How old is too old to have kids?

Great Debates
21

I have a somewhat older dad. He was 36 when his first kid (me) was born, and something like 48 when my youngest sister was born. He’s also an unusually vital and active dude; you don’t have to squint to hard to mistake him for late 40s/early 50s, and I’d wager that he’s in better physical shape as a sixtysomething than most guys half his age. I don’t feel like my siblings have missed out on any “dad stuff” because their dad was too old.

Still, it does kind of suck to think that my youngest siblings’ kids won’t remember their grandpa as anything other than a frail old man, provided he’s not already dead or incapacitated completely, which is not at all unlikely. :frowning: :frowning:

But you know, I’m planning on having my first kid at ~27 and there’s no guarantee that I’ll live to see them grow up, much less my grandchildren. And I do know I wouldn’t trade my own dad for any other one, regardless of how much younger he was. :slight_smile:

22

So for all those who say it’s unethical or irresponsible to have kids when you’re too old, what about all those people who have kids when they can’t feed them? Or when they’re alcoholic? Or poor? Or abusive? Or homeless? Or too stupid or young to raise them correctly? Or, or, or, a whole slew of worse things than being an old parent? There are very few people who can raise children in ideal conditions and I’m pretty surprised at some of the ageism expressed here. Age is no different a disadvantage than all the other disadvantages people bring into their children’s worlds. If age brings wealth and wisdom, that advantage offsets disadvantages. Parents die at young ages too.

I hear “I need to feed my family” as an excuse for all kinds of things, well wouldn’t it be more ethical for someone not to have kids if they can’t support them? A few old people having one kid isn’t going to hurt anything, people having 10 kids apiece and then not being able to support them is never questioned as being ethical or not.

Just playing devil’s advocate here…

23

So for all those who say it’s unethical or irresponsible to have kids when you’re too old, what about all those people who have kids when they can’t feed them? Or when they’re alcoholic? Or poor? Or abusive? Or homeless? Or too stupid or young to raise them correctly? Or, or, or, a whole slew of worse things than being an old parent? There are very few people who can raise children in ideal conditions and I’m pretty surprised at some of the ageism expressed here. Age is no different a disadvantage than all the other disadvantages people bring into their children’s worlds. If age brings wealth and wisdom, that advantage offsets disadvantages. Parents die at young ages too.

A few old people having one kid isn’t going to hurt anything, people having 10 kids apiece and then not being able to support them is never questioned as being ethical or not. More often its: “oh that poor man has to support his very large family, let’s give him a break” instead of “why did he choose to have all those kids”… Why the double standard?

Just playing devil’s advocate here…

24

Correction: it hasn’t been questioned IN THIS THREAD. That’s because having families that are too large for you to support is not what this thread is about.

I speak only for myself but I’m sure a great many will agree with me when I say that I have major problems with people having kids

but this thread is specifically about age. The above would be roughly akin to saying “for those of you who have problems with people driving under the influence of marijuana, why don’t you have problems with people driving drunk or people who drive when they’re legally blind or have a history of accidents and no insurance?” It’s not a valid assumption that to have a problem with one negates having problems with the others.

The ideal parents are those who can reasonably expect to be able to provide financial and emotional support and guidance and live long enough to see the child in college. Ideally there should be two parents to share the financial and emotional burden and provide the child with two role models.

As always, on the individual level all bets are off. I’m sure that Clint Eastwood is far more active hands-on father with the kids he fathered in his late 60s than the much younger Michael J. Fox (whose physical disability would limit his involvement with the children born in his 30s), and again using Eastwood there’s a lot more reason to believe he’ll be around when the kids are grown [given that his mother is almost 100 and in good health and Clint still exercises and keeps healthy] than there is for, say, someone like John Candy [who was a morbidly obese smoker with a stressful schedule]). On the individual basis a particular 68 year old great-grandmother and her 72 year old lesbian partner may be far better choices to raise a child than her 23 year old granddaughter and said granddaughter’s substance abusing boyfriend. For that matter, 23 year old granddaughter’s twin sister, a 23 year old single mother of five living on public assistance in a dilapidated trailer may be providing a far happier than healthier environment to her kids than her 35 year old upper middle class yuppie uncle and aunt are providing to theirs in a home with heated pool and media room are providing for their kids across town. That’s why social workers inspect the individual homes rather than go on basic descriptions. But on the faceless, abstract level with all other factors being equal (which they never are and really can’t be), younger parents are arguably if not provably better.

