Should 60yr old women have children? (IVF)

I think it is totally and completely her business. If she wants and loves the babies, that's all that matters.

Well the problem is can she take care of her children? The average life expectancy is around 76 last I remember, so I think the cutoff should be at least 20 years below that. And say she does live long enough, will she become a burden to her children? I know as soon as my parents are old enough i need to take some responsibilities to make sure they are taken care of, such as hire someone to look after them or pay an elderly people's home...That's in part my culture, but come on imagine having an elderly parent at 20 when you are in college and don't even have your own life together yet...I dunno that's just IMO I know many people don't take these things into consideration....But I would because it makes things so much easier if you plan.

My belief: if you couldn't have a baby naturally by 40, don't force nature. Especially at 60. Holy cr**.

Coming from having older parents... lets do the math here: she'll be 78 when those boys graduate from high school... if she lives that long... who'll take care of them? my mother was not active in my upbringing... as in she wasn't actively working with me on things like reading, and talking and little developmental stuff. She just sat back and watched me do things on my own. Yeah... great bonding time there... fast forward 15 years: I nearly lost my father to heart trouble... he was nearly 60 at that time...

There's a reason for the cut off in most places... it sickens me when I see women pushing the boundaries like this. Who are they really thinking of? the children? no. They're being selfish and thinking only of themselves 'wanting a baby'

If I get to 40 and decide, all of a sudden, that I do want to share my life with a kid, I'll adopt. I'm 36 now... I have no desire to produce offspring. I realized, mostly after my own childhood, that if I were to have kids, I wanted to be young enough and fit enough to get down on my hands and knees and play/bond/help my child grow. Not sit back and watch them.

I see others in today's times who wait and wait... to what end? So you'll be pulling social security before your kid is in college? Mid thirties to 40 should be it. End of story. what this woman did JUST to have a baby is selfish. Purely selfish.

~A~

We have no guarantees on how long we will live, or how old our children will be when we die. And being young doesn't make you a good parent any more than being old makes you a bad one. How involved a person is with her children has nothing to do with age. There are young parents with serious health problems who cannot take care of their children and there are older parents who are healthy and have no problem keeping up.

For me personally, I would not want to have a child or children at 60 years old. But I'm talking about my life; I will be the last person who will ever pass judgement on the decisions other people make in their lives.

Wow, it's a good thing I had my baby at 39, since that's not selfish. According to what has been written here, if I gotten pregnant a few months later I would be a horrible mother who is a burden and suddenly too old to play with her child!

I worry about older people having kids. That said....my mother was 30 or so when she had me. She has some serious health issues at a little over 50 years old. I will be sticking in the area (and still live at home) as she will not be able to care for herself/do basic housekeeping. She can't even handle vacuuming the living room - I do most all the laundry, cleaning, dishes, etc.

Being younger when having kids doesn't guarantee anything. That said - I don't think its "right" to have kids at 60 - as instead of being teenagers, will they end up caring for mom?

My parents were 40 and 55 when I was born. I'm now 25, and my parents continue to live independently. I haven't had to put my life on a shelf to take care of them, or anything of the sort.

I don't have any resentment because they're older- I'm grateful to them for bringing me into this world, and I'm happy that they haven't stopped living simply because they've grown old, or are growing old. They did the best they could to raise me, and I would be more than happy to provide care for them if they required it.

As for the 60-year-old woman and IVF... I agree that she probably shouldn't have children if she's past the age where she can have any naturally.

I do not feel a 60 year old should have IVF.

It's her body at the end of the day, but i think 60 is too old.

My mum had me in her early 40's while she went through an early menopause and that was hard for her.

Now that I'm not in as grumpy a mood (aka no headache)

If having a child falls within the normal parameters of when we're meant to have them (i.e. before you hit menopause), then fine... but so many aren't thinking of the child, and the future. They obsess over the baby stage. If you're 40, early 40's and you want a child... if you haven't shown signs of Meno yet, then fine... but think about the future, not just a bundle of wriggling infant in your arms... Don't force nature to conform to what you want.

There's a HUGE generation gap there when you have a child when you're older. My parents were born in the 1920's.. my dad was in WWII. other kids my age had parents of the hippy age. my best friend (four months older than me) had hippy parents. I'm not saying ALL women who wait and push the boundaries are selfish. But someone who isn't letting her body do what it should at her age, and forcing it to produce children at 60, is selfish. She's only thinking of herself... not the future welfare of the children.

i have no qualms with adopting later... that's what I intend to do if I feel so inclined and have thought it all through. There are thousands of children out there in foster homes (US) and orphanages (world) who could use a good loving home... why not? My cousin did it. She never married, but wanted a child in her life... she adopted a little girl from China. I think she's about in her teens now. She has a good life with my professor cousin.

