Letters to the Editor
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Not a big trend
I don't expect that 60+ women and men starting families is going to be a big trend. This is something only the wealthy can afford - fertilization treatments (doubtful many insurance companies are going to cover for a couple that age). And you need megabucks to live in Saddle River!
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Imagine..
how easy it's going to be for those kids to sneak out of the house when they're 16.
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New meaning to the term grannymom
You forgot to mention that she had to travel to South Africa to find a doctor with such lax ethics that he was willing to purposefully make a mother out of a woman who will be nearing 80 when her children graduate from high school.
No wonder her older kids are appalled: there's a rather high liklihood that they're going to be made guardians of a set of twins sometime soon. We can joke all we want about how "60 is the new 40" but medically, it's not. Watching my parents and their friends (all healthy, active adults with excellent medical care) as they go through their 60's it's a surprisingly rapid decline... eyesight, hearing, joint health all go and there's not much you can do about it.
I find it somewhat appalling that you lump this woman in with same sex parents.
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It's not easy to make me feel young, but this did it.
I'm 51 and my partner is in her 30's. Together, us two aging lesbians are planning on having a child (with the help of a valued sperm donor). My younger partner will be the birth mom (thankfully!), but I have worried to death whether I am too old to shepard a new life into and through this world. But in the wake of this story, I have no more qualms. As it turns out, I'm a veritable spring chicken!
Thank you Frieda Birnbaum for making me feel young again! :)
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how old...
... is the nanny?
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quaint?
Historically speaking, women so late in life bearing children is new. Everything else is pretty old. People have been experimenting with relationships and living arrangements for millenia. There really aren't any new permutations. People being shocked at the re-emergence of an old idea is an indication of poor education. That's not new either.
What should become quaint is the notion that these ancient ideas are radically new.
By the way, that's how a conservative can be comfortable with most social issues. They ain't new.
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This entire concept of aging/decrepit
women and/or couples wanting to procreate is:
1. Selfish and pathetic. This is why adoption is limited to individuals UNDER a specific age.
2. Moronic and engages in narcissistic behavior which fails to recognize that most of these people WILL be dead before their "children" turn 25.
3. IVF is also pathetic. Biology determines who should get pregnant, who shouldn't, etc. Most IVF pregnancies are high risk and an unusually high % involve multiple births. Children from IVF have profound health problems and defects at a much higher % than natural conception methodology.
4. No insurance company in their right mind should reimburse for IVF.
5. This nutjob who faciliated this child, no wonder she is a psychologist. Loser.
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I dunno...
It's not that crazy. There's even bibilcal precident! Sarah and Abraham had Issac when they were very old indeed, I think they were both 100. I mean, yes, it's just a story, but the point of it seems to be that concieving a child is a miraculous thing.
What really goads me is that if she were 40 and her husband were 60, I dare say we wouldn't have heard about this at all. No one cares if some old man fathers a child, but god forbid an older woman have a baby.
(I know, I know, medically there are some big risks for older moms that make it a different situation, but still.)
I wouldn't go this route, but hey: to each her own.
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Answer to Lydia
I wouldn't have a problem if the father were 40 and the mother were 60. When one parent is 40, it's likely that she or he won't be using a walker at the child's high school gradation (and that's a pretty good scenario if that's the worst thing that's wrong with an 80yo).
Many adoption agencies and IVF clinics have rules about the COMBINED age of the parents for this very reason. It would be nice if there was a high chance of at least one parent being relatively lucid during the teen years.
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Women raise the kids...
"No one cares if some old man fathers a child, but god forbid an older woman have a baby"
is the reason why people don't care if any old guy fathers children. We all know, even with younger fathers, women end up doing the bulk of the child-raising tasks.
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Megan
Yeah, I see what you're saying. The thing is, I feel like that argument gets into a gray area. Adoption agencies get to screen, because they are in a position to maximize the chances of placing a child in a home that will provide a stable, loving environment. They use the meager information that we, as human beings have so far gathered on what that might entail and they use it to choose. That's great. But you know what? That it the best-case scenario. In the russian roulette of life, most of us are stuck with the parents we were born to, not a set chosen for us by careful professionals. That means that some of us grow up easier than others and it's all extremely relative, baby.
Define the "perfect" parents for me. Go ahead. No one can, really, can they?
What if two parents who were obese had a baby? They are much more likely to die than people who eat healthy and exercise are, so is it morally reprehensible for them to procreate? Are we going to make good health a requirement of parenthood? Are we going to decide who's allowed to get pregnant? I don't want to live in that place, do you? Would you be "approved" to have kids, do you think? Who would decide?
Parents die young, too, you know. People get cancer or get hit by buses. Kids lose parents all the time. That isn't to say that it's good thing, but it's pretty much the definition of "normal": It happens every day. It has happened to me, It will or has happened to you.
Besides, who's to say that the 40-year-old won't get struck by lightning and the older parent won't live to be 110? Why can't someone in their 80's be active?
I just fear the generalization of it all....