To discuss the societal impacts of older parents?

I agree. I had just come on here to say the same.
As an older mum I did not feel your thread was a criticism that required me to justify why I had kids when older. But most people on this thread are just battling out the whys rather than the long/ medium term implications of having kids later in life on society.

As a child of older parents and an older parent myself I can totally appreciate the bigger picture you are trying to discuss. I could not care less what others think of me having children later in life but there certainly are societal ramifications if this then becomes the norm. This is not a criticism but a fact. And those that think societal changes don’t affect them are clearly living with their head in the sand!

To be honest - nobody knows!! We can all speculate, but even when they look back in 100yrs time it will be impossible to pinpoint cause and effect. Did marrying in early 20s lead to more divorce, poorer older women with no pension, and increased care home bills as women tend to live longer? Some yes, some no, it would be very difficult to prove taking in hundreds of external factors.

In what way? How I feed my child is completely up to me. The government can put a sugar tax on, but if I want to feed my children sugar I can pay the tax and foot the cost. They can’t police what I feed my children (unless it’s neglect).

When I have my children is also up to me. I think the option to have children later is a positive (it’s such a shame there is a stigma on here which I’ve not experienced in real life). I can see many positive ms for women being able to choose to have babies later. They can establish a career and potential have more money to ease the load. They’re not reliant on a man and have to stay for financial reasons (I’ve see a lot of that on here). They’re not in a rush to pick just anyone to have children with. They have time to find someone who shares their ideals (equal views on childcare, housework, money). I think long term this choice will be of great benefit to women, but I’d never try and make all women have children at 40 just because it may help women in the future!!!! That’s like something out of a sci-fi novel (it Trump’s America).

Or acting like having kids in your 30s/ 40s is really unusual! My dad's parents (he was youngest of 40 born shortly after WW2) were 39 46 when he was born.

@Kindersurprising it’s interesting what you say about children moving away from their parents so less available. I think this is one of the things that will potentially change,
less migration. I spent 10 years moving around and did a lot of travel in my 20’s. But ultimately I moved back to near my parents in my early 30’s precisely because I knew they would need me more as they got older and there was no one else. I did want to move to another part of the UK, but this stopped me. Now I am settled and live not that far from where I grew up.
I flew the nest and came back. This coupled with the cost of living may well see families living closer together once again.

As if it's just lesser, socially and intellectually inferior parents having babies in their late twenties /early thirties and almost implying we are somehow delinquent.

I think it's also people not thinking about things outside their own sphere of experience...me and most of my friends (sensible boring graduates) mostly had our DC between mid 20s and early 30s...most are (at least culturally) religious and not white-British though.

I agree, very few of us ever met our great-grandparents. I only knew one set of grandparents and although I was vaguely aware that some children had two sets, it didn't bother me because one lot was, to me, the norm. When you are a child, you tend to think that what you are used to is just how things are.

I had my son at 33, my daughter at 35, my second daughter at 36 and I am now 17 weeks pregnant at 38 with our 4th and final child.

In hindsight it would have been better to perhaps start at 25, but this is not how my life has panned out and I feel extremely blessed having my children.

I can see benefits to having children late and having them early. But, ultimately it’s about choice, specifically choices for women.

It doesn’t really matter what effect having children early or late has on society. Women aren’t here to prop up society, well I am certainly not. I am fortunate that I was able to have children when I wanted them, as did all my friends. I made this choice for me, not how I think will benefit others - I’m the one getting pregnant, giving birth and raising them.

I am so fed up of this demonisation of women because of their choices (when to have them, how to feed them, whether they should work, whether they should spend a night away from them…). If politicians and members of society think there will be problems in the future due to whatever guesswork and mental gymnastics they are using to justify trying to control women’s choices - then do something about it, but not by controlling women. We didn’t ban cars due to the climate crisis, we looked for alternative fuels.

Women aren’t here to selflessly serve society and pop children out when required.

My Mum was 37 when I was born in 1963, fair enough I was her 4th ( & last ) child, but older parents are nothing new.
I didn’t really know my grandparents let alone my great grandparents, but that had zero effect on my life.

