Pregnancy Over 50: A Medical and Moral Issue

Many women plan out their lives and choose to have babies when they’re somewhere between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five (although many do have children in their earlier twenties and later thirties.)  Although the chances of birth defects rise after thirty-five, many women do have successful pregnancies and healthy babies at forty.  My mother had my brother when she was almost thirty-six.  Although he was born with severe jaundice, it probably wasn’t caused by her age (because she was thirty when I was born, and I ended up with jaundice too).  Plus, my brother ended up healthy, intelligent, and devoid of any birth complications.  So I’m not telling women to shut down the factory after the age of thirty-five.  But some ages are just too old to be having children, period.

Before I begin with the moral, societal and medical analysis of this phenomenon, I want to make some disclaimers.  This is not only a woman’s issue.  Although men’s age has less to do with birth defects than women, the age of the father can also result in more birth defects.  See this New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/06/health/06sper.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.  

Of course, men’s and women’s ages are not always the cause of birth defects, and I have known children who were born to older parents and ended up fine.  Plus, their mothers did not suffer severely during the pregnancy, and I have also heard of perfectly healthy, young parents who gave birth to unhealthy children.  However, a lot of the time, older maternal ages do cause some issues.  Interestingly, a paternal age of nineteen or below can also cause birth defects.  In addition, I’m aware that there is always going to be one person who says, “My mother had me when she was fifty, and I’m giving birth to my baby in a few months and I’m forty-five.  How dare you!”  Well, I’m sorry, but this is medical fact and right now that’s all we have to go on.  There are also people, like my great-grandmother, who smoke their whole live and live till ninety.  Does that mean an article about cigarettes being unhealthy would be inconsiderate or misinformed?

First of all, why do you think menopause happens?  A woman’s body after the age of fifty is usually not in the right state to be going through pregnancy.  With hormone levels fluctuating, especially estrogen, it can result in breast cancer or death.  Other complications of pregnancy over fifty include gastrointestinal diabetes, cesarian section, and low birth weight (three times more likely than the babies of women in their twenties).  If nature is making it so you can’t have children after fifty, there is probably a reason why.  Of course there are some women who unfortunately never are able to, physically, and I don’t think that’s the ‘way it’s supposed to be’, because those are outliers.  Using in vitro fertilization when you are an infertile woman at thirty-two is different from doing it when you are just fifty-five and menopausal.  One is correcting a little error in nature, and the other is trying to combat nature completely.  

I am aware that I will receive a lot of criticism for writing this.  But of course, everyone will always have different views, and this is a controversial subject that is constantly being debated, especially since celebrities like Nancy Grace and Elizabeth Edwards have gone into the public sphere with their late-in-life pregnancies.  Keep in mind, however, that Elizabeth Edwards is suffering from a serious form of cancer.  Perhaps the unnatural hormone changes in an over-fifty-year-old woman’s body caused that to happen, or at least exacerbated it.  I also acknowledge that I am not a sociologist or a doctor.  I am on my way to an undergraduate degree in sociology, but not in medicine.  So if you want to read the most well-informed piece about this, you are reading the wrong article.  This is my opinion, and I am willing to admit that if new findings are discovered, my opinion could be wrong.  But judging from medical articles I have read, it seems to be the truth.

So we have already covered the medical effects of late pregnancy.  Other genetic defects can also happen in very young pregnancy, especially when the mother is not finished with puberty, which usually ends at around seventeen.  My mother chose to have her first child at thirty, and her second child at thirty-six.  My aunt had her first child at twenty-seven and her second child at thirty.  These are standard ages, for both physical and emotional reasons.  While a twenty-year-old woman (like myself) may be physically able to have a healthy child, she would not be emotionally stable enough for it, or mature enough.  So while I am against having children over the age of fifty, I don’t think kids should be having kids either.  But that gets into completely different territory.

On the emotional side of having children over the age of fifty, many women do this thinking only of themselves.  Their kids have gone off to college, and they want another baby.  What they are not considering, other than the health effects, is the emotional stress that the situation would put on the child. Imagine you’re ten, and you’re at your friend’s birthday party.  Your sixty-five-year-old mother comes to pick you up and everyone thinks she is your grandmother.  Now, on a more serious note, pretend you are thirty and have just started a house of your own and are taking care of your own first child.  But your eighty-year-old parents are suffering from serious health issues that come with age, and you need to set aside even more time and money to take care of them.  Even if you end up living until you are one hundred, which is more possible than ever with modern medicine, you will still not be able to do the same things with your child as he or she gets older.  And no matter what, your child will feel left out and different.  Also, I’ve noticed that it’s more important for kids to have young moms than young dads.  I can’t really explain this phenomenon, but kids are usually more attached to their mothers, especially little girls, and perhaps that is why.  Also, in society men tend to be a little older when they have kids than women are, so it’s more acceptable to have an older father, depending on how old.

Now, what if an older woman became pregnant naturally?  There are cases of this, such as fifty-nine-year-old Dawn Brooke, the oldest mother known to have conceived naturally.  She was undergoing hormone replacement therapy, which could have contributed to this instance.  According to Wikipedia, she had not been trying to get pregnant, because she originally mistook her large belly for a tumor and was shocked to find out that she was pregnant.  She gave birth to a son on August 20, 1997.  

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-476452/The-British-woman-worlds-oldest-natural-mother-59.html

Although the article above shows just how happy Ms. Brooke was to have the child so late in life, it also showed a remarkable situation in which her entire family had fabulous genes, hence naturally conceiving a child at that age.  I believe that it was irresponsible of her to encourage more women to go her route.  It is not something that should be aspired to, but rather something that should be accepted if it happens.  I do not think that women over fifty who become pregnant naturally should terminate their pregnancies.  But they should not attempt to become pregnant.  The link below shows a news report that even says having a child at forty-five is plausible.  However, the study they cited found that “pregnancy risk skyrockets after age 50″.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,229059,00.html

I think this also sheds some light on the romanticized “older woman, younger man” phenomenon.  Although hit shows like Desperate Housewives, and even movies like Harold and Maude, have made it seem romantic, it could result in serious problems down the road if the couple chooses to marry and have children.  For a fling, it doesn’t affect anyone, but to end up in a relationship that way, and bring children into the mix, is selfish.  Imagine being a child whose mother is sixty and whose father is thirty.  It’s almost more embarrassing than the other way around, given society’s limitations and rules, which, although unfortunate, are very present in the minds of children.  Modern medicine is a fine way to fight nature’s unfortunate actions.  Getting pregnant after menopause is not.