Ilyka sends on this article about fertility experts arguing that older women shouldn’t be able to undergo IVF treatments to get pregnant, “because elderly mothers may not live long enough to see their children grow up.”
A campaigner on ethical reproduction accused Rashbrook yesterday of being “selfish” and “irresponsible”. Josephine Quintavalle, founder of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said that Rashbrook had “totally distorted nature”.
“What she has done is selfish, it is an example of putting her own wants ahead of those of the child,” she said. “I am sure the reaction from most of the population to this is one of revulsion and distaste.
“The irony is that by taking so many invasive drugs to create a child at an advanced age, she may have actually shortened her lifespan.”
She questioned whether the egg donated to Rashbrook, who has three adult children but wanted another by John Farrant, 60, her second husband, had been obtained through the exploitation of poor eastern European women.
Huh. So the 60-year-old mother is selfish for wanting children, but the 60-year-old father is not. She’s selfish because her age may prevent her from being around long enough to see her children grow up. He, apparently, isn’t expected to be around.
Older men have been fathering children forever, with little hand-wringing about their ability to live until their children reach adulthood. As Ilyka pointed out in her email to me, MRAs and father’s rights advocates have a lot to say about the dangers of fatherlessness when women seek a divorce, but they don’t seem to have a problem with the number of older men who are fathering children.
Issues like this one are complicated, and there are moral and ethical arguments to be made about 60-year-olds having children. If I take off my feminist hat for a minute, I can admit that the situation makes me uncomfortable. But why the gender of the parent is an issue — other than for the obvious physical reasons– is beyond me.
And as for those physical reasons, I don’t think a bright-line rule should be in place barring older couples from seeking out fertility treatments. They should be informed of the risks, but should be able to proceed according to their own value systems. Would we, for example, bar a woman or her partner from fertility treatments if cancer ran in her/his family, and s/he had a strong probability of developing it early? What if s/he had cancer before, and the chance of recurrence was high? What if one parent has a disease or disability that is likely to shorten their lifespan? Who gets to decide whose physical health makes them a fit parent?
All of those factors are worth considering, and any doctor worth her salt will bring them up with couples seeking fertility treatments. But at the end of the day, if these treatments are going to be available — and I’d argue that their availability is one component in the reproductive freedom movement — then they shouldn’t discriminate. And if people are going to make moral or ethical judgments about who is too old to be a mother, then they’d better be able to explain why those same rule don’t apply to fathers.
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Technically this isn’t a feminist issue. This is a rights issue. You’re corret, the sex of the parent shouldn’t be an issue. That part is a feminist issue, but the fact is these people have a right to do what they want without anyone’s judging them.
There are a hell of a lot of 30-somethings who aren’t there for their children. They’re alive and around, but not there. I know. I’ve been one of them.
This has been one of my rants for a while as I watched Donald Trump, Geraldo Rivera and Tony Randall sire children when they are geriatrics. Men cannot argue that they are an essential part of a child’s upbringing if they continue to produce children they know they may not see make it to adulthood. I, personally, do not want to have children after a certain age because I still enjoy talking to my mom as I approach middle age. I probably would not be able to guarantee any child of mine the same thing. I think men should take this into consideration too. Do men have any value beyond impregnation or not?
The average life expectancy in the US is a little more than 77 years. More for a woman. If the 60 year old person in question is in good health and a non-smoker, they are likely to live to see their children to adulthood, although perhaps not much beyond. A 60 year old mother or father should, of course, make provisions for the child in case they don’t survive, but so should a 20 year old.
Another thing to consider, for those who are not part of the rich and famous, is that older parents may tend to have more health issues. Is it fair to have a child at 60 then at 78 expect their 18 year old to take care of them when their adult life is just beginning – particularly girls? Life and good health are promised to no one – regardless of age – but the fact remains that older parents are more likely to die or get sick. I know more than a few people who lost their mothers as children and always, somehow, they are missing a piece of themselves. 18 is not a cut off for needed a relationship with one’s parents. Sometimes a good relationship is just beginning at that point. I talk to my mom almost everyday. Most of my close friends have similar relationships with their parents. Those who don’t seem to have a multitude of other issues.