25

PS- My closest friend has a sister who is a 26 year old high school dropout (though she did managed to get admitted to a “graduate school” in photography last year [not a misprint] and of course flunked out immediately at the cost of several thou). She has no money, no skills, no transportation other than city buses/trains, her rent is perpetually late (sometimes by months) and largely due to her immaturity, she has STDs (not the “big one” at least, but it’s a matter of time), she cannot keep a job for more than a few months (due largely to her attitude), and she’s three months pregnant. The father is penniless meth addict (to the best of my knowledge Friend’s Sister (FS) isn’t into hard drugs, though I could certainly be wrong). Baby-daddy is allegedly in a recovery program and clean (save of STDs) but even if he is he’s already the father of three kids by two women, none of whom he supports, and already broken up with FS, so there’s no chance he’s gonna help with bills or anything else.

Here’s the hell of it: this was not an unplanned pregnancy. FS has been wanting to get pregnant for a while. This is AT LEAST her fifth pregnancy- she’s had two unplanned pregnancies that ended in abortion and three planned or unplanned that ended in miscarriage. She wants “a sign from God that I matter” and somehow that equals baby to her, plus she doesn’t see continual miscarriages as a sign from God that “now’s not a good time” (don’t look for logic). She did consider aborting this child and even went to have the procedure but an abortion cannot be performed on a woman with her particular STDs until it’s been medicated into remission. While waiting for the medication she’s changed her mind.

This child will be born as Damned From Day One as John Calvin’s worst case scenario. Public assistance is absolutely mandatory as this girl (woman, rather, for while she has the mind of a self-pitying teenager 26 is adult) doesn’t have the proverbial piss pot and doesn’t have any conceivable way of getting one anytime soon.
I don’t think she has a clue how much work or commitment or money a baby is. I’m well aware that many have come from single moms and or welfare backgrounds and done well, but they’re by far the exceptions and usually (Oprah comes to mind) it’s because they had a parent (in Oprah’s case her father) who cared enough to kick their butts and kiss their heads, whichever was more needed at the time.
I have begged her to put it up for adoption, even using pitches to appeal to her own self interest (i.e. meet a wealthy childless couple and let them pay for everythign and possibly even give her money for a car or what-not; hell, she lives in a big city with a huge gay population, find a male gay couple and they’ll probably let her be a part of the kid’s life so it’ll have a mommy) but nope. She wants this baby, it’s her little sign from God. So if not the Anti-Christ this will probably at least be one of his Playground Apostles (if she doesn’t miscarry, which frankly and evilly I hope she will because it would be best for everybody including taxpayers and, I honestly believe, the kid).

The reason I mention this is that it’s not abstract but a real person and a real potential person. There’s no doubt in my mind that the average 72 year old financially comfortable retired used car baron and his social climbing icy 32 year old trophy wife with silicon implants, living in a bland McMansion and with plans to lucratively divorce her rich old husband once she has trust funded kids named after a law firm (“Hailey, McKay and Doyle, come get in the Suburban now! If you’re late meeting your new stepbrothers Warner, Hemsley and Britt for lacrosse practice we’re not stopping for latte afterwards!”) would be infinitely superior to a child born by FS. Whether a pack of wolves raising the kid would be better than FS raising would require a site visit to their den and an innoculation record before making a judgment. But neither rich old man/ice cold trophy wife or wolf pack are ideal, just better than FS.
What I’d far rather see is FS’s baby raised by two loving parents who want a child, are ready for the emotional and financial commitment, and for whom the odds are good that they will both be there when the kid is a young adult starting life on his own.