What is too old for parenthood?

Great Debates
21

What if the parents are young but have a potentially lethal disease? Should they not have children?

Depends on how you define “potentially lethal.”

A test showing the gene for breast cancer does NOT mean you will get it. Last I read only 10% of the women that actually get breast cancer have the gene for it.

If you have, say, an inoperable malignant brain tumor, and you’re a man and decide you have to spread your seed … yeah, I’d say it’d be wrong for said man to get his wife pregnant just so he can “live on” when he knows he’ll be dead in 3 months.

22

:eek:

23

I gotta say I disagree with lel’s statement as well.

My father is not dead (AFAIK), but I have never met him, nor will I ever. My mom left him when I was 6 months old.

Growing up without a dad was tough but I wouldn’t say that I wish I was never born because of it.

24

Huh, I didn’t think it was so rare to wish that one had never been born as opposed to losing a parent at a young age. After all, it is a terrible experience to lose a parent when you’re young, no two ways about that.

That’ll teach me to quit extrapolating from my own circumstances…

25

IMHO, there’s a difference between feeling sorry for a kid whose parents (or one parent) are/is older, and thinking that it was completely wrong for the parent to have kids at all.

I feel sorry for kids who have a parent who works 80-hr weeks. I would never say that said parent shouldn’t have had any kids.

Will an older parent affect the child’s life? absolutely.

Will any possible parameter other than ideal affect the child’s life? absolutely.

Should all parents have to fit the perfect parameters? :rolleyes: Yeah, sure, and what color is the sky on your planet…

The question (as I understand it) is not ‘when is it less than ideal’ but ‘when is it WRONG?’ What is TOO old. Not ‘pretty darn old’, not ‘old enough to mean the kid will have a different life than I did’, not ‘the kid will miss out on some stuff’, but TOO OLD, as in forget about it, don’t do it, period.

I suspect that we all know that an older parent is not “ideal.” So is a much younger one. So is one with a less-than-stellar set of examples for their own parenting. So are single parents, for whatever the reason. So are parents with a history of childhood abuse. But qualifying it as wrong because it isn’t ideal? Something comes to mind about letting the all the ideal parents here cast the first stones…

I feel sorry for a lot of kids I see, kids whose parents are less than ideal. I also feel great for a lot of kids I see, whose parents are also less than ideal, just in different - but critical - ways. Hmmm. Actually, I can’t think of a single set of parents who are ideal. Oh, wait, I do know a set who are pretty ideal. Great folks. Great kids, use the mom as a sounding board. Glad they had kids. Glad most of the rest of the non-ideal folk I know had kids, too.

Bad is when you can’t adapt, can’t provide a loving environment, can’t communicate, can’t provide structure, support, guidance. If you are too anything to give those things, then don’t have kids. Old, young, crosseyed, or whatever. If you can provide those things despite one or more lacks in the technical details, go for it. I know plenty of people who would pick a good but older parent in a heartbeat over the young, energetic, but cruddy parents they got.

26

But if you have the gene, you have an 80% chance of getting breast or ovarian cancer.

27

Given those parameters, there would be an age where a parent is too old to have children. How can a parent provide a loving environment, communicate with their children, or provide structure, support and guidance when it is known that likely won’t live to see their children be even 12 years old?

We could all put different figures on how long a parent has to live to provide those things to their children. I might be completely off, but for purposes of setting a number, I’ll set an arbitrary age limit at 12. Average life expectancy drops below 12 additional years at age 75 in the United States, according to charts linked off this page under “Comprehensive Data.” (It’s a PDF file, so I didn’t want to link directly to it.) If chances are that you will not live to see your child attain his or her 12th birthday, what kind of loving environment can you provide? (Granted, I would say that this differs from having a freak accident and dying when your child is young. As long as you can reasonably expect to care for that child and provide a loving environment for them, have children. It’s easier to project a loving environment if you’re having children and die young due to some freak accident than if you’re self-servingly having children at age 80 knowing that you’ll very likely be deceased by the time the child graduates high school.)

Would age 75 be a reasonable cutoff age past which a person should not father children?

28

I feel sorry for kids who have a parent who works 80-hr weeks. I would never say that said parent shouldn’t have had any kids.

/begin rant

I’m not so sure about that.

