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Oh, Baby
By Susan Crandell, September & October 2005
A growing number of older men and women are welcoming newborns.
What’s it like to be changing diapers at 50?
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They were a graying crowd, mostly parents of kids in their teens and 20s, sitting in a circle in a suburban New York living room, looking like a Botox party just before they load the syringes. But they were defying aging in a completely different, increasingly popular way—with a baby shower for their 51-year-old friend Claire Gruppo. As they oohed and aahed over tiny powder-blue sweaters and wondered at newfangled gadgets such as the Diaper Genie, everyone sipped flutes of champagne. Even Claire could join the toast, since she was having her baby not just at an unusual age but in an unusual way: a surrogate was pregnant with donor sperm, and in four days Claire would fly down to Florida for the birth.
In the last few years, a slew of celebrities, including Diane Keaton, Joan Lunden, and Sharon Stone, have embraced motherhood in midlife (see sidebar). They are a high-profile reflection of what's happening all over the country with less famous parents: the birthrate for women 45 and over more than doubled between 1990 and 2002, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, and adoption at midlife is on the rise too. "Nobody keeps those numbers," says Adam Pertman, author of Adoption Nation
and executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York City, "but there's no question that the number of older adopters is growing."
This Baby Boomer baby boom has even attracted publishers' attention. A glossy magazine, Plum, just out from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, targets pregnant women over 35. Likewise Conceive, which deals with fertility issues, is finding a ready-made audience of baby-minded women sporting reading glasses and chasing menopause.
But while it's easy to imagine that this new wave of midlife babies is simply a status symbol—the ultimate arm candy of a Baby Boomer generation that figured it could do anything, even become parents, on its own terms—the plain truth is that these older moms and dads are clearly delighted to devote what might have been leisure-filled years to the frenzy of childcare and all the responsibilities that go with it.
"I feel blessed that I am not waiting around pining for grandkids," says Diane Aldrich, 50, of Windham, Maine, who started a second family after getting married to a much younger man. "I feel energetic and revitalized—most days—by this brood. I taught kindergarten for over 20 years; now I'm the ringmaster to my own circus."
Producing an infant later in life isn't easy, of course. No one throws out her birth control pills at 50 and nine months later delivers a baby. These children are hard won, through fertility and adoption processes that are time-consuming and expensive. When Gruppo, who went through years of fertility treatments and explored adoption possibilities before deciding on surrogacy, calls Connor her million-dollar baby, she's exaggerating—but not by all that much.
Ask a hundred midlife parents how they did it and you'll get a hundred different stories. Carolyn Pelcak, who lives outside Los Angeles, began attending law school at the age of 40 while working as a waitress. With so much else going on in her life, she and her husband decided to freeze some embryos. By the time she got her degree and passed the California bar, she and her husband had separated. With his approval (and her parents' support), she decided to go it alone and have the embryos implanted. She gave birth to her first child, a little girl, at 52, and her second, a boy, this past winter at 55.
Nancy Hemenway, who's 55 and lives in Northern Virginia, had a daughter at 44 after four miscarriages. "It took a cutting-edge treatment and a boatload of drugs," she says. So rather than try again, she and her husband, David, a high school teacher, adopted their second daughter from an orphanage in China when Nancy was 51 and David was 50.
Kristen and Jim Hooke had undergone fertility treatments off and on for more than 15 years when they learned of an infant who needed a home. "I was working and trying to find peace, knowing I was never going to raise a child, when out of the blue this girl came into my office one day," says Kristen, 41. The girl knew of a teenager who had gotten pregnant and wanted to give her child up for adoption. In October 2004 Kristen and Jim, 56, became the proud parents of Lillie. "This baby was meant to be," Kristen says, "and she came at a wonderful time in our lives."
Parenting is rarely easy. But parenting in midlife has special challenges. First there is the sheer exertion. "Getting up in the middle of the night, having your sleep broken, trying to go back to sleep—it's really tough," admits Barbara Harris, 49, who adopted a baby girl last December. "Once you're in your 40s, you know you cannot stay up all night and be bright-eyed the next day."
Adds her husband, Jerome, 57: "My friends who retire at my age talk about a renewal of energy, but it seems like I never get enough sleep."
Yet energy is what older parents need most. "Looking after a child is much more intense than being in business, where in a meeting you can sit back and gather energy," says Tina Georgeou, 53, who gave birth to a daughter in 2003. "As a mom, all your feelers have to be out. I find that draining."
Georgeou's day starts early, before Lauren awakens. "Hearing her stir gets me out of bed more than the alarm because I know I have about 20 minutes to get a shower," Georgeou says. "Then when she wakes up, we all have breakfast together." Tina and her husband, Steven, both work, so when Tina gets home at 4:30 p.m., Lauren becomes the focus. "The babysitter leaves and I get dinner on its way. We play, we have dinner, I get her ready for bed. She usually goes to bed around 8 or 8:30, I finish cleaning up from dinner, Steven collapses, I collapse, we watch the news and go to sleep. It's exhausting."
