To discuss the societal impacts of older parents?

[Kindersurprising]

I feel like this is a really under-discussed area, particularly as it’s now really extremely common (particularly in middle class circles) to have a first baby after 30 and in many cases 35+.

I feel like in 20 years we are going to see quite a big impact, in adults having fewer (if any) siblings due to parental age, caring for elderly parents while having small children themselves, a lack of grandparent support and I guess a smaller family circle much earlier on. I only realised today that it will be vanishingly rare for kids to have great grandparents soon - my DC have only one, through me.

The positives are often cited as more money, and more life experience.

I was 30 when DC2 was born, so somewhere in the middle and not a young parent as such. I often wonder what it would be like to have had them earlier.

How do you think this will play out in the next 20-50 years?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 understand what you’re saying but the ripple effects into society will affect women as well.

@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.

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.

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).

So this thread hasn’t answered the effects on society in 30 years, it’s just become everyone telling me people have been having children older forever, which I already knew 😳 I should’ve known better!

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.

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!

Thank you!!! This is exactly how it was intended - not a criticism of individual choices, just a ‘what will happen later because this is now happening on a much wider scale’.

Instead a handful of very offended posters turned up to call me dim, dense, offensive, stupid and whatever else. It’s mad!

No doubt in 30 years they’ll want to know why ‘we never acknowledged that this was coming up, like with climate change and the ageing population’

When they were battling against anyone saying anything

@Kindersurprising we already have an ageing population, it isn't a new thing. And the significant factor that I already said is because people are having less or no dc not because women are having dc in their 40s.

So this thread hasn’t answered the effects on society in 30 years,

The effects will be as they are now, we are already dealing with the impact of an ageing population...As I said more taxes

because this is now happening on a much wider scale’.

But there aren't millions more women having dc in their 40s. look at the statistics!!!

My mother was 45 when she had me. Dad died before I was 5. GPs both died before I was 7. Mom died when I was 15. My much older siblings were never interested in me much beyond criticising me.

My life has been shitty, full of poverty and trauma.

Wish I'd never been born and so did my mother.

I'm being honest about my experience and feelings but I'm sure there are plenty with a better experience from being born to older parents. However, the risks of dying before the child grows up are always going to be higher the older you get before conceiving.

There are valid points around older parents and increased neurodiversity or health of those parents as dc grow up.

But ageing populations, stalled productivity, shrinking tax paying base are a much wider issue.

Someone earlier posted that more babies were born to women over 40 than at any time in the previous 80 years (since records began). I think the biggest change is that often these are being born to first time mothers, whereas previously while women did have babies into their forties and even fifties (for some unfortunate women, god, I couldn’t cope!) but they would have had their first much younger. It is a fact that first births have different risks attached; even in dogs it isn’t advised to let a dog have a first litter after she’s four.

@AlertCat the highest fertility rate for women in their 40s was after WW2

Yes there are more first time mothers in their 40s but statistically it's still a very small percentage.

Women are having less dc or none at all & the birth rate has been below replacement rate for years.

This rather perfectly illustrates my point indivualism writ large. As Mrs T said there is no such thing as society.

So women should have children before they are ready for the benefit of society?