This lady we're discussing is most likely not thinking things through. She has pushed the boundaries of what her body should be doing... and I doubt they've truly thought about the future... it's sad.

Yes, that is my opinion... I know not everyone feels that way... but being a child of older parents, I see what these children will have to deal with. Dealing with aging parents at a young age is tough... something these boys of her shouldn't have to go through.

~A~

I think her and the babies' medical needs should be taken care of by India since that is where she got the fertility treatments.

If she and her husband can afford the children, can care for them and obviously love them to want them so badly, I don't see a problem. None of us can guarantee how long we'll live or what condition our health will be at any age, so I don't see her age as being even an issue in that matter.

I am not for or against. Personally, for me, I am almost 44 and the thought of being pregnant? No way! I'll take cats

Just a thought: There is a huge number of grandmothers raising grandchildren, on their own, in the US. These women ar 60+. It is hard on them, but they do it. Older people can and do raise children.

We all have our personal experiences, and we form our opinions from them. There's nothing wrong with that; in fact it is good and honest.

BUT it's a different matter when we impose our experiences and our opinions on others as if it's the right thing for them, too. That is wrong because we absolutely do not know their situation unless we are the ones living it. Reading an article that a journalist wrote does not give us a complete picture of the people and their lives and circumstances. Who are we to judge what we do not know?


The problem here is, who gets to decide what age IVF is okay and what age it is not? Who do we want to have that kind of power?

If the IVF cutoff age is 50, does that mean a 49-year-old woman who is not in the best of health and who spent every penny she has for IVF gets to have a baby, while a healthy 51-year-old who is financially stable cannot? Again, if it's not the women who get to decide, who does get the power to decide for them?

Pregnancy is always risky, but it has to be the individual woman who decides if she is willing to take that risk for herself and her child(ren). No one else has the right to decide for her!



You said earlier that your mother was a "hands-off" parent, and you attribute that to her age. You are probably absolutely correct, I don't know your situation and hers, but I do know that there are many, many hands-off parents in any age group. Is it possible that's your mother's parenting style? Is it possible that would have been her parenting style if she had you 10 or 20 years earlier?



This is a flawed argument. If a person isn't "young enough and fit enough to get down on my hands and knees and play/bond/help my child grow" then the person isn't going to be able to do that with an adopted child, either.

I don't know if the parents in the article are going to be good parents. They might be terrible and the whole thing is a huge mistake and the children will suffer. But, maybe not. Maybe the kids will be happy and loved. We just don't know and can't pass judgment based on our own experiences.


I hesitate to pull up this card again, but it is very applicable here... My mother had me when she was in her late 20's, my parents were financially secure; in fact they were/are "pillars of the community." What a perfect setting to have a family, right? Wrong. My siblings and I were not only neglected, but we were emotionally abused, and violently and brutally physically abused. I have physical problems that are a direct result from the abuse.

Frankly, from where I am now, I would have loved to have old parents who neglected me. That would have been preferable to the experiences I had when I was a child. Like the times I was yanked out of my bed in the middle of the night and beaten up by an enraged mother who had been fighting with my father and had no other way to vent her hate and anger.

Really, age is not a very important factor in parenting.

We have had a lot of negative comments about adopting children at an older age, we adopted our youngest when we were 45 , she was 26 months. I have had so many people say. don't you think it would be better, if she had younger parents. they have more energy. I spend much more time playing and interacting with my children. then my 26 year old neice does with her children. I work very hard at being the mother my children need. I resent people telling me that at my age raising children is wrong. I have no idea what this women's life is like. I have no idea what support system, she has in place, My hope is that these children have, a wonderful loving, caring home.

Wow. You gave a small child a loving home and people are critisizing you for it! God bless you! I'm sure you are a wonderful mother!

I think we agree on this issue more than it seems. I believe the decision has to be made by the woman, but the she needs to consider many factors especially the advice of her doctor(s).

Doctors aren't going to agree on a hard cutoff date, anyway, because they know that every situation is different. And I really believe that lawmakers have no place in deciding what is best for "everybody" in this type of personal decision.

I know this is an old thread, but this article speaks volumes for the argument against IVF for women that old.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_w..._mom_dies.html

Now those children have no mother. Sure, none of us are guaranteed to live a long life and many die or are killed with small children. But having them at age 67 really ups the chances of that. She never should have been able to have them IMO.

