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Can it ever be right for a woman to have a baby past 60? Next month Elizabeth Munro, 66, a businesswoman from Suffolk, is set to deliver her first child, following fertility treatment in Ukraine.
The world's leading authority on late pregnancies, Professor Severino Antinori, is not impressed: “I am shocked by the idea of a 66-year-old woman giving birth,” he thunders.
“I respect the choice medically but I think anything over 63 is risky because you cannot guarantee the child will have a loving mother or family.”
His objection is that the doctor must be able to guarantee that the mother would live for at least 18 years of the child's life. But Professor Antinori is hardly in a position to take the moral high ground on this one. He has helped more than 3,000 women aged between 49 and 63 to become mothers, including the UK's Patricia Rashbrook, who gave birth to a son in 2006 at the age of 62.
Now Antinori reminds us that it is possible for a woman to give birth up to the age of 83 — but that this would be “medically criminal”. (Eighty three! Thanks for that mental picture.)
Antinori's criticism misses the point, though.
Whether you want a baby at an advanced age is an individual matter. It's certainly an eccentric decision and one many people would disagree with — but it's a personal one. If you want to experiment with your body and you have the money to do it, it's your life. For me, the idea of conceiving and carrying a baby around retirement age falls into the same category as running the London Marathon: a potentially life-threatening endeavour that I could never be persuaded to undertake. But then I'm a wimp. And I already have two children.
In Munro's defence, extreme older motherhood is hardly a trend in danger of catching on. She is only the third ever example of a woman doing it over the age of 60 in the UK. And who cares whether she is being selfish? Millions of babies — some of them unwanted— are born into far less advantageous circumstances every day and no one complains.
Rather than demonise the tiny minority of women who take this route, it would be far more productive to analyse what has pushed them to it.
Older motherhood is often seen as some sort of triumph of the women's movement: a way of sticking two fingers up to the biological clock. What it really represents, though, is failure to create a society which respects women's bodies. After all, there is never really a good time for a woman to have a baby at any age, it seems.
Have one in your teens and you are labelled as feckless. In your twenties and thirties you are vilified as a smug yummy mummy if you give up work or a career harpie if you don't. Wait until your forties and you're already in the older mother bracket.
We need to admit that a lot of social and professional attitudes still work against women's biology. Using medical progress to outwit mother nature is a hollow victory. Instead of debating the ethics of IVF in old age, we should be asking why some women feel unable to have their children earlier, at a time in their lives when it would be easier, safer and kinder for their own bodies — and for their babies. It's no consolation to know you could always — in theory — wait until 83.
Reader views (7)
Viv makes a very important point at the end of her piece. The standard feminist line is that it is a tragedy if a woman has children before she is in her mid-thirties and fully educated and established in the working world. This gives up entirely on the alternative prospect of starting a family young and continuing education and entering the work-force later. Could it be that entrenched ageist taboos about older people being able to learn and compete in the work force have more to do with this than sexism?
- Bloke, London, 19/05/2009 00:40
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I disagree with Penny. Whilst it's a well-known fact that men can father a child well into their seventies, their partner is usually of childbearing age. I'm sure women go through the menopause for a reason. If this woman dies before the child reaches majority, who will look after her? No matter how much the child is wanted, no amount of money can buy a mother.
- Sonia M., St Albans, Herts, 18/05/2009 18:00
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Why would no-one even raise an eyebrow if a 66 old man fathered a child? The lady in question has apparently already said she's going to employ a full-time nanny so quite why is it any different to a man with a younger wife?
- Penny, Ealing, Ealing, UK, 18/05/2009 14:42
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"If you want to experiment with your body and you have the money to do it, it's your life."
Even when doing it brings another life into the world?
- Alex, London, UK, 18/05/2009 14:02
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A child will grow and become a PERSON in it’s own right - that must be the first and major consideration - any other is purely selfish.
Nature itself brackets the "natural" age to have children, and doctors will tell you that the older the carrier, the more risk there is.
Now science is a wonderful thing, and (almost) anything is possible - whether it is RIGHT is another matter.
If the social consequences are taken into account, and the likely effect of a teenage child coping with a geriatric parent are considered, then ultimately these kinds of decisions can only be seen as selfish.
The same of course can be said about too many children born into a family who cannot afford them, so these arguments are never cut and dried - but standards and limits MUST be discussed and set, otherwise the scenario of the innocent baby born to the seventy year old lesbian mother living off benefits is just over the horizon....
- Darius Midwinter, London UK, 18/05/2009 10:57
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On my travels through life I have noticed "ordinary people" lead tedious empty lives. People should not fear undertaking curious routes through ones life. What makes each of us unique is the different routes we choice on our journey and so long as Elizabeth Munro is doing this for the right reason and not selfish ones then I support her, only she can honestly answer that question and it is not for others to judge her.
- Gary, Brentwood, 18/05/2009 10:34
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"Wait until your forties and you're already in the older mother bracket."?? I gave birth to my only child at 38 and was then labelled an 'elderly prima gravida' and underwent Amnioentesis tests as I was considered so ancient that I was likely to have a Downs/other syndrome baby (I didn't.) But pregnant at 66?? And a single parent?. She must be mad.
I'm now the permantly exhausted working single parent of a challenging, testosterone-fuelled teen,and I'm only in my fifties...she'll be in her 80s.. with a teen.
- Older-Mum, Essex, 18/05/2009 10:16
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