Friday, Jul 4, 2008
Are aging parents doing the math when they add to their families late in the game?
May 23, 2001 | Pregnant at 51, photographer Annie Leibovitz is the latest, and perhaps the oldest, entrant in the burgeoning celebrity class of Mothers of a Certain Age. She follows Cheryl Tiegs, also 51, who recently delivered twins; and playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who had her daughter, Lucy Jane, at 48.
And then there are the rest of us, a newly abundant group of professional and well-educated "aged" individuals with access to current reproductive technology. The latest figures from Massachusetts -- a state that mandates insurance coverage of fertility treatments -- provide convincing evidence: More women there are giving birth between the ages of 35 and 40 than between 20 and 25. What's more, the largest increases are taking place among those in the 40- to 45-year-old age bracket. Deborah Klein Walker, the Massachusetts associate commissioner of public health, calls the development "a trend."
I suppose I feel vindicated to learn that experiences and observations I had tagged as quirky have now been elevated to the status of an official trend. For several years, I have been noting that generations are collapsing into one another. My sister had a baby at 45. My sister-in-law became a grandmother at 42. My 44-year-old friend is the stepgrandmother of a 10-year-old. Now, she is contemplating adopting her own child. She is creating a new paradigm -- grandparenting as practice for motherhood. The recent reaction of one man of around 50 upon hearing the news of his 40-ish wife's pregnancy says it all: "Oh good. Now we can have our own grandchildren!"
Yet, as far as I can tell, analysis of this trend has focused almost exclusively on the physical risks that postponing pregnancy poses to mother and child. I have yet to find any serious discussion of the "quality of life" implications down the line. These concern me, because, as a mother who gave birth to two children after my 35th birthday, I get a little nervous when I do my own math.
Until recently, I had managed to repress the knowledge that, by giving birth at age 39, I condemned my 55-year-old self to the torture of parenting a teenager. At an age when my empty-nested parents were basking in the comfort and ease of a new, downtown condo, I face the prospect of stuffing my nightgown under my coat at midnight, crawling into my car and frantically combing suburban streets in search of my errant 16-year-old daughter. I imagine that financial pressures to pay college and, God forbid, graduate school tuition bills will keep me working full steam well into my 60s, despite urges from my heart, body and soul to flee to the retirement havens of Florida.
And what of our children? What will it mean for our society when a critical mass of kids in their 20s, barely out of college, are either orphaned or forced to cope with parents in their dotages? How will they make decisions about our nursing care while simultaneously fretting over the dating implications of the recently sprouted pimples on their noses? No doubt, some entrepreneurial shrink will articulate the defining therapeutic acronym of the next generation: YASWAPs, standing for "Young Adults Saddled With Aging Parents." I can already foresee the proliferation of these counseling groups on college campuses throughout the country.
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