A dear friend adopted three children. One year after her last adoption she developed breast cancer. She died at the age of 36. She left children ages 5,3, and 1. Those children now have no Mother. There is no guarantee any of us will not leave our children orphaned. It is very easy to say huh! I knew she would not live to raise her children. We have no idea what support systems she put in place for her children. My friend think she was young and invincible, had nothing in place for the care of her children.

She died two years later, now what? The twins are orphans now, oh well.

If she wanted a baby that bad, why not adopt?

I agree 100% - age is not an important factor in good parenting. As others have said, none of us can guarantee that we will live to a ripe old age. That is why most responsible parents draw up a Will - to ensure they know who will look after their children if anything should happen to them. That's the very first thing we did when Jennifer was born.

Your experiences probably had more to do with your parents' mental health state than age, (both of them if your father allowed your mother to get away with that abuse).

No child should have to live in that environment for sure.

As I said above, NO mother has guarantees, but when you have a child at age 65-70 then you are almost guaranteed NOT to see your child grow up. I think its ridiculous.

These are such tough questions. One can't help but feel for this woman, who tried for so long to have children, only to be agonizingly thwarted by both man and nature. As a man, I can't relate to that biological clock that women feel working against them, so it must be quit a boon for them to realize that now, the clock now seemingly never has to strike midnight.

Still, one has to ask "why". ckblv (sorry, I don't know your name) said it best, "why not adopt?" One presumes that she/they wanted one of "their own", which is an answer that always makes me cringe. Children aren't a shiny new Corvette, they're not "yours". But if I'm going to run with that metaphor, it's really more like you're leasing them, whether their birth was your doing or someone elses. And in that respect, every child needs the same care and love as one out of your own body. To say that we "deserve" something that has its roots in our own desires, actions, and DNA codes, is the height of arrogance. In truth, it's probably just as well - for everyone involved - that some people choose not to adopt.

Even her own husband told her, "There's nothing wrong with you. If God wants to give us kids, he will". But did God give them kids? That's up for debate, isn't it.

It seems discriminatory to say that she shouldn't have engaged in this sort of thing just because of her age. But if it's all just one big grey area, then I guess 65 is a reasonable age. 70. 90. Hey, if it can be done, then it must be okay, right?

There are no definitive answers when it comes to this sort of thing, because it's no one or two children that are going to cause our global social structure to topple. It just seems that at a certain age, the fact that you've made it there healthy and in one piece, is cause for celebration alone. Deciding to have children outside of the normal, vibrant "wheelhouse" for doing so, seems to be a compensatory move, whether it's to alleviate loneliness, to reach back and right the ship of history that failed you, or something. Something, dare I say, that seems selfish.

From the sounds of things, she didn't even know how many children she'd end up with due to the procedure. That's just downright irresponsible.

For me, it always comes back to this, but...it's my opinion that 100% of the socio-economic problems on this planet are the result of overpopulation. And not just for humans, and our depletion of resources and land, our non-renewable energy struggles, etc., but for wildlife, and how we've infringed on their territories in order to both build, and to contaminate.

Just sayin'.

I can see your point Paula. It's not like she was able to run and play with her kids like a 30 or 40 something could do, at 67 she would be limited as to how hard she could play with them. Like Cindy said she could have adopted, because like cats, theres plenty of children out there needing homes

My answer is absolutely NOT! Menopause was created for a reason! Don't mess with Mother Nature!

Absolutely and totally selfish!

I think the woman was a total nut job. She must have been obsessed with experiencing a term pregnancy. It obviously wasn't a burning desire to pass along her own DNA, because she used donor eggs and donor sperm. It wasn't a desire to experience a vaginal delivery....women at higher age are almost always scheduled C-sections, especially if they are carrying twins, and they certainly must have discussed this aspect with her. Perhaps there is a social stigma about being barren in her native country, that pushed her to pursue pregnancy at all costs. We'll never know the truth. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that there are now two little boys who are orphans, because of this woman's selfishness.

True there are mothers who die young, but statistically speaking, there is a greater change of a woman dying before her children reach adulthood when starting after the age of 60.

Given that the expected life expectancy is about 80 years for women in the US, the typical 35 year old woman can expect to live another 45 years. The typical 60 year old woman can expect 20. And it is the rarer individual who is active, healthy, and cognitively sharp in those later years.

I think the graph in this document on Page 6, figure 3 shows it best. Notice how the survivorship dramatically drops off after the age of 60.

To me, it is irresponsible to bring children into the world when there is a very good chance, that I would not survive to care for them properly.

Theres a documentry on here on Thursday about " The Worlds Oldest Mums "

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/t...ds-oldest-mums