew a girl who had an older dad, he was about 86 when she was in high school, and doing relatively good considering. He would sometimes come to school and pick her up etc and since he retired by the tme she was in preschool, he was very involved in her life.
so a number to me, is not the issue
I take issue with the idea that an 80 year old parent to someone who is 20 or 25 is okay. When you’re 80, you’re facing end of life issues, have problems with physical and mental stability, and are very close to the one thing that will start the hard and scary processes where you cannot take can of yourself. Not to mention that parenting isn’t over when your kid is 18 - I lost my mother at 21, and while it wasn’t the end of the world, I can’t even begin to tell you the literally thousands of things, from mundane to serious, I’ve needed to get her advice on. Now that my Dad is gone at 35, I have no parents, and my kids have no grandparents.
I just have an issue with people putting it off (leaving aside fertility problems). I saw an interview with some woman who put off kids until her 40s, and she said something like “I may not have the energy of a young parent, but I have the wisdom.” Well, kids don’t need the wisdom when they’re toddlers, they need the energy. Wisdom becomes important later, when they’re adults, and if you’re dead, well, too bad for them, I guess.
It just seems like so many people put it off until their thirties or later, because they have financial and career goals they’re trying to meet, or they’re not ready to give up their own lives and freedom for their kids. You can drive a baby in a Ford as well as a Lexus, and if you rob your adult children of a good and wise parent as they live their adult lives, that’s pretty selfish. I don’t see what’s wrong with sacrificing your younger life raising your kids, and then enjoying your later years with kids and grand kids, with stability and the additional income that comes with being older.
I know this won’t be a popular opinion. But there’s a certain selfishness that I see in most parents that have children later in life, and a lot of rationalization for their choice, like that woman I spoke of above.
My grandma had my uncle at 47 - entirely naturally, she mistook pregnancy for the menopause at first. She died two years ago, when he was 41, and after meeting his first-born.
My uncle is a surgeon btw, as well as a hale and hearty 6’ marathon runner and triathlete.
Not saying an advanced maternal age is a good thing, just that it’s not always a bad one either.
It seems a little presumptious to say that you “take issue with” older parents, because its not your issue in the first place. Your issue is when you decide to, not when they decide to. Besides, it certainly was not an issue even for them, so why should it be for anyone else. The kid I knew in grade school lost his dad in his thirties, when he was in grade school. The girl i knew in high school had her dad still around and relatively active in his eighties. I think she prospered in ways she would not have been likely to with a young dad. As for wisdom that comes with age, I dont think its benefit can be emphasized enough. And just because a mom is young doesnt mean she will enthusiastically play with her children, or be more patient. In fact alot of times younger parents can have issues such as being immature and selfish that make them more prone to laziness or impatience.
Poor phrasing, I guess.
Your friend with the 80 year old dad - is she ready to handle the issues that come with an incapacitated parent at any minute? Mature enough to handle possibly emptying a bed pan or fighting a dementia sufferer over car keys? How about the hours and days she’ll have to spend dealing with those tremendously hard and uncomfortable problems at a time when she should be trying to figure out how to be an adult, and with no parental direction? You didn’t say anything about her mom, so she may have been younger, but for kids with both parents in their 40s or 50s at birth, that’s an awful lot to dump on a kid in their twenties who haven’t even fully mentally developed and still need lots of guidance.
In regard to wisdom, yes wisdom is great. But the wisdom that is needed for a toddler is more along the lines of “don’t hit people - it hurts them” whereas the Big Lessons of life don’t really come up until they’re in their teens or later. But the energy to run after a toddler, wake up nights for years and still have energy for the exploration of the world is a lot for a young parent, let alone one who’s older.
I guess I just wonder what the thought process is for people who wait for mid-thirties or older to have kids. Is it career? Maybe getting that corner office isn’t as important in the long run as having kids who have parents who are around for their adulthood. Money? Maybe you don’t need to upgrade every time there’s a new iPhone. Party time? Just be careful, because those late nights pale in comparison to, say, sharing the movie Beetlejuice is with your 10 year old son for the first time.
