Post-menopausal mom
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- May
- 28
A 66-year-old has just become Britian’s oldest new mom.
According to this story in the Daily Mail, Elizabeth Adeney had fertility treatments in the Ukraine after she was turned away in England. The baby boy, who weighed 5 pounds, 3 ounces, was delivered by C-section.
This story is generating a lot of buzz online. What’s your feeling about this? Do you think a 66-year-old should be having a baby?
This entry was posted
on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 3:59 pm by Linda Lombroso.
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Baby boomer Linda Lombroso was born in Queens and grew up in Port Washington. She began her journalism career at New York Magazine and Rolling Stone, and came back to the field after spending 10 years as a stay-at-home mother. Linda joined The Journal News in 1997 and has been a Life & Style writer since 2000. She has three children.
I could not have a baby at 66. But, this woman looks good for her age and says she is very fit. I’ve read that she’s desperately wanted a child for many years. And there’s no way I could tell her that she doesn’t have the right to give birth to a baby of her own just because she has reached an age that offends others. I hate that people are saying so many cruel things about her. Let them go through the agony of wanting a child and not being able to have one and still say she’s scum.
The ‘wanting’ of a child is from the adult and the adult in this case is only centered on herself. Make no mistake about that. The ‘desperation’ also belongs to the adult. The ‘right to give birth’ is also the adult’s.
No mention is made about the baby’s needs. What about the baby’s needs????
Her physical fitness is terribly irrelevant. Is it only physical prowess that makes a mother an able parent? As a mother, I can say it takes so much more than a tight abdomen to be an adequate parent. I only gained weight after they grew up and went out on their own.
This is a situation rife with the possibility of overindulgence on the part of the ‘desperate’ adult for her wish-come-true. How bratty can a kid get? HA! I have seen the results of parental overindulgence that would make decent people vote for forced sterilization. Sickening when you can’t stand being around a child because the child is a beast created by poor parenting skills.
Or worse, will mother and grown child fight a lost battle for the role of caretaker? Will the home health care aide take care of both of them? Does Barnes & Noble have a bestseller entitled, “How To Raise a Teenager on a Pension and Still Look Fit at 80”? Uh, why not?).
Please. I’m not offended by her age. I’m offended by her egotism.
I’m not getting ego or selfishness from what I’ve read about this woman. She’s barely said anything to the media. Most of what we’ve gotten is a few choice comments from friends, colleagues, acquaintances, neighbours who don’t really know her, her ex-husband and his friends and children. That doesn’t exactly create a 3-dimensional picture of a human being with thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. that are all her own. More like a cardboard cutout of a woman that we can use as a dartboard from the comfort of our living rooms, home offices and so forth. I’ll freely cop to my initial reaction being, “Ew” when I heard of Ms. Adeney’s pregnancy. However, I think most people seem to be making a lot of judgments and jumping to a lot of conclusions about someone they don’t even know.
We assume she’ll die before her child is grown.
We assume she’ll spoil him rotten because she’s wealthy and she was so desperate for him.
We assume he’ll end up taking care of her at a young age.
We assume she’s selfish because she still wanted a child in her 60s and didn’t adopt instead of getting pregnant.
We assume she can’t be a good, involved mother because of her age.
We assume she won’t feel like being active and playing with him as a toddler.
We assume the nanny will be raising him.
We assume that her plan to return to work means she won’t spend enough time with her child.
We assume she’s made no provisions for her son should something happen to her.
We assume that she hasn’t thought past the cute baby stage.
And it seems that we’re assuming that this child is not going to be the center of her universe, that she isn’t going to shower him with love and attention, that she doesn’t plan to instill discipline and values and that he’s just a plaything for a lonely, egotistical old lady.
That’s a lot of assumptions about a woman who’s said little in public besides the fact that she doesn’t feel the need to give an interview or explain herself, nor does she expect or ask anyone to understand her personal decision.
Does everyone who has a child/children do it because they think the child(ren) will be so lucky to have them as parents? I think they do it because they want to be a mum or dad. Which is totally normal and understandable. Ms. Adeney wants to be a mother and give her love to a child. If she weren’t 66, she wouldn’t be any different from any other mother who decided to have a baby.
Now that I’ve seen the photos of her arriving home with the baby, I find that I’ve changed my view. The woman looks like a radiant 50-year-old, not a nearly 67-year-old hag. In fact, she appears significantly younger than she did in those scowling shots of her from last week. Is it possible that the birth of her son has turned back the hands of time a bit? The stress and the pain of not having a child are removed and she is transformed? I don’t know, but that’s certainly how it looks. I hope she devotes the rest of her life to loving, enjoying and taking wonderful care of that boy AND taking great care of herself, because he needs her.