There was an article in The Times the other day written by Andrew Billen all about how older mothers “are the best” and about the “special quality of the relationship between the older mother and the child”. WHAT? The latest figures from the office for National Statistics show that the number of births to older mothers has nearly doubled in the past ten years.
He suggests that it is better to get the career out of the way first and then stay at home with the children, because then you are more relaxed and “less worried” – much better to have had a “pre-existing career to mop up vast reservoir of ambition”.
Well. I beg to differ.
I don’t believe you can comment on when is a good time to become a parent. A good (enough) mother can be any age, in my opinion. There is no “best” time to embark on what is arguably the hardest job in the world at whatever age you happen to start. Career or no career.
I challenge him to write another article in 10 years time when he is 62 and his two children are 8 and 10. Because then he may be a little more world weary. At aged 45 I now have a 17 year old, a 14 year old and a 9 year old and it is bloody great. I love them with a passion and would have done so if I was 67 BUT I like the fact that I am not TOO old….that I can still relate to a degree (not including the tattoos and naked girl bit). They can still make me feel old, but I’m not sure I would have the energy now to cope with a newborn.
I went for a coffee with a friend yesterday. We sat with her 3 year old who rushed about being busy. In that time he held his head in his hands and told me that “this is my third head that you can see now. Usually I have five head’s but some are broken, so I only brought this one with me today” and I just love it….the randomness of their thoughts, but when he drew me a picture and I quietly asked his mum why he had just drawn a picture of a testicle, she laughed and it was then that I realised I had so lost touch with tiny children. She pointed out that the yellow circle with hairy bits drawn out of the edges was not a testicle but a sun – which of course it was.
Then I tried showing off with a skipping rope yesterday. My teenage son is skipping for 45 minutes a day whilst he recovers from his shoulder operation. I used to be the Skipping Queen when I was in the school playground – I could skip for hours and hours without a thought. Yesterday I did 100 skips in a row. It took me two minutes. I nearly died. Sweaty. Palpitations. Pelvic Floor muscles engaged to the maximum. Gravity being cruel. Bosoms (which I don’t have) flying about. Just dreadful. Stomach wobbling in horrible manner. Suddenly needed a poo. Not good. At all. To jump up and down like that at my age.
And my daughter, who went off to the Summertime Ball on Sunday looked at me incredulously like I was an Octogenarian when the only bit of advice I gave her was not to get caught up in the mosh pitty throng in case she needed to go to the loo. “Stay near the edge” I said, “in case you need to go to the loo”. “Mum, don’t be ridiculous, I’ve got to get near the front and if I need to go to the loo…well, I just won’t go”. WHAT?? How can she do that? Although I remember vaguely that I could go to places and not stake out the loo, like they were the emergency exits on a plane as my first priority. It didn’t cross my mind when I was young. I used to go to concerts and drink 85 pints of alcohol over a number of hours and then go to a club and dance and slosh about with a bladder the size of a balloon and drink lots more and not even notice.
My children think I am ancient already. That’s fine. That is the nature of being a parent. BUT none of us need to be told that we should have waited. It’s all great at whatever age you/they are.
Give us a break.
Anna
June 10, 2010What a strange thing to argue – of course, if a woman happens to become a mother in her early forties, as is very common these days, she has equal chances of being a good at it (whatever that means exactly) to those of a younger woman.
Andrew Billen is arguing against mother nature, though, – the older the woman is the more difficult it is to conceive and the more chance there is of complications, either for the mother or for the child. I thought that this was common knowledge.
And in terms of getting your ambitions out of your system by putting your career first – that’s relying too much on things turning out exactly as one’s planned them. Life is unpredictable and ambitions are finnicky by nature – they mutate with age, it takes a long time to sort them out, they don’t follow job descriptions.
If what is being implied is that a woman cannot feel realized unless she has mastered both the working world and the motherhood challenge, then it is a very simplistic view of women as human beings. One’s sense of self-worth does not spring from having “A” career. It is a lot more complex than that. Tons of women who are successful in the work place complain that their lives are empty. Adding a child to the situation solely because it gives you a “complete package”or because you have the financial security to do it might not fill the void. A girl I know told me of a friend of hers, a mother of one and a full professor at Columbia university, who says that she wants to jump off the Empire State building. And no, she is not mentally ill. It’s just, well…. complicated.
Family Affairs
June 10, 2010Completely agree with you Anna. Thanks for your comment Lx
Dulwich divorcee
June 10, 2010So with you on scoping out loos everywhere. And I can’t go on a trampoline now without urgent recourse to a bewildering number of bodily functions. Ax
Jon Storey
June 10, 2010When nature says that you’re old enough, you are old enough. When your knees and back say you are too old, you are too old!
Otherwise, you girls should have your kids when they are right for you. Career first, last or during, whatever is comfortable. I know fantastic new mothers of eighteen and forty five.
I guess I have a problem with women in their sixties say, who have fertility/IVF treatment. It just doesn’t seem right somehow, not wrong exactly as I can understand why some women would wish to do this but just not ‘right’.
If I had to express a personal preference it would be to follow natures design and have children younger. Besides, I can vouch for the fact that at the ripe old age of fifty three the little buggers are hard work! That said, I wouldn’t be without them……