I am not that uncomfortable with 60 year olds having kids. Our life expectancy has increased significantly and it is very possible to make provisions to free one’s children from having to care one in old age (although that may be a luxury of the more prosperous segments of the population). Also 60 year olds may be at a stage of life when they are better suited to care for children and have more time to give their children.
A question*: Would people who feel uncomfortable about a 60 year old becoming a parent feel as uncomfortable about a younger person who was terminally ill becoming a parent? What about one who was chronically ill? For example (a real examples, somewhat altered), a 35 year old with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a condition that generally kills after a number of years, almost always less than 18 (and may be more virulent in younger people)? Or a 25 year old brittle diabetic who may or may not make it 18 years but will almost certainly spend a fair amount of time in the hospital over that time?
*A question I don’t have a good answer to.
it is very possible to make provisions to free one’s children from having to care one in old age
I don’t really understand what that means. “Free one’s children from having to take care …?” Children who have been well taken care of, WANT to take care of their parents – no matter what. BUT, if they are young, placing the possible burden/guilt on them in the first place is wrong in my eyes. Why not adopt? Why not mentor? As I said, so you make it until your child is 20-25 or even 30 … I know people who are in their 50s with grandkids and still are devastated when their parents die because their parents have become their friends. For me, I’d like a long relationship with the kids I’d breed and would want to be their for them until they are middle aged … and at this point, it is almost to late for what I would want to give. But that’s just me … If you believe in kicking them out at 18 and only expect a card every now and then, breed on until you cannot breed anymore! :-)
“Men cannot argue that they are an essential part of a child’s upbringing if they continue to produce children they know they may not see make it to adulthood”
I refer to it as “making an orphan”. Obviously life is a bad drive-in movie – anyone can die at any time – but to practically guarrantee that your child will lose one of both parents while a teenager seems awfully short-sighted.
About 33 years ago, my mother’s best friend’s boyfriend was diagnosed with some sort of terminal cancer. They rushed to get married and have a baby right away before the boyfriend died. As predicted by the doctors, the boyfriend/husband/father died when the baby was 6 months old. Baby was raised his entire life by his single mother.
When I was growing up, everyone always talked about what a wonderful and touching story this was. No one ever as much as suggested that having the baby under these circumstances was the wrong thing to do. Indeed, it was considered right and proper that the young couple take all steps to make sure dad had progeny to survive after him.
Qusan-’I know more than a few people who lost their mothers as children and always, somehow, they are missing a piece of themselves.’
That maybe true for the people you know, but it is not a universal rule. And how have you made that judgement and that connection from the outside? You do not have the right to imply that I am missing a piece of myself because my mother died. I am not incomplete. My parents were not selfish to have a child knowing that they were mortal.
I can’t personally imagine having the energy to run around after a baby or toddler at 60, and a grade-schooler when I’m close to 70. I dunno–I don’t think it’s “wrong” to have kids in the 30′s and 40′s, but it just seems that 60 is pushing it, not only lifespan-wise, but just as far as physical stamina goes. That goes for men or women.
I think that a couple deciding to have or adopt a baby, knowing that one of them is ill and may not survive for the child’s entire rearing, is different. Both of the parents in this case were 60, meaning that they may BOTH pass away before the kid grows up, or at some point become unable to care for him or her. I agree that the article shouldn’t have focused just on the mother’s age–especially when so many old guys (Paul McCartney) are becoming fathers these days without any moral outrage at all.
But H.F., how is that so much different from a single woman who wants to have children and decides to impregnate herself with donated sperm? In the story you told, it’s pretty much the same thing, only the sperm was “donated” by someone whom she already knew and loved. I’m not an overly romantic person myself, so the story doesn’t give me that wonderful & touching feeling that it gives the people you’re talking about, but I wouldn’t say that what she did was necessarily “the wrong thing to do.”
Sorry, my comment refers to Happy Feminist in #9, in case anyone’s confused.
Here’s the problem I have with this: we already know that use of fertility drugs may increase the risk of certain cancers later on (something I wasn’t fully informed about when I donated eggs, but I’m not sure if it was known back then). And that’s in pre-menopausal women.
