I would appreciate your opinions on late motherhood and especially late fatherhood?

Logic by itself says nothing about it. Garbage in, garbage out.

It depends on what the alternatives are. Having a father that old is generally better than not having a father at all. It certainly outweighs any supposed harm that might result from your “Grampa is here” scenario. It also depends on whether these are first-time parents or not.

In general, I’d say having kids is less selfish than not having them, since having kids requires more sacrifices (in the US anyway). But it depends on the specific motives for having or not having them.

There are, however, medical considerations for older people who have children. There are increased risks of certain abnormalities.

@ZEPHYRA: “It must hurt a child to go to school and be told – “Grandpa/ma is here to pick you up”, when it is actually you parent.”

Whatever can be said about the challenges and risks involved with older parents, how other kids or teachers will respond to the parents shouldn’t be one of them. My grandparents made that argument when they felt that “mixed race” and same-sex couples shouldn’t have kids.

I had my first at age 40, my second two years later. Now that they are teens, they have kept me young and active, and I don’t think it has been to their detriment. If anything, I am a better parent having had them later in life. And at back to school night, I was not the oldest by far.

A good friend has his first age 48, second at age 50. His wife is 12 years younger. He is one of the more involved fathers I have ever seen, playing ball with the kids a couple times a week, rides bikes with them to school.

If anything, older parents carry a wisdom and experience that younger parents just don’t have.

@zenvelo I agree with the maturity and involvement aspect, but is the energy ( both physical and mental ) always there? And as for fathering in one’s fifties, is the shadow of death not one that hangs over the child as it enters teenhood?

All wonderful answers with food for thought but, two questions to @CugelTheClueless – why does having kids in the US entail more sacrifices than having kids anywhere in the world? Sacrifice and responsibility are key concepts for parents no matter where they are. And, why is it selfish not to have them if you cannot do/feel/sacrifice what you have to. Selfishness is bringing a person into the world without wanting to, without having the means or maturity to do so. Please correct me if I am wrong.

In certain less developed parts of the world, having kids means having extra laborers to support the family, and not having them means that you will starve when you are too old to work. In certain parts of the developed world, there is much more support for parents than there is in the US (such as publicly supported daycare), and higher education is free or inexpensive. So yes, the level of sacrifice depends on the society one lives in.

As I said before, whether one’s choice is selfish depends on one’s specific motives. I’m sure we can think of cases where not having children would not be a selfish choice for a specific individual; I know people I would put into this category. I also know others who do not. And “cannot” is one of the most misused words in the English language. People are often lying to themselves or others when they say they cannot do something.

Bringing a person into the world accidentally (I assume this what you mean by “without wanting to”, not people who are somehow forced by others to have children), without having the means or maturity (and who gets to set the standards for those things, I wonder) is not necessarily selfish, though it may be thoughtless. There’s a difference between thoughtlessness and selfishness. Quite a few of us came into the world unexpectedly, born to parents who weren’t ready (is any first-time parent really ready?), and life goes on. Anyway, I would expect that older parents are more likely to put some thought into whether they want children, and have higher levels of means and maturity.

I will just give my perspective on this as my mother had me at the age of 43. It was often on my mind that she would die while I was still young. I’d worry about her. I was only 27 when she turned 70. And while, yes, I was an adult, I certainly still felt too young to lose my mother.
Another worry I had was her developing Alzheimer’s while I was still relatively young. She was in fact diagnosed with it when I was in my early 30s. I know, that’s not exactly a “child” but it was too young for me to deal with that.
She is almost 90 now and still around. Though she is in a nursing home and has been for 7 years. To make a long story short, I hated that she had me later in life.

But @anniereborn, think of it this way…there was no other time in her life she could have had you. If she’d gotten pg at another time, it would have been someone else, not you, who was born.

I think there are positives and negatives on both ends of the spectrum. My parents had me very young (19) and there are definite down sides to having very young parents. They were much more high strung and worried about what other parents thought of them. They were somewhat resentful having me so young and while they didn’t come out and say it directly, I knew. As I got older, they were a little more direct about it. They weren’t very patient and they weren’t very understanding. Everything I did that was typical little kid behavior was seen as selfish and bratty. There were serious financial issues as well, because my parents were going to college while they had me. I lived part time with my grandparents and part time in my parents tiny apartment in a nasty and dangerous neighborhood where it wasn’t safe to play outside.

