Letters to the Editor
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Honestly...
If dead people can have babies with strangers because their parents think it's a good idea, are there any remaining boundaries in the world of conception?
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Wrong tack, Carol
This should not be framed as "It's OK for senior citizen women to bear children because few people take issue with very old men bearing children."
This must be framed from the child's point of view. It is selfish, if not outright abuse, to choose to be a parent long past an age where you can reasonably expect to meet that child's financial, physical, and emotional needs. No, there is no magic cutoff age, but reasonable minds can agree that say from 50 on you're definitely past the age where procreation will benefit the child's right to a childhood.
It would be so much easier for feminists to add to their numbers if they chose reasoned debate instead of "Not fair, men get to do it!" as the foundation for their discussion. Just a thought.
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Nature
It's a misnomer to state that older women need the permission of doctors to have children late in life. More specifically they need the cooperation of doctors.
That Tony Randall can marry a woman half his age and prodcue progeny has more to do with his own biology and genetics, rather than a societal acceptance.
For example, Michael Jackson, despite being a healthy male of child producing age, likewise needed the cooperation of medical professionals to have children, while other women with only the love of a good man have change of life children despite being perceived by society (and perhaps some feminists) as being too old for the responsibility.
No one endorses the 14 year old juvinile delinquints choice to become a parent, there just is very little, short of eugenic practices that society can do to show their displeasure.
The fact of the matter is, there is nothing stoping most forty or fifty year old women from finding a man and producing a child the old fashioned way. A sixty year old woman may need donated eggs, but a sixty year old man may well need donated sperm as well.
Nature regulates, and humanity violates, we push the envelope, and that is very often a good thing, gauranteeing genetic diversity and all.
However there is no restriction against old women or old men from having kids, it's just easier for old men to find young women to receive their sperm, and harder for old women to find young men to donate their sperm.
That's nothing personal, just the choices people make.
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The flaw in
your comparison between men and women having children later in life is flawed...
In most cases women over the age of 55 need some societal help in having children, where most men only need the help of a willing woman. Having said that, I'm personally of a mind that no one should have children over the age of forty. Mainly because I'm convinced kids need two mentally and physically engaged parents more when they are 20 than when they are 5. Is it agist of me to suggest that 60 is the cutoff to ensure that both parents are mentally and physically engaged? Sure, but at least it's a tad more democratic than saying only men or only women should do it...
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Access
I agree that the tack here to show that we accept socially older men as fathers but not older women, i.e., pointing out the double standard, is not the only point to be made. The women in question are not having children naturally and then being scolded for it, they are availing themselves to high technology to do so. If older men also avail themselves to such, I imagine the question is raised--is this right? The question pertains to both.
Medical ethics looks at issues of limited resources and access when assessing these kinds of situations. I suppose that if a private citizen has the money to spend on IVF, no matter what age, there is nothing to stop them. But is it ever that simple? What happens when/if insurance and government programs might be used to help perform IVF ... would there be a cutoff for women and men of a certain age? Would there be an ethical decision here? One that looks at the interests of the children to be born but also at the interests of the society at large? Should a 30-year-old IVF candidate be given preference over a 67-year-old IVF candidate, if resources or access to them are limited? If we have no problem saying this is something to be debated seriously, then I don't think we should have any problem debating it right now, in the current state of affairs. The technology seems to be the issue, as the writer points out, but I don't think it's only an issue for the women involved. If the men don't need as much technology, then the question in that situation is just one of age/death/partenting-through-childhood.
Technology brings with it ethical dilemmas that are sometimes different than ones that aren't fueled by technology (like the pregnant 14-year-old example). So, I think we should also address the resources question rather than just the 'personal decision' and society's response perspective.
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Old folks can make dumb mistakes, too
There is no upper age limit to the right of people to make horse's asses of themselves.
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From the perspective of such a child
Reading this touches on a personal nerve, precisely because of the fact that I had an older father. He was 55 when I was born, and subsequently died at the age of 74--a good run for any of us in the scheme of things, but hell on a nineteen year old to deal with--to say nothing of what my then-thirteen year old brother must have gone through.
I applaud Ms. Lloyd pointing out the contradiction in terms of societal acceptance faced by older men and women in child-bearing, but ultimately find myself questioning the underlying point. As other posters have noted, the difference here is one of procreation where medical intervention is necessary. I should hope to find people equally critical of older men turning to science to bring a new life into creation, but given the way biology works it's far more likely that they'll simply become fathers "the old fashioned way" which a society can (and should) do very little about.