What do we know about the effect of taking fertility drugs and whatever supplemental hormones are necessary to obtain and maintain a pregnancy in a post-menopausal woman?
It just seems to me that IVF is big business, and big business focuses on the bottom line. Focusing on the bottom line may mean that IVF is pushed to older and older candidates without any real work done to know the effect on their health. Are they really appropriate candidates, or are they just a new market segment?
Nevertheless, I bridle at the label “selfish” for these women. It’s one of those that get thrown around no matter what — if you don’t want kids, you’re selfish. If you want only one, you’re selfish. If you want them, but you want to have them when you’re older than some would like, you’re selfish.
Another issue I have with this is that it means that women are never really done with fertility. If you can have a baby at 70, there can be no end to the pressure to reproduce and people will still be smugly insisting that “you’ll change your mind someday” even after menopause.
I think zuzu is right. There is a limit to just how much you want to mess with nature – especially when the health risks are unknown. If your body is telling you not to have babies, there is probably a good reason, and it’s probably not a bad idea to listen.
If your body is telling you not to get erections, there is probably good reason, and it’s probably not a bad idea to listen. There, we’ve just eliminated all need for PDE5 inhibitors. No more messing with nature!
But I didn’t want to get sidetracked with that. Mostly I just wanted to thank Jill for not hollering at me for spamming her. More thoughts after more coffee, I hope.
I remember a story I heard about 20 or 30 years ago about a woman whose father had died of Huntington’s who decided to have a baby at a young age, so that if she had HD herself she would be able to raise the child before her symptoms develop. I remember thinking that she was behaving in an incredibly selfish way: Not only was she putting her child at risk of losing a parent at a young age (I was too young at the time myself to think of the “setting the child up to caref or a debilitated parent throughout young adulthood” aspect), but also putting it at risk of getting HD and dying young itself. At the time there was no test for HD prior to onset of symptoms so it was a strict coin toss whether either parent or child would have it or not.
Maybe having children is an intrinsicly selfish thing to do at any age or state of health. No one’s immortal and to have a child is to set up that child’s death. If no one condemns that act as selfish then why condemn acts that are only incrementally worse?
Are you comparing a guy who can’t get it up to a post-menopausal woman making the decision to bear a child? I think it’s a bit different…
If the woman is pre-menopausal and can’t get pregnant, that might be another story, but there is a natural cycle that includes menopause. Menopause occurs in every woman. Erectile dysfunction does not occur in every man. Different stories completely. I’m not making some claim to control women’s reproductive rights here – I’m just point out that it might not be such a good idea. Ultimately the decision is between you and your doctor.
Qusan, what do you mean “particularly girls”? It’s not as bad if it’s boys who have to care for their elderly parents? Please explain.
Oh, yeah, that’s a fair reading. I think–and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, Qusan–that she’s pointing out a statistical truth: it’s more frequently female children who care for elderly relatives and parents. They would therefore be particularly affected by parents who are already elderly by the time they leave high school.
Something–like, for example, changes in libido in both sexes–doesn’t have to be universal or even more common than not to be natural. Erectile dysfunction to varying degrees is common, particularly among older men.
piny, yes, I agree – there are varying degrees, however. If treating erectile dysfunction had any potentially harmful side effects, I would probably recommend against that too (I don’t know enough about the treatment to know either way). My concern is a health one entirely. It is probably unsafe for a post-menopausal woman to be pregnant, and as zuzu pointed out, the effects of fertility treatments have not been well documented.
I wouldn’t argue these should be made illegal – nor would I call women who wish to recieve the treatments “selfish” – but I would worry nevertheless. Although historically speaking, the idea of females (of any species) living past menopause is a relatively recent phenomenon. Perhaps with our lifespans lengthening, we can begin to look at menopause differently. Having a child post-menopausal might not be all that bad – but it’s something that should be considered very closely.