Certainly, people wait because they have fertility problems when they’re younger, or haven’t found a good mate. But women have dealt with these problems for years - I don’t think we’ll ever find a solution to the problem of moving forward in life in terms of career versus child rearing. But I think the answer is that you just have to give up a tremendous amount of freedom and potential to have kids, and those who try for both take away things that are important to those kids when they’re older and subject them to hard things when they’re too young to deal with them well. It’s a Me vs. Them problem, and older parents pick themselves.
I know lots of people have parents who die young or have terrible disabilities, but shouldn’t we be working toward an ideal instead of using them as mis-guided lessons and assuming they’ll be okay?
Cecil’s Advocate (huh, funny Autocorrect!), but aren’t you advocating that that ‘kid’ in their twenties should be aiming to be a parent themselves (so as not to be a parent in their 40s and 50s), and in fact would be making a whole heap of complex decisions and caring for a helpless individual anyway? Absolutely it’s emotionally different to watching the decline of a parent rather than the triumphs of a child growing, but the situation for that child will be that it was ever thus. And if not the 20s, or the 40s or the 50s, you’re leaving a very small window for people to make parenthood happen, whether or not it may be the most convenient thing.
As to the OP, menopause for women (and I have a friend for whom this was early stage in her 30s, so this can be earlier than we’ve discussed), and probably 47ish for a man.
If anything, I would be more concerned about young parents who oftentimes lack the maturity, resources or parenting skills to do a really decent job of it. There is a whole culture of young parents having kids,who dont have the essentials to raise a child in the first place. Grandparents end up in alot of these cases taking on the parents role and so those kids who are just as or more attached to the grandparents may have to deal with the same issues your raising
I have an issue with people who make silly judgments about other people’s choices myself.
I’ve been a young parent and an old one and I have no less energy than my youngest child’s friends’ parents. I’m a professional and do quite a lot of volunteer work, but spend as much or more time with my girl than do her friends’ parents. My kid is a healthy, a gifted student, and a happy child who lives with both parents and has a great relationship with her older sibs.
Which part of this makes me selfish and a bad example?
Let me preface this by stating clearly that I’m not defensive about being an older first time parent; I wish I’d done this sooner so that I could have more kids, and more time with her. I’m full of regrets. However…
I have tons of energy. My husband and I are both athletic, as are my nearing 70 parents. Dad ran his last marathon at 60. They only retired so they can play more golf and expand the garden, and I see no reason why my life won’t follow the same pattern of good physical health. Assuming this little ten month old girl in my lap follows suit, we’ll happily be coaching sports and playing in the yard until she leaves home.
Our nephew had an unplanned baby a couple months after we did. Both 22 year old parents graduated at the top of their class and have loving, very involved family in the neighboring houses. They should be good, attentive, thoughtful parents. But no. They are gamers, lethargic, and significantly overweight; the father is diabetic and sleeps a lot, and is perpetually nursing some virus or bug. The only time their six month old sees the sun is when I stop by and take her outdoors. The baby spends her waking hours parked in front of the blaring television and strapped in her swing for hours while her parents game online. That baby’s extended family has taken on the responsibility of enrichment and take turns rescuing her from disinterested, self-absorbed parents who don’t respond to advice, guilt, lectures, or appreciate help with the baby. The baby is well-fed, warm and dry, and that’s about the only good thing that can be said about her life with these immature, selfish parents.
A lot of times, it’s about finding basic stability- a reliable job, a partner you can trust, a stable place to live, and being mentally prepared to settle down.
You have a stereotype about chasing the corner office, but in reality the job market has changed dramatically, and it’s not unusual to spend your twenties moving from job to job. Having the kind of job that you can expect to hold even five or six years in the future is now unusual, and it takes time to either find one of those or to reach the level of skill that you can make sure to provide a stable home despite the ups and downs of the job market. In my 20s, I never spent more than two years in the same place, and often I was changing houses every year to six months. That’s not a good environment for a child.
