Is It Fair To A Newborn To Have A Mother In Her 60s?
A womanâs body is not her own. Not really.
Of late, viagra 60mg thereâs been a steady stream of confusing messages for women. In May 2015, Haya Shahar of Israel, who had struggled with infertility right through her forty-six years of marriage, gave birth to a baby boy at the age of 65. May, it seems, was a month for spectacular maternal triumphs as 65-year-old German primary school teacher Anna Raunigk, already a mother of thirteen, gave birth to quadruplets. But May was also the month Geeta Nargund, a leading fertility expert at Britainâs National Health Service (NHS) wagged her finger at women for putting off having babies until past thirty and consequently suffering through expensive and often futile in-vitro fertilization.
More confusing messages followed with Chelsea Hottovyâs article in Time magazine (10 June), âWhy I donât want to have children,â (quote: âI donât want to worry about diaper rash and âtummy timeâ and I donât want to know what colic isâ). Hottovy at 28 has already had her tubes tied and now probably wishes she had been tongue-tied, given the abuse she has received from that bastion of informed opinionâthe social mediaâwith people assuring her that she wonât be truly happy unless she has a child.
A world of infinite choice? Not for women. To Geeta Nargund, who presumes women are putting off having babies until their thirties, the question is: who are these women? Why hasnât Nargund or anyone else ever directed their âbaby adviceâ at men? A lot of women in their twenties want to have children but where are the men wanting to commit to stable, long-term relationships? Men arenât pressured into compromising their careers or clamping down on promiscuity until their hair begins to thin, their gut begins to expand and their virility dampens.
In the UK, the mean age at marriage is thirty-three years for a man. And 67 percent of babies born to fathers under the age of thirty were by men who were not married. By contrast, over 68 percent of children born to men over thirty were by married fathers. Marriage and possibly commitment is something that becomes important to men much later. These trends may reflect European societies but other metropolitan populations are not too far off from conforming to them. Almost everywhere the trend of delaying marriage is catching on. In India, the increase in age at marriage has been the greatest in Goa.
The cultivated image of a young woman callously climbing the corporate ladder, partying, travelling and shopping at the expense of her ageing eggs, is unfair. The prerogative to propose marriage still belongs to a man. Men should be held as accountable for hurrying along procreation as women. Holding women solely responsible, implies they are free to have children on their own, but how supportive is society of women who make that choice?
As women, given the trend of late marriage and declining fertility, we can only celebrate the advances made in assisted reproductive technology (ART). Elisabeth Richards, author of Motherhood; Rescheduled, argues that women should never have an age limit on fertility treatment. Freezing of eggs and donor eggs now makes it technically possible to have children into your fifties and sixties (the egg is usually that of a donor is such cases). But while we can all talk sagely about a womanâs reproductive rights, does a child not have rights as well? We wouldnât encourage pubescent girls to have children, nor women struggling with disabilities or addictions. We wouldnât even encourage women with financial problems to have more children than they can afford. So why isnât there a more robust discussion on the ethics of fertility clinics willing to impregnate elderly women?
Some countries like Japan have placed an age cap on artificially assisted reproduction with fifty to fifty-five being the cut-off. In India, a seventy-year-old woman gave birth in 2008 through fertility treatment. Children have a right to their parentsâ energy, they have a right not to be abandoned by death and they have a right not to be impaired by disability. Society puts undue pressure on women to become mothers and thatâs partly the reason why women are pursuing motherhood well past menopause at great risk to their bodies. Perhaps the more sensible thing is not to make women feel like utter failures if they donât have children.
Childlessness is not always a choice and neither is motherhood. Itâs what happens to womenâs bodies as a consequence of various circumstances and emotionsâlove, lust, duty, obligation, fertility, infertility, committed partners or non-committal ones. As such, we donât have as many choices as it seems. Our bodies are not our own, they never will be; they work in partnership, they bear responsibilities, they create whole worlds. And women donât need any more guilt or pressure on account of this, than what they already endure.
Selma Carvalho is a columnist and author of âA Railway Runs Through: Goans of British East Africa, 1865-1980â. Between 2011-2014, she headed the Oral Histories of British- Goans project.