It most certainly does. Viagra can be fatal, especially in men who have heart conditions. If taken with nitroglycerin, which is frequently used to treat heart disease, it can cause a severe decrease in blood pressure which may be enough to stop the heart from functioning. I’m not sure if the risk is any lower for the other viagra-like erectile dysfunction drugs, but since they work the same way I suspect it is not. And, of course, one can be allergic to any drug.
Surgical solutions to ED, of course, have surgical risks, as well as being frequently rather unsatisfying in their outcomes. A sometimes proposed “natural” remedy, rhinocerous horn, not only doesn’t work, but its use decimates the rhino population.
As the economists say, there’s no such thing as a free lunch: everything has risks and side effects. Artificial fertility enhancement has risks, treating erectile dysfunction has risks, getting up in the morning has risks. The question of whether the benefit is worth it is one that each person must decide individually.
There’s some evidence that women not living long past menopause may be a relatively new phenomenon, as well. It may be that for most of human history (ie during the hunter-gatherer era), most women who lived past childbirth lived into their 60s or 70s.
After all, menopause must be, evolutionarily, there for some reason. The usual speculation I’ve heard is that women whose mothers helped them raise children had a higher rate of reproductive success and a woman who is post-menopausal can help raise her daughter’s children because she is no longer busy with her own.
Menopause usually occurs around 45-50. The average life expectancy in the US for women is about 78 or 79. Women spend a signficant part of their lives post-menopausal.
After all, menopause must be, evolutionarily, there for some reason. The usual speculation I’ve heard is that women whose mothers helped them raise children had a higher rate of reproductive success and a woman who is post-menopausal can help raise her daughter’s children because she is no longer busy with her own.
Yes, I’m familiar with this, but I’m not sure where the evidence of women living into their 60s or 70s in the hunter-gatherer era comes from. I’m not saying you’re wrong, of course, I’ve just always heard otherwise. It’s an interesting possibility for me to look into.
Women spend a signficant part of their lives post-menopausal.
Now they do. If you’re right in the first part of your post, then this has been true throughout history, but I wasn’t under the impression that it was. I do know that most animal species, including primates, die shortly after menopause.
I’m here to learn, so this is all very interesting for me to think about! Thanks!
Maybe having children is an intrinsicly selfish thing to do at any age or state of health.
In a way it is: there’s this new person who suffers and has a host of unmet needs (the best parent in the world can’t meet every need of their child) because you decided you had to reproduce. In another way, like BitchPhD says, it isn’t, because someone somewhere has to do the breeding thing.
And when it comes to the selfishness of reproductive decisions, I am very well aware I have a plank in my eye, so…
The sperm donor comment is interesting. If it isn’t okay for an elderly man to have a child because he may not be around, it isn’t okay for a single woman to use donated sperm for the same reason. Like it or not, it’s an established norm that these situations are acceptable so far as men are concerned.
I think there’s probably more mileage than we’ve seen so far in the argument that the purpose of medical interventions is to restore healthy functioning. Is bearing a child heathy functioning in post menopausal woman the way producing sperm or getting an erection is in a man? It’s interesting that this isn’t an argument on the ‘too old to be a mother’ grounds – it’s about the purpose of medicine. So asking why someone isn’t ‘too old to be a father’ is pointless. Perhaps that’s a sophisticated verison of Quintavalle’s idea that she “totally distorted nature”. You’d probably have to be very careful in your wording to avoid that line of reasoning being picked apart though.
Bryan, I’m not sure what evidence of hunter-gatherer women living until 60 or 70 in the past is, but it seems to me that you could look at the hunter-gatherer societies in existence today to get an idea of lifespan. If their way of life hasn’t changed substantially in tens of thousands of years, I would imagine their lifespan hasn’t, either.
I’ve been doing a bit of searching online and everything I seem to find indicates an average lifespan of 25-30 years in many paleolithic societies.
Zuzu, there are very few societies that still exist in the way they did tens of thousands of years ago, but I’ll look into it.
I’m extremely curious now…
Yes, but that’s infant mortality plus adult mortality. It doesn’t imply that people tended to croak in their third decade.
I would have expected life expectancy statistics to have been adjusted for infant mortality, but I’m guessing I’m wrong about this. It’s certainly misleading, however.