I waited until a month before my 39th birthday to have my kid. I’m MUCH more patient and understanding. I’m not as energetic, but I’m more willing to kick back, relax the rules and let just about anything fly. I wouldn’t have been the parent I am to day if I had my daughter at 20 or even 30. I was too anxious and busy doing things with my life.

I don’t have any regrets or “could haves” that I can hold against my daughter. In my 20s I lived a wild fun and responsibility free life. In my 30s I had college and a career. I can take care of my daughter and not feel like I’m missing out on anything because I’ve done it all. Financially, we’re much better off and my daughter can grow up in a nice house in a safe neighborhood. She doesn’t have to worry about the electricity being turned off and won’t have to have tuna casserole 3030 times in a row because tuna was on sale.

I sometimes get sad when I think that she’s going to have to take care of me sooner than I’ll have to take care of my own parents. But I think it balances out having a much better childhood than I had with really young parents.

@Dutchess_III And?

One of the best fathers I ever saw had kids in his 60’s. His first wife divorced him late in his life and he found someone that cared about him and they had two boys. Both of them turned out excellent, very successful and good all around peeps. I used to see all kinds of young parents in the collections area of the bank where I first worked. There are a lot more issues than just age involved.

Well, @anniereborn, you wouldn’t be here wishing your mom had had you a little younger. You wouldn’t be here at all.

@Dutchess_III I think this belongs in a discussion about existentialism.

Existentialism is a philosophy. What I’m referring to is biology. Facts.

I think a man becoming a Dad in his 60s or 70s is pretty selfish because he is almost sure to die when his kids are young. More and more people are having a first child in their early 40s these days and I would not judge them. There is probably an optimal time for each individual to have their children but life doesn’t work that way.

@Dutchess_III Yes, you are correct. This exact physical body that I am living in at the moment would not exist. I am fine with that.

Well, not just the body. The consciousness too. You would not exist.

Okay, that’s cool My answer still stands. It was very hard having an older mother.

@ZEPHYRA The men I know that have had children in their forties/fifties do not have the specter of death hanging over them more than any other fathers. They all seem young for their chronological ages, and in pretty good shape; in better shape than most men in their 30s. I think that is one reason they are having kids later in life; they are healthy and in good shape and have a higher than normal life expectancy..

David Letterman had a child in 2003 when he was 56. I have a feeling that men who have kids at that age probably leave most of the heavy lifting to the (obviously) younger mother. But that’s just a thought.

If it helps to know, I loved my late father and my late mother.

But that’s probably not what you were looking for. My mother was 32 when she had me, and I was the first of five. My brother is 8 years younger than I am, so he was born when she was 40 years old. Although he grew up within a range of what would be considered “normal”, and is healthy enough now – and always has been – I always considered him kind of “slow”. Except for the fact that he could outrun me and since middle age he could pound me into the dirt if he wanted to, I don’t dare say that around him.

Besides the added health risks of advanced maternal age, I’d say age shouldn’t be the main issue.

Some are better suited to be young parents. While other are better suited to be older parents. It’s just a matter of figuring out where you fall on that spectrum.

Death is not something to be scared of. I’d also imagine that more mature parents would have more life experience to better equip their children for these kind of life stages.

I think having parents who love you is more important than their age. There are crappy young parents and crappy old parents. My mother died when I was 5 and my father when I was 23. Neither were old at the time of their deaths.

While I do think it’s beneficial for parents to be younger because they’re likely to have more energy, they’re also likely to be more burdened by getting careers established, have larger mortgages and financial constraints and may lack the patience and life experience of older parents. On the flipside, while older parents may not be around as long or as energetic, they are likely to be more financially stable, may be less driven by the need to succeed in their job and so have more time to spend with their child and might be more easy going about what’s important in life.

I had my children young and I’m glad I did but I think there are pros and cons either way. In some ways, I think I’d be a better parent now than I was back then (not that I was a bad parent then).

I had my daughter when I was 41. She’s 7 now, I’m 48. I’ve never been mistaken for her grandmother. She’s a good kid, I’m a good mom, we have a great time together, we travel, she’s well taken care of. If I had her twenty years ago, life would have definitely been different as I had not a lot of money, was about 100 lbs heavier, whole different living situation I think it’s hard to generalize that older parents are great, they’re not great, younger parents are wonderful, etc. Each situation is different. There are plenty of examples on both sides. All I can do is speak for myself – we’re good.

In my opinion, the question is an example of over-thinking a non-problem.

This article pretty much sums up how I feel being an older mother.