To think becoming a first time mother in your 60s is the height of selfishness?

[CounsellorTroi]

www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/julia-peyton-jones

Had a baby alone at 64. She’ll be 80 years old when her daughter is 16. There’s a good chance she’ll be dead by the time the child is 30. She could well die before the child reaches 25. So very selfish.

I might add I generally think people having kids through IVF is selfish. Something (nature) is causing your egg and your partner's sperm to reject each other, and probably on good grounds - but because we women feel it's our right to have our own babies, it's forced anyway. Resulting in babies that shouldn't even have been born if nature had been left to it. Unpopular viewpoint but it's true nevertheless.

Oh for goodness sake, leave the woman alone to get on with it. I can't get worked up about stuff like this.

@AtlasPine

Plenty of men do parenthood at that age.

Misogyny at its finest OP

Look, anyone having a child does it for selfish reasons. And many men are much older when they become fathers. I don't think anyone should judge.

Because actually, Ms Peyton-Jones' child will probably have a "better" life than being one of a large family existing on benefits, or in foster care, or passed from parent to parent like a parcel ...

See where judging gets you?

Rich older woman buys baby, exploits a poor woman by renting her uterus. It's despicable for more reasons than her age.

Motherhood, parenthood, childhood, life, people, MN - are seldom perfect

@Aroundtheworldin80moves

In the article there is mentions of a Nanny, an Aunt and the child's father. So other family and carers around.

Presumably they are around the same age as her?

She has clearly had a lot of expensive anti-ageing interventions on her face but that does not change the fact that she is in her 60s.

That child will be a parentless single child at a very young age. That's a lot to put on someone.

Anything done out of want rather than need can be described as selfish

She is very coy about saying how her child came into being but it is clear if you read between the lines she used a another woman’s body and another woman’s fertility.
Just shows that in the modern world money can buy you anything.

DoubleTweenQueen
I think quite a lot of us could be dead before our children reach 30, for a number of sad and unforeseen reasons

We could but, in this case, it’s almost a certainty.

How is JPJ "going it alone" any different from the millions of other women who are single parents?

Other than the fact she is financially independent AND rich. So JPJ doesn't need to work, can look after her child; and has enough money to secure the child's future even if JPJ dies.

Not like all those stressed -out single parents with no life insurance, working shit hours for peanuts, barely seeing a kid who is bounced from breakfast club to after school care .

It's not ideal for a lone parent to die young but equally bad things happen; like being deliberately abandoned and ignored by a feckless living parent who never wanted the child in the first place, never loved it and will never support it. A circumstance mentioned almost daily on MN.

So only young genetically linked to their child Women should be mothers. Wow

For those without money, that is generally the norm. Well not necessarily young but usually by mid 40s at the latest.

Its not the norm is it.

@BobsBurgersisthebest

Its not the norm is it.

That wasn't In response to the above post.

@theThreeofWeevils

What a load of navel-gazing, self-justifying wankery. And she got rid of her poor bloody dog.

That hit me too, the poor dog! Needless as there are so many tactics for introducing babies to dogs

I'm sixty-three. Don't send me one of those, I'm already tired.

I can't see a problem. She appears to have planned for middle aged lack of energy and her impending mortality by hiring a nanny and ensuring that the child has a strong and stable network.

Hopefully she will still be alive when Pia hits 20ish. After that, it looks like there's enough money (and a father) to get Pia into her mid twenties.

After that, a parent is desirable, but not essential.

The bar has changed for the middle aged woman. Back in the day, you hit 50, cut your hair short, wore a headscarf and spent your life in slippers, waiting for grandchildren and death.

Now we have decades of work and promotion ahead of us, better nutrition and well-being advice, HRT, botox and plastic kneecaps. If we're expected to use advanced medical techniques look and work like young woman (and have to suck it up; I was looking forward to the slippers) why not use advanced medical techniques for our own benefit?

Just read a bit of the article. She is 69! 69! Her daughter is 4 and a half!

I genuinely think that is appalling. Look, in life we make decisions, and making a decision closes off other choices. Alternatives exclude. That is why making decisions can be so paralysing and difficult. She clearly chose to prioritise her career and lifestyle, and that is a perfectly legitimate choice to make.

But now she is refusing to accept the consequence of that choice, that she let go of having children, and has just added in a kid at the end of life, so that she can have that 'experience' too.. And no amount of thinking it through changes the fact that child will be without parents very early on. When children become aware of death it is very natural that they worry about their parents dying too. What reassurance can a mother in her 70s give her child about that? That child will grow up knowing their mother is going to die in the very foreseeable future. She doesn't even have a sibling as a cushion when the inevitable happens.

Children aren't commodities for us to fit around our lifestyle, choices and decisions. They actually matter in their own right and deserve to be centred.

I do think it is wrong to bring a child into the world that will have to face that huge emotional burden.

Egg freezing technology is relatively new. She would already have been too old at the time it became possible.

As I am close to this woman’s age, I’m sure you are right. But if it was just about possible when she was still producing eggs, surely she would have thought at the time she would actually try to have a baby rather than leave it another 20 years. As she only more recently asked the advice of her two gay friends, it seems even more unlikely.

Meh

I don’t agree with it. But that’s a different story. I had a very interesting discussion regarding my own premature daughter with the neonatologist who said technology has advanced so far in the last few years that everyone has A chance at being A mother. (Great). But that also brings with it the risks. Naturally there’s usually a reason. Sadly. As to why they don’t. Even myself. Had I of had my own children 20 years ago. We’d all be dead. Me and my children. Does this mean morally I don’t or shouldn’t of had the chance to survive? Or my children? As only the advancements of technology and more babies surviving naturally.

It brings some incredibly interesting moral dilemmas. However. Most 65yr old women. In fact I’d say 98%. Can’t naturally have children. Which denotes a certain answer as to do we agree with it based off that?

However. The other side of the coin is what about the mother in her 30’s that tried for many years through IVF. What if she gets to 40. And 50? Is that a problem then?

Goes round in circles really

I can't see a problem. She appears to have planned for middle aged lack of energy and her impending mortality by hiring a nanny and ensuring that the child has a strong and stable network

69 is NOT middle aged, You can't change reality with words.

It does seem quite selfish, although in this case at least she's very wealthy and well connected and I'm sure she has made plans for the girl's welfare should anything happen to her and the father before her daughter is an adult. But that's still rather emotionally unfair on the child.

@Proudboomer

She is very coy about saying how her child came into being but it is clear if you read between the lines she used a another woman’s body and another woman’s fertility. Just shows that in the modern world money can buy you anything.

Money has always enabled infertile women to buy a child that was born from another woman . Nothing new there. Women producing babies to sell is big business in USA and elsewhere.

In UK it's illegal to pay semen and egg donors and rent-a-womb surrogates more than "expenses" but I'm damn sure it still happens. Just out of sight.

From what you have written, I think you know very little about the aging process

Really? I said that no matter how good a 65 year old looks, her muscles, bones and...sonething else, can't remember...are 65 years old and degenerating (in line with physical age, not appearance which is irrelevant).

Which bit of this is so innacturate that you conclude I can't possibly understand the aging process?

My old council for adoption purposes said there could not be more than 45 years between the age of the adopting parents and the child. That was based on 45 being around the natural cut off point for women to conceive children (only a small number of women carry a child to term naturally after that). I think that is a reasonable cut off point.