Of course, in the past, women often didn’t do any of this. Middle class people often had single earner families. That’s no longer possible (and often not desirable) for many families.
Anyway, I’m about three times healthier and more energetic in my 30s than I was in my 20s. I spent much of my 20s moody and restless, but at this point I’ve got a lot more direction and enough perspective that I am able to provide stability. Furthermore, I’ve gotten over my “I’m invincible stage,” and it turns out that I have a lot more energy when I work out and eat well than I did in my 20s, when Doritos and Mountain Dew was considered a balanced diet. Every woman in my family has lived into her late 80s, so I feel the odds are good for me.
I would also add to this assessment that medical costs have really changed things. It’s not just about having a stable job, it’s about stable access to health care and the savings needed to cover the premiums.
I’m a teacher. It’s as common of a middle class job as there is. Having a baby cost me about $6K in medical expenses after my medical insurance paid its share: basically, I had to pay two deductibles and then two out of pocket maximums. That’s perfectly standard in this day and age for normal health insurance. On top of that, I do not get paid maternity leave; I had to work ten full years to save up enough days that it was all paid. Had I taken six weeks off my first years teaching, much of it would have been unpaid, and because of the weirdness of teacher salaries, each missed day is -1.3 days out of your pay. So yeah, it’s not about waiting until your career is fully formed so that you can keep paying for the marina fees after the baby is born.
ISTM that medical coverage used to be better for maternity care: a generation ago, it seems like insured people didn’t pay those kinds of fees, even adjusted for inflation. That, plus the punch of unpaid leave (there is this MYTH out there that maternity leave is usually covered) make the costs of having a baby often beyond what prudent, sensible people can afford.
I think anything past 40 is pushing it. That said … unplanned pregnancy at 45? Have the baby and enjoy.
How old is too old to become a father?
In July my 63 year old brother and his 43 year old wife had a son. She wanted one more child in addition to the three they already had.
We are, however, no longer fully constrained by nature. A woman getting pregnant at Halle Berry’s age, for instance, is very likely not using her own eggs.
Says who? She may very well be using her own eggs. IIRC, from reading one of the celebrity news articles, she was not expecting it. Like the previous poster, she probably thought mid-40s was enough birth control. Turns out it is not.
I have a cousin whose mom had him way past 40. She is still alive and kicking, with lots of grandchildren from the older kids. He is past 40 himself and still a bachelor.
Certainly it’s possible, and I have no knowledge of Berry’s or any other woman’s particular case. Statistically, though, natural conception at that age is really rare.
Hmmm, I doubt there were many 60yo cavemen around, and we were cavemen a lot longer than we were “civilized”.
Up till recent times, historically speaking, poor nutrition, appalling living conditions, overwork, lack of health care, warfare and disease would have wiped out most people at a relatively early age.
Even in London in the 1950s most dockworkers died at an early age. That didn’t stop till air quality improved.
A poster in this thread conceived at 45 with no intervention. I conceived at 41 on the first try with no intervention. Carrying a high risk pregnancy to term after age 40 isn’t a popular choice, but conception beyond age 40 can and does happen. We may have extended our fertile period thanks to modern medicine, dental care and access to far better nutrition (for those who choose to follow a healthy diet). Most women over age 46 aren’t in Berry’s spectacular physical condition, and most at that age are trying to avoid conception. The stats may be skewed by a few limiting factors that have nothing to do with the age of the eggs.
It can be really simple. In my own case, I didn’t meet my wife until I was in my 40s. So there was nobody to have children with. until then.
We each have only one life to live, so we have to live it the best we can. If circumstances are such that having children late in life is what happens, well, that’s life. I don’t know anybody who had children late for a trivial reason. Usually it was for serious reasons like lack of a partner or a steady job.
Age matters, but it is always a taking a chance.