Old Parents

Note: The following screed is a hard one because I'm one of the guilty parties. Nevertheless, given how stylish it has become to be an ancient parent (for just one example, see this week's People magazine with its glowing article on old celeb moms), this rant's time has come.

One of the many experiments we Baby Boomers have embraced is geriatric parenthood. We wanted to marry late, travel, party, and just generally not settle down to diapers and PTA until we absolutely had to. So it was that—thanks to the twin facilitators of high-tech pregnancy assistance and international adoption—many of us became first-time parents at 40, 45, 50, or even older.

Why not? We were still young (we said)! We were more mature now, more financially stable, more ready to nurture. Given our yoga classes, organic produce, and low-fat everything, we planned to live to 100—plenty of time to raise the little tykes we were taking on in middle age.

Well, guess what? Illness, death, and disability happen more often to old people than to young ones—even old people who run 5 miles a day and don't drink. My evidence is anecdotal, but it's alarming nevertheless: I know dozens of middle-aged parents of young children who are sick, disabled, or dead.

There's the mother of two girls adopted from China who died of lupus right after bringing the little one home. Or her peer, who died of cancer last year at age 58, leaving a sixtysomething husband with two grade-school girls. Or the two adoptive moms I know who are struggling with ovarian cancer, and not likely to win. Or the other mom with a 60-year-old spouse, whose diabetes has rendered her nearly blind and barely mobile. Or playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who finally got pregnant in her fifties with a donor egg and soon after died, leaving an 8-year-old behind. Or my own husband, hit by a stroke in his mid-forties (our girls are 8 and 12) and permanently disabled.

And these kids are all under 13—how many of their geezer parents are even going to be around by the times the kids finish college? Or able to help them financially or emotionally when they're in their [still unstable] twenties?

There's a very selfish aspect to taking on parenthood in your forties and fifties. We boomers wanted to experience parenthood, and even if nature didn't cooperate, we could afford it through means technical and bureaucratic. But is it truly fair to our kids? Let's ask them in 20 years.