Choosing to Parent When You Are Over 40
Almost eight years ago, I was leaving my favorite restaurant, playing with my five-year-old daughter as I went. An older man in his seventies smiled at me and said, "Aren't they the apple of a grandparent's eyes?" For a split second I wondered, "Why is he telling me about his grandchild?"
In the next split second, I realized he was making a friendly connection to what he thought was another grandparent. Yikes! Do I really look that old? If people think I look like her grandparent when she is five, what will they see when she is 10 or15? More importantly, what will she see? How will she feel about having an older mom when she is a teenager. And how will I feel when I am 60 with a daughter smack in the middle of her teen years?
Time has marched on and now I am almost 60 and my daughter is thirteen years old and fully in the throes of hormonally induced mood swings. Does it make any difference that I am an older mom now that she has entered her teens? What do I think would be helpful for older single women to keep in mind as they turn to adoption as a way to build their family?
As a Marriage and Family Therapist for 20 years, I have specialized in infertility and adoption and have worked with many single women who were trying to build families, either through fertility treatments or adoption. For several years, I led support groups for older moms, which included many single parents. Although I am not a single parent, my experience of working with single women as they start the adoption process and go on to raise their children makes me want to insure that all single women consider carefully the challenges and joys of being an older parent.
Natural question: So how old do you have to be to enter the distinguished company of older moms? That depends on how you feel and what your support community looks like. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where many mothers are over 35 and it is not unusual to see women with graying hair and young children. But in other areas of the country you might feel differently about being one of the few older moms. I would venture that starting parenting after your early forties qualifies you as an older parent, and you will face the dual task of entering mid-life while parenting a young child.
I became a mother when I was 46 years old, after twenty years of trying to find the right partner, after years of misdiagnosed early menopause, followed by years of trying to adopt. I have found the experience of being an older mom challenging in ways I hadn't expected, and filled with blessings that are always apparent.
What was apparent to me from leading support groups for older moms is that most of us didn't choose to be older parents. Life led us down this road. Most of us didn't start off in our 20's or 30's thinking that we would wait until we were in our 40's to have children. A myriad of factors led to being an older parent: putting off childbearing until a career was established, only to find it was difficult to get pregnant; pregnancy losses or years of infertility treatment sometimes followed by the adoption process; years of trying to find the right partner or situation to support single parenting. For many women, the desire to be a mother was always present - it just got stronger as we got older. The road was often filled with obstacles, waiting, and searching, but finally we found ourselves in our forties with a child brought to us by adoption.
As older moms, we never take parenting for granted. We look at our children as blessings that arrived after long and often arduous journeys. We also come in all shapes and sizes: we are working class, middle class, and affluent; we are mostly European-American women, but we are also Women-of-Color; we are lesbian and straight; we are stay-at-home moms; stay at home wanna-bes, and part and full-time working moms.
Although we are diverse, there are many similarities in our experiences. The primary one is that it is different being a parent in our 40's than if we were in our 20's or 30's. Women in mid-life have explored many aspects of ourselves, and often have established careers or jobs, but that doesn't mean we are not changing. Our forties and fifties often finds us searching for more meaning in our work, our relationships, and in our desire for expressing more creativity.
There might be a great deal of stability during these years, but there can also be many internal changes as we have an increasing understanding of not only the biological clock, but also the mortality clock. The mortality clock is a gradual awareness that hits every so often after forty. Sometimes when an older mom looks at her young child, she wonders, "Will I see her through college? Will I be alive for her wedding? Will I ever have grandchildren?" This awareness isn't morbid. It's more like a bittersweet awareness. Bittersweet because we feel so blessed to be moms, and also know it came at a time in life that leaves us with different choices and different possibilities than if we were a decade or two younger.
We bring great vitality, love and energy into our parenting. But we wouldn't be telling the truth if we didn't acknowledge that we are a little more tired than we were at thirty. The sleep deprivation of early infancy has a different impact on a woman that might be peri-menopausal or in menopause. (I had successfully been dealing with menopause symptoms with herbal supplements until the sleep deprivation of early infancy hiked the hot flashes up to twenty or thirty a day. I refused to carry around an infant and deal with soaking wet hot flashes at the same time, so I finally hit the hormone replacement road.) As our bodies age, we sometimes face more than the little aches and pains. Some might say, "No, not me, I am healthy and fit. I am not going to be one of those who ages in her late 40's or 50's."
Choosing parenting over 40 needs to be done with your eyes wide open about the realities of gradual aging. Sure, we can exercise and eat right, but there is no getting around the fact that when our kids are teenagers we will be getting solicitations to subscribe to AARP (American Association of Retired People).
Family, friends and community may look a little different for an older mom. Grandparents may no longer be living, or have caregiving needs that may add a layer of complexity to parenting young children. Many of us are geographically removed from our families of origin and so we work to make community with our peers. For older parents, our peers might more naturally have children in their teens or out of the home. Connecting with other parents in mid-life who also have young children becomes an important challenge.
Changing values about what is important in life, reexamination of the work we do, redefining friends and community, and looking for more spiritual sustenance are all usual parts of this time of life.
What is not usual is the combination of mid-life with a young child.
There have always been women who had children later in life, but never before have there been so many of us - and especially those starting and not simply ending their child-bearing years. Older moms with young children are charting new territory. We are learning to juggle not only motherhood and work, but motherhood and the challenges of aging and making new priorities for the second half of life.