Then again, older moms—and dads—say they have more patience and understanding than they did when they were younger. "The things I would have taken my oldest child to the ER for, I would hardly bat an eye at this time around," says Aldrich, whose older children are 16 and 23 (her younger ones are five and eight). "I don't stress over a clean house, spilt liquid, unmade beds. I have made peace with 'doing it all' and sometimes do none of it." She's just as strict with "the little ones," as she calls them, but "I am slower to judge and temper my punishments with more compassion, not strictly 'because I said so.' "
When it comes to truly significant challenges, being an older parent can have important advantages. Hemenway recalls the first time she and her husband saw Rebekah, the child they adopted from China: "She was 15 months old but the size of a four-month-old. I used to teach special ed, and I knew she had severe problems." As it turned out, Rebekah suffers from both attachment disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Hemenway says their age and income level have been instrumental in helping them find the right specialists for their daughter, who at five still does not speak. "It's a huge maze parents have to navigate. And if my husband and I weren't so far along in our careers, we wouldn't have had the resources to get her treated."
‘I’m honest enough to know that if I’d had kids in my 20s or 30s, I would not be the parent I am today.’
Being an older parent can mean being an outcast—even an object of derision. In Father of the Bride II, Steve Martin does a whole riff on the subject, telling his wife, played by Diane Keaton, "Between us, we're almost 100 years old. Our kid will be spending his adolescence in a retirement home. At the movies, it'll be one child, two seniors."
When reality-show host Joan Lunden, 55, announced the impending birth of a second set of twins by a surrogate last winter, a website for moms prickled with jibes: "I'm younger, and I don't want one set of twins, let alone two! Honestly! Is the woman nuts?" wrote one woman. Such busybody comments are frequent enough that another site, www.mothersover40.com, has posted suggested responses. Comment: "I can't believe you're pregnant, and at your age." Reply: "I can't believe you're so rude." Comment: "Aren't you too old to have another baby?" Reply: "Evidently not."
At one point or another, many midlife parents will encounter the classic experience of being mistaken for Grandma or Grandpa. Some laugh it off. But Diane Aldrich bristled at more direct putdowns: "I couldn't believe what people thought they could say to a pregnant older woman. They'd ask, 'What were you thinking?' Or say, 'Your child will be born emotionally, physically crippled.' " She thinks she knows the source of the anger: "I find a certain level of envy. In private, they'll say, 'I wish I'd had one more child.' "
Claire Gruppo has a different theory: "It shakes up the social order of expectations. I remember 15 years ago, when the first single women were deciding to have kids on their own. People were horrified. We've pushed through all of that. This is the new frontier."
Carolyn Pelcak points out that in a world where Clint Eastwood and Warren Beatty had kids when they were in their 60s, we reserve our harshest criticism for older moms, not dads. "For a man it's a wonderful thing, very macho. But for women it's still taboo. There should not be a stigma for a woman who wants to be an older mother."
Even if these parents feel—and act—much younger than they are, doesn't their age give them pause when they look 15 or 20 years ahead? Will they be alive to see their children graduate from school and get married? Will these babies all too soon be returning the favor, taking care of Mom and Dad?
"My father was 50 when I was born," says Kristen Hooke. "Yes, he did die when I was 22, and the likelihood is that a child with older parents is not going to have them around as long. But my father gave me a very strong sense of self. Maybe he did that because of his age."
"There is this constant thought hanging over your head that you may not be there when your child is 20, or when she's 35. I don't think it ever enters a younger parent's mind," says Tina Georgeou.
Gruppo is buoyed by a statistic she heard before beginning the surrogacy process: "If you live in our society, you're female and 50, and you've had no cancer, no heart disease, they say you'll live to 90." She had a thorough physical exam before she set the surrogate birth in motion, so she doesn't worry too much. But she still tries to exercise and eat right.
Indeed, most of the older parents interviewed take extra special care of themselves so as to increase the odds they'll be around for many years to come. "I had been putting off having a colonoscopy, but I promised Steven I would do it, and I did as soon as I could after Lauren was born," Georgeou says. "You can't afford to wait on anything that might be life threatening."
Assuming they remain in good physical health, midlife parents face another challenge: how to stay financially healthy as well. Many may find themselves working well beyond the traditional retirement age just so they can send their kids to college. Being realistic, and planning in advance, can help. The Georgeous, for instance, met with lawyers and financial planners not long after their daughter was born. "We're looking at a lot of years of income generation to provide for her, at the same time facing our own retirement," says Tina Georgeou. "You look at the job market and think, What can I do to make sure my career remains vital?"
At the end of the (very long) day, though, older parents—just like parents of all ages—find ways to make it work. Kristen Hooke quit her job three months after Lillie was born, adding: "We can't do this forever, because we're a two-income family, but we waited so long for this. I want to spend time with her now." When Jim retires in a couple of years from his job repairing surgical equipment, Kristen plans to go back to work. "We've put a lot of things on hold," she adds.
And most of these parents wouldn't have it any other way. Says Diane Aldrich: "I know the decision to have children in later life would not be most people's choice, but it was mine, and I've never been happier. I have never regretted one moment with them, never thought twice about doing something 'more' with my life. My children are the primary reasons my life is wonderful and complete."
Susan Crandell is the former editor in chief of More magazine.
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