If you’re talking about a case where we have a single parent trying to make ends meet, then sure. That’s a different situation, and sometimes that’s just what they have to do to keep a roof over their heads.

However, if you’ve got a married couple working 80 hour weeks, though, why did they even bother to have kids to begin with when it’s clear career is more important to them?

I am not against having important careers, nor am I against stay-at-homers. (I have been both a working mom and a stay-at-home mom.) I just wish people would PICK … if you want a big career and want to work 80 hour weeks, that is fine … but don’t bring kids into the picture when you’re just going to pay someone else to raise them.

I realize it’s hard to stand up to family members who want grandchildren, and stay-at-home moms catch hell too for staying at home (“don’t you want to DO something with yourself, honey?”). I think people need to decide what’s most important to them, though, and go from there, society’s opinion be damned.

/end rant

29

I feel sorry for kids who have a parent who works 80-hr weeks. I would never say that said parent shouldn’t have had any kids.

/begin rant

I’m not so sure about that.

If you’re talking about a case where we have a single parent trying to make ends meet, then sure. That’s a different situation, and sometimes that’s just what they have to do to keep a roof over their heads.

However, if you’ve got a married couple working 80 hour weeks, though, why did they even bother to have kids to begin with when it’s clear career is more important to them?

I am not against having important careers, nor am I against stay-at-homers. (I have been both a working mom and a stay-at-home mom.) I just wish people would PICK … if you want a big career and want to work 80 hour weeks, that is fine … but don’t bring kids into the picture when you’re just going to pay someone else to raise them.

I realize it’s hard to stand up to family members who want grandchildren, and stay-at-home moms catch hell too for staying at home (“don’t you want to DO something with yourself, honey?”). I think people need to decide what’s most important to them, though, and go from there, society’s opinion be damned.

/end rant

30

OK I’m feeling guilty now after reading this thread. I’m 33 and my SO is 38 and we aern’t ready for kids just yet. We’ve got our reasons but I really don’t want to be too old. I’ve recently heard alot (mostly from my MIL) about how after 35 it starts to get increasingly difficult to conceive and more dangerous. I just don’t feel it would be right though to have a child that I would want to give “my all” too if I’m not ready to do that yet. At what point do you give up your dreams and have children?

And then there’s the idea that I only want to have one… :confused:

31

I can only offer my real-life examples.

“N” was born when I was 42. His mom was 31.
“Z” was born when I was 46.
“K” was born when I was 49.

I sometimes awaken at 4 in the morning(to pee, if you must know:eek: Just wait 'til you get old). I think about what happens if I die before my daughter gets out of high school. It brings me grief. I think she might never forgive me for dying.

But, then, when she hugs me after coming home from school with straight A’s, or tells me something that just splits my sides, the fears all go away. I’ve had a good life, she’s had a good dad, and even if she doesn’t have me until she is a full-fledged adult, she might have gotten a better deal than some poor unfortunate who grew up with a young father who beat her, or sexually abused her, of left her mom to raise her on a single parent’s salary of $7.50/hr. and left to fend for herself.

I do agree that an older person should be able to care for the child in the event of a calamity.

“Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never have loved at all.”

I truly believe that.

32

I can only offer my real-life examples.

“N” was born when I was 42. His mom was 31.
“Z” was born when I was 46.
“K” was born when I was 49.

I sometimes awaken at 4 in the morning(to pee, if you must know:eek: Just wait 'til you get old). I think about what happens if I die before my daughter gets out of high school. It brings me grief. I think she might never forgive me for dying.

But, then, when she hugs me after coming home from school with straight A’s, or tells me something that just splits my sides, the fears all go away. I’ve had a good life, she’s had a good dad, and even if she doesn’t have me until she is a full-fledged adult, she might have gotten a better deal than some poor unfortunate who grew up with a young father who beat her, or sexually abused her, of left her mom to raise her on a single parent’s salary of $7.50/hr. and left to fend for herself.

I do agree that an older person should be able to care for the child in the event of a calamity.

“Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never have loved at all.”

I truly believe that.

33

Just one point: remember that it’s much more common now to have kids at an older age then it was. So your hypothetical kid’s buddies are much more likely to also have older parents. The embarrassment factor is probably going to be a lot less. (Heck, at the grade school I worked at for a while, just about all of my first-graders’ parents were old enough to be my parents.)