Same. I’m nearly 30 and still living the bachelor life, whereas my parents had me when they were younger than I am now. It’s really hard not to think you’re screwing up somehow when that happens. It’s a little gratifying to hear of successful older parents.
I’m in the “It’s none of my business” crowd. But my grandfather did not have my father until he was in his 50s, and I’m awfully glad he did.
How old is too old for a woman to adopt?
There is my answer.
This. I’ve known a few people who who had parents who were in retirement homes when they were in middle school. I know one kid who was about 13 their father died of old age.
I knew one girl who’s mother and father were very elderly and had full gray hair. They dressed her like an old lady and were not with it at all. She smelt like an old person. I’m fairly certain (I went to school with her from third to 8th grrade), when she reached puberty she was wearing her mothers hand me downs. It was obvious they were on a fixed income and couldn’t afford to properly take care of her. I often wonder what she’s up to and what became of her. (I don’t do facebook.)
I would say 45 and up. At that time you’re too close too retirement/being a senior citizen.
When I started work, one of the girls who was there (my age) was a little different. Anyway, we used to have drinks after work and she told me her father was 72 when she was born. I have no idea if it was true although I never had reason to doubt it. I also have no idea of the age gap between husband and wife.
That to me is far too old.
If you ain’t gonna be there when the kid is 21, forget about it.
I think it really does depend on what kind of stock you come from. My grandmothers were running their businesses at full-tilt into their 80’s. My grandfathers never told anyone about their conditions till it was too late but still made it to 75; one died of a heart attack that could have easily been held off till 85 by blood thinners and a bypass if he’d told anyone his damn chest was hurting. Older parents exist the higher in income and education you’ve go, the circles you run in essentially. Me and my younger brother (mom had us at 31 and 35, dad at 41 and 45) never felt we had old parents because other parents were their age. The youngest brother did feel our Dad was physically old (at 49) but was glad he could keep up with other fathers. When he moved to a prep school where he was older but still fell within the median 50%. Their sports team took a picture with their trophy and the fathers and my dad - I shit you not - looked the best. Others had giant man boobs or guts or saw the ravages of alcohol, looking pasty and sickly and yet there he was, eligible for Medicare and 15 years older than some of them but in the best physical shape of the lot.
notfrommensa mentioned her mom going gray prematurely - mine went gray at 35 but after ten or so strands went she dyed it and dyes it to this day 20 years later. Dad was using Rogaine from his 40’s and both of them exercise vigorously to keep away the old age. They’ve done a good job - they each look 10 years younger by holding themselves up to high standards.
My dad was just about 60 when I was born, and he’s still going strong at 86. Although, I’d rather not have kids after 50, since there’s no guarantee that I’ll be as healthy as my dad at 70+.
My dad had my sister, brother and I while still military but after he stopped being in combat and started being exclusively chairborne [though he did get his bronze and silver stars while he was a combat type] and he was um, 38 years old for my sister. We were all late mother babies but I don’t really see a problem with it, she had a nanny for us until I was 9 and my brother was 11 [my sister died of leukemia in 66, right after we moved back from Germany. She was a guinea pig for cortisone.]
I really don’t think there is a too old for fatherhood, though I do agree that youth is no guarantee that your father will be around until you are an adult. Accidents happen, and acrimonious divorces happen.
Seems like two cases here: adoption improves the child’s life, and a few years with dad are better than none.
But natural children? I think 50 is really pushing it. I was in college yet when my parents retired, and it made life awkward. Think about offspring just entering a career when you die. They’ve got to take time off for grieving and to make arrangements. It could kibosh the career of someone who’s the junior at a firm. If the kid is in a McJob, kiss that job goodbye.
I’m not wording this very eloquently, but I wish my parents had had me a few years–even five–earlier.
That’s kind of a crazy answer, though - you shouldn’t have kids when you’re older because they might have a hard time taking off for your funeral? That one day?
I read an article in the Wall Street Journal just the other day about how the popular perception that men are just fine creating babies until they die isn’t exactly correct. They can physically impregnate a woman for essentially their entire lives barring some medical problem, but as an earlier poster said there is strong evidence that just like for older moms older dads have a much greater risk of fathering a child with serious disabilities.
