Sister says my husband and I are selfish for wanting a child in our 40s

As long as your child is looked after then it's no ones business. I would understand them having an opinion if they thought the child would be neglected or if they thought you couldn't cope but this is not the case. I think they are just jealous. Honestly I'm happy I waited until my mid 30s for my children. I have spent my 20s doing things I wanted to do (met someone I'm happy with, travelled the world and went to university) and now in my 30s I can enjoy bringing up my children. 🤷

Me and my partner had our first child together at 41/44 and second at 42/45. It's been great and they are now 16 and 14. I am very grateful we had a lot of youthful fun together before kids and we were lucky enough to have them in our 40s.

We've travelled extensively with them, gone to many many music festivals dancing for hours on end and climbed several mountains with them. I don't think they've noticed any lack of energy in our parenting.

👏👏

I had DD1 when I was 41 & DD2 when I was 42. I didn’t meet their Father until I was 39. My DDs are 17 & 16 and they wish that I’d had them when I was younger. They feel they’ll just have less time with me in their lives. I get that … but I always point out that if I was younger I’d have had to work all the time to support them & I didn’t give up my recreational partying ways until I was 36 😂 … I’ve been a SAHM since DD2 and I’ve always Home Educated. There’s pros and cons whatever our age…

This is so ridiculous, I'm 43, we spend our weekends with our kids swimming, bike rides. Parks, trampoline parks etc etc and because our careers were established pre kids we were able to take longer mat leave and manage a few years part time. I know plenty of younger parents who aren't up for half of what we do in a week. I also have kids who love looking at photos and videos of our travels, kids are interested in what their parents did before them, were you not? How odd.

How old are you?

How odd that someone had a different life experience to you?

How...odd

Also I was so proud of having an older mum. She had to give up work once she got married (Ireland in the 60s).
So she and her peers waited to get married until their late-30s, since they wanted a career first. The kids of her friends were around my siblings age, so it felt normal to me.

I think I've may border on selfish. It would take lots of time and energy. Id be worried about the time scale with ivf

My mum had me at 42 (and had my sibling at 44). I had my kids at 47.
My mum is now a healthy 95 year old.

Like a previous poster my mum was very active with us. I go skiing, ice-skating, swimming etc with my kids. I think having kids late keeps you young.,

No, Not true. I've been very clear all along that the risk factors come from both older men AND older women. I have frequently talked about 'parents' rather than just mothers and I've referenced men specifically more than once.

I think if you know you want children, then choosing to put them off until you are 40+ when there is no absolute necessity to do so is short sighted, ill judged and foolish. And yes, a decision often made for trivial or shallow reasons when one considers all the drawbacks. People who have delayed parenthood until 40+ and taken the view that 'no need to rush, we can always just get some IVF if it doesn't happen by itself' will get cognitive dissonance in trying to rationalise their own decision making though.

I think I've made it more than clear why I feel this way. If people don't agree with me that's entirely up to them but I feel strongly about this and no amount of debating it is going to change my mind.

How odd. My dm had me at 42 and dsis at 44. She was constantly on the go, and still did 3 days a week in a charity shop in her 80s.
I had my ds at 45, he's 18 this year and I still ski and practice karate with him, and run parkrun while he lays in bed on a Saturday morning.
Maybe your parents just weren't very fit.

I had my youngest child just before I was 40, she was our ‘last ditch’ attempt but because of repeated losses, not my age. I’ll be 60 by the time she is through university (if she wants to go - but we’re working on the basis she’s financially dependent on us until 21) and then we’ll retire. Both sets of grandparents are still fairly healthy in their early 80s so hopefully at least one of us will live that long and she’ll have a parent around in her 40s. Something unexpected could happen at any age but I’m not intending to drop dead before I’m 60 and leave a motherless child.
My SIL is pregnant at 44 and we raised an eyebrow slightly but more because her current youngest is 12 and we couldn’t imagine going back to nappies etc when they are all leaving home or at secondary. That doesn’t apply when your son is still quite little. It’s none of our business what anyone else chooses anyway. Crack on!

Very selfish. My parents had us in their mid 40s and I’ll never forgive them for it. Our upbringing was miserable and they were utterly worn out by the time we were pre-schoolers.

And the same applies for some of the nutty answers here. 40 is far from uncommon these days especially if you already know everything is functional.

Your mother’s opinion is completely irrelevant!

people choosingto have their children later and later in life, just because medical science has made it feasible to do so.

Natural biology has made it feasible for women to have children later in life for centuries. Women have always had children towards the end of their fertile years. Which can often be well into their 40s.

Just look at the thread by the woman who found herself unexpectedly pg last week, and SO many posters reported late unassisted pregnancies.

It’s contraception that has enabled women to control childbearing earlier in their lives.

And whatever your overall sociological views, not nice to moralise and lecture an individual woman who would like to have a baby.

Well it’s my opinion, you don’t need to understand me not understanding.

40 is not too old at all, especially when you have a 4yo.

And who asked your sister's opinion??

But what is there to understand? If someone isn't ready, they're not ready.

Maybe take another look at, say, your last paragraph? Would you say that to someone’s face?

I don’t understand waiting 20+ years to have children either, especially when you could have the ‘best of both worlds’ by having children between say 28-34.

But if OP isn’t overly attached to the idea of a second child, then it’s no big deal. It’s definitely a gamble and not a risk I personally would choose knowing the stakes.

But you have no idea if OP can get pregnant naturally or not. You also failed to point out the health risks with older males becoming fathers, unsurprisingly.

Can you explain why you feel people putting off kids because they're not ready and don't want them yet, is trivial or shallow? Do you think women have a duty to society to get pregnant young, ready or not?

It wouldn't be for me - but I'm not you, so what does it matter what anyone (including your sister and mum think?)

Perhaps OP should of considered children earlier, but she didn’t so you can’t go back in time and change anything!

I appreciate this is AIBU so all opinions are welcome but I think whatever the reason, some woman are older when they have children and that’s that.

You’re 39, nearly 40. No I don’t think it’s too old. No I don’t think being 60 and having a 18-20 year old is weird.

You obviously knew the risks of leaving things later and you weighed up the pros and cons. You have to do what you want and not what your sisters think.

It's not that I am 'not okay' with medical science being used to solve infertility. Of course I am. What I am less okay with is people taking for granted that they can put off parenthood for longer and longer for what are often quite shallow or trivial reasons, in the understanding that they can fall back on medical intervention later, as the safety net to solve the inevitable age related fertility issues this causes.

As many as 60% of a woman's eggs are thought to be compromised once she is over 40. Sperm declines in both count and quality in men over 40 and particularly markedly over 45 and 50.

The simple fact is that leaving parenthood too late is playing Russian Roulette with your ability to conceive. It's playing Russian Roulette with your pregnancy managing to go full term and it's playing Russian Roulette with your baby's health and wellbeing.

Being over 40 in pregnancy substantially increases the risk of all these things: miscarriage, congenital abnormalities, chromosomal conditions and syndromes, structural defects such as heart, skull, genital and oesophageal abnormalities, and the risk of autism. And this increase gets markedly greater for every year over 40 the mother is.

I just don't understand why more couples don't take all of that very seriously indeed when deciding when is the right time to start a family, or to add to it. Assuming they have the luxury of choice of course, which clearly the OP has had, and many other women have had. I realise not everybody does.