Why? The planet wouldn’t implode if there were no people on it.
I’m afraid I’m going from my memory of a study of modern hunter-gatherers that I read some time ago. I think it was in Nature, but I’m not sure. I’ll see what I can find out.
Why would you expect them to do that any more than for any other age? A death in infancy is still a death. As I understand it, most estimates don’t; it’s usually calculated from birth. Here’s the wiki article.
Now, the average lifespan from middle age has also increased, since we’ve learned how to prevent things like congestive heart failure. But IIRC and according to wikipedia, the primary controlling factor in average lifespan is pretty much the infant mortality rate.
A couple of references on the “grandmother hypothesis”:
An article in Nature, though not the one I was looking for.
A full text review article on the issue, which suggests that the issue may be quite complex
Piny: There wasn’t a particular logic to my assumption about adjusting life expectancy for infant mortality rates, but it just seems like there should be more statistics for how old people generally lived if they were to reach maturity. It is a bit misleading when the average falls in between two dramatic extremes when most people may or may not have actually lived to anything near (above or below) that age. I had always assumed the figure was indicative of how old people were when they were dying because that’s often how the statistic is employed in articles. You’re right though, I checked out the Wiki and it makes perfect sense.
Dianne: Thanks for the link. I’ve read some of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s work that has dealt with similar things.
I’m learning quite a bit today… Thanks all.
Belated response to Raging Red in #13, responding to my comment in #9:
I don’t at all think it was wrong for my mother’s friend to become pregnant knowing thath the father would die during the baby’s infancy.
I was just providing an example to further the point about the double standard at play when people complain about older women who have babies. I bet a lot of those same people would NOT complain about older men or terminally ill men (or women) having babies.
Qusan, what do you mean “particularly girls”? It’s not as bad if it’s boys who have to care for their elderly parents? Please explain.
Raging Moderate, I meant that of the people I know taking care of elderly or incapaciated parents, they are all women – particularly if there is also a son in the family. I have two close friends whose mothers became invalids far younger than they should have. BOTH, have brothers who barely help. Both of them have almost the entire responsibility for taking care of their mothers … and, trust me, it interferes with their love lives (or subsequent lack thereof).
One theory (promoted by Jared Diamond in his book “The Third Chimpanzee”, although he may not have been the one to originally come up with hte idea) is that because childbearing for human women is significantly more risky than for most mammals, and because a woman’s risk of dying in childbirth increases with her age (general wear and tear on the body, etc), menopause is nature’s way of maximizing the chance that a woman will be able to raise her other offspring.
A woman in a hunter-gatherer society will typically breastfeed exclusively for about three years, but once the child has reached hte age of three, they can walk on their own, and don’t have to be carried. A woman who’s pregnant and carrying a young toddler everywhere (or carrying an infant and a toddler) won’t be able to keep up with the group, when it’s constantly on the move and must stay on the move in order to hunt and gather food. The human female body is extremely poorly-designed from the point of view of having to expell a comparatively large baby with a comparatively huge head through the generally narrow pelvis. A child who’s four years old is self-transporting, but certainly not self-sufficient. If a woman dies before some of her children have reached adulthood, the chances of her young children surviving much past her death are not great.
Every time she gets pregnant, she’s gambling that this pregnancy WON’T lead to her death, but with every subsequent pregnancy the odds get worse. If she stops being fertile around the time her body is getting pretty ill-equipped to handle the stress of further pregnancies, her chances of living to provide for her existing children until they grow up, and potentially to assist in the care of and food-gathering for her grandchildren is a good evolutionary strategy. Well, that’s the theory, anyway. Not being an anthropologist, I have no idea if Diamond is onto something, or if he’s on crack, but it seems plausible enough.
The difference between using a sperm donor (or having a child in the expectation that you will die while it is an infant) and having a child in the expectation that you will die when the child is a teenager is that in the first case you’re not hurting the child emotionally. If an infant loses a parent, it doesn’t really know what’s happened. If an older child loses a parent, he or she is losing a loved one, which hurts a lot. It’s not all about being there to provide for the kid economically. The pain of not having a parent is very different from the pain of losing a parent.