Actually as I describedupthread the difficulty is starting have babies at 17/18/19 and continuing throughout your 20's and 30's. A child at 17, another at 19 means both at school FT by the time the mother is 24- she then has 43 years of potential education/ employment. Even if fully supported by the tax payer for 7 years, it is still good value.

So older parents don’t receive statutory maternity pay or government subsidised childcare? ‘’My taxes pay for your lifestyle’ is used against teen parents all the time but parents of all ages receive financial support and that’s a good thing that governments support families! I don’t think the financial support I received as a teen mum was particularly more than I’ve had as a financially secure older mum.

There seems to be a strange dichotomy on this thread, either you are having a baby before 22 or after 37,completely ignoring the intervening 15 years, which most people would agree are optimal. It isn't either/or. Agree completely with PP this is a young men problem as much as anything else but also ultimately a consequence of a post industrial invidualistic society.

YABU because usually the discussion devolves into "selfish women" and selfish women wanting to have careers."

So YABU to discuss this unless you look at the decisions a lot of young men make not to settle down, and not to develop theseles so they are good partner & father material.

Many women want to have DC at the time that is healthiest - in their 20s. BUt young men are rarely thinking about this and there is a dearth of suitable men as fathers and life partners.

And it's not a new discussion. Back in the midde of the 19th century there were lots of public discussions (again, women-blaming) about the "surplus" women who weren't getting married & having children. Again, no mention of the "useless" men who were not marrying and parenting ...

It's much harder to get on the housing ladder post dc as it affects your borrowing power & there is less social housing now.

This. It's absolutely a financial issue.
Where we are the younger parents are all those who've started having dc late teens/early-mid 20s and continued and are fully dependent on state benefits.
The 'older' parents you talk about are the ones who've had to work and save to get in a position to afford mat leave and children as they are entitled to nothing from the state, expect possibly the paltry child benefit, and increased tax on their salary, and also paying eye watering child care fees!!

Traditionally it would actually fall to the unmarried daughter/s. Failing that one of the married daughters would be expected to bring her parents into her home so she could care for them alongside having/bringing up children.

Don’t forget that the life expectancy was lower so people became ‘elderly’ at a younger age.

I remember visiting my paternal grandparents and they’d always be sat in twin armchairs with blankets over their laps. Mum or dad would make them a cup of tea and I’d have to sit there on my best behaviour whilst they talked. I worked out recently they were early sixties at this point 😳

This was a response to previous poster suggesting a 70 yo would be caring for a 88yo. Personally I don't know anyone who doesn't provide some support for parents in their late 80's/90's even if it's just company, house hold maintenance. This does include both DH (50) and DS (21) who do things such as change light bulbs, climb into the loft/ onto the roof to investigate leaks, get various things down and file a tax return for MIL (80).

No it isn't Teen mothers often come from families where education isn't priority ( the girls who come from. " Better" families are more likely to have abortions) and less likely to be highly educated even without the baby

Whether parents get help from GPs is going to depend at least partly on whether they live anywhere near. Many families are now scattered.

I had one GGF until I was 14, but that was ages ago now. Both GFs died in their 60s - both GMs lived well into their 80s. Neither set lived near, so DPs never had help from them.

Tbh the housing ladder hasn't worked for all 3 generations of DH's family. Dh's grandpa bought his 3 bed house at 26 in 1957 as a garment worker with a council mortgage, suspect he lied about income as he didn't know where next paycheck was coming from. He died in that house. MIL and FIL bought a tiny 1 bed flat (bedroom was 2.4 by 2.4 m and it was a maisonette) which fell from 70k to 40k, they only bought the next house cos family gave them money. We bought our 2 bed flat in our 20s, still there in our 30s and unlikely to move to anything bigger than a flat. Our flat does offer us stability in the sense that our mortgage was 1k for 5 years and 1282 now which is handy for mat leave and dh's health expenses (700 quid on prescription, and his employer has already covered 30k on medical bills).

But we don't expect to move up esp with our anticipated health costs and if ds has similar health issues. I was ttc since my 20s though and am now 32 so not a very old mum, unfortunately dh's problems are inherited.