For me personally, as a man in my 50s, I would never want children now.
A lot of people seem to think having children in your 30s is ideal, because you are “settled.” I actually think from the perspective of the parent, early 20s or mid 20s is the best time to have children. There is never a time in your life when a child will not disrupt things. My father and mother had children starting in their early 20s and while my mother was a traditional 50s era house wife my father was very successful in his career–having children young didn’t really limit his potential in life.
What it did do is allowed him to truly enjoy the years from 48-65 or so, he retired in his mid-50s and unlike a person with a teenage child at that age him and my mom were able to travel extensively and do many of the things they had always dreamed of doing. If you don’t get that time until you are past 65 or even 70 then you may be very infirm and unable to enjoy it, or you may not live to that age at all. I think from the perspective of the parent there are massive benefits in the late-40s early 50s to having had your children young. Just as you are reaching the peak of your financial security you’ve already gotten your kids out of High School and potentially college.
My husband’s father had him when he was 22. My husband just had his second child at 44. My husband’s father is a fucking asshole who has not spoken to his son in eight years because of petty bullshit. He deliberately broken my husband’s heart in ways that can never be healed. A jerk is always going to be a jerk no matter when he fathers a child. My husband could father a child at 88 and he’d still be a better father than his father.
Chances are your parents may not both go in their sleep, overnight, after being perfectly healthy. Just watching my mother deal with her own dying parents after the kids finally flew the coop was pretty awful. For a child to have to start taking time off work or university to help care for a sick or dying parent, perhaps when they’re planning on taking maternity or paternity leave (assuming they get any), or when they would otherwise be traveling or moving cities for their career or relationship, is quite a lot to ask.
Obviously this could happen to anyone, and a parent could get sick at any time, but the odds increase with age. I also agree with those who pointed out that whatever we define as ‘childhood,’ the kids are going to be around past their 18th birthday (now more than ever, perhaps).
ETA And I can’t imagine it’s a walk in the park for any younger woman dealing with kids and an aging husband at the same time!
My dad was 64 when I was born, 65 for my sister. It’s definitely different having a dad several generations removed, but I never once thought he was “too old”.
I think a dad should stand at least a statistical chance of seeing a kid graduate high school.
Personally I think post mortem pushes the envelope.
Widow wins access to dead husband’s sperm
For those of us who are alive at the time of conception, I’d go with having reasonable expectations of seeing them graduate i.e. early 20’s and capable of being financially independent, which puts 50 about the upper limit.
That’s true if one is adopting a high-risk child that’s otherwise unlikely to be adopted into a stable family.
But if one is adopting a healthy child without any apparent problems (as my wife and I did), the reality is that if you hadn’t adopted that kid, some other couple with the resources to navigate their way through the adoption process would have done so, and they’d likely have been just as good at this parenting gig as you were. In fact, they probably are demonstrating the truth of that right now, just with some other kid.
So for such children, being adopted by one of us geezers isn’t a “a few years with dad are better than none” case. It’s more a “if you don’t expect to be able to raise this kid to adulthood as well as anyone else could, then step aside and let someone else do it” situation. There are a lot more parents wanting to adopt healthy infants and toddlers than there are healthy infants and toddlers being put up for adoption.
I guess it all depends. But just for starters, the life expectancy of a 50-year-old male in the U.S. is another 29 years. And from there, life circumstances play a nontrivial role in aging and mortality: 60 year olds (male and female combined) in the top half of the income distribution have a life expectancy of 25.4 years; it’s 19.6 years for those in the bottom half. (scroll down to Table 4, about halfway down). And then there’s your own family history: my parents are still doing pretty well in their mid-80s, and my grandparents were also long-lived.
All things considered, I figure that sometime around when the Firebug turns 30, he’ll start checking in on my wife and me a bit more often just to make sure we’re OK. And the likelihood is that we will be OK for at least a few more years. I think we may have been getting close to our limit when we adopted him when I was 55 years old, but we weren’t right up against it. It really all depends.