Childbearing among older women

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The world’s oldest mother died last week. She was a Spanish woman who gave birth to twins when she was 67. But cancer took her life just three years after giving birth.

"The Takeaway’s" family series explored the issue of starting a family later in life with Lisa Belkin, who wrote about the issue in "The New York Times" blog, Motherlode: Adventures in Parenting.

Belkin says when it comes to determining what age should be the cut-off for childbearing, it’s subjective: "It used to be that nature took care of that. And now we have technology that can override nature. And there’s a feeling on one hand of, ‘well we need to do something about this, we need to control this.’ And it’s a tragedy when a mother dies and leaves children this young. It doesn’t mean that mothers don’t die and leave young children at any age, but you’re increasing the odds — if you have a child older, you are guaranteed less time with them, than if you have a child younger.

"On the other hand, I chafe at the idea of, ‘well let’s regulate this.’ Because where do you draw a legislative line?"

Journalist Karen Day is a 56-year-old mother of a three-year-old. Day already had three other children when she married her second husband. He was never able to have children, Day says, due to fertility issues. But new scientific and medical advances allowed them to have a child, "The technology just came into existence within the two or three years when we had met each other … and so we looked into having a surrogate."

Day found, through extensive research, that having a child through a surrogate would cost upwards to $60,000. Her fertility doctor suggested another option, "It was actually the fertility doctor that suggested, ‘look, you’re in perfect condition — you’ve already had three successful pregnancies, you’re a fit 53-year-old. Why don’t we look at you.’

"The other thing is I had not reached menopause, but that’s not a predictive situation … after laboring with my own belief systems about the fact that I was too old … he [the doctor] said that he also had a 59-year-old woman who had given birth for her daughter who was incapable of carrying her own children.

"So my first question, when we look at should this be regulated … why is the conversation immediately toward a woman?"

Belkin says men have biology on their side — an older man is more likely to have a child with a younger partner than an older woman, therefore  the child will more likely have at least one parent that will be around longer.

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