Couples Are Postponing Childbirth
and Suffering the Consequences
by John Stonestreet
In October, a son was born to an Indian man named Ramjeet Raghav and his wife, Shakuntala. This story made news around the world because Raghav claims to be 96, which would make him the oldest man living to have fathered a child. Lost in the questions about Raghav’s age is the fact that his wife was 53 when their second child was born.
India isn’t the only place where new parents are getting older. In a recent New Republic cover story, Judith Shulevitz notes that having children “much later than we used to” has become “perfectly unremarkable” for most Americans.
But “unremarkable” is not the same as “without consequences,” which is why her article is entitled “How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society.” (see below)
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www.lifenews.com
Over the past half century, parenthood has undergone a change so simple yet so profound we are only beginning to grasp the enormity of its implications. It is that we have our children much later than we used to.
This has come to seem perfectly unremarkable; indeed, we take note of it only when celebrities push it to extremes—when Tony Randall has his first child at 77; Larry King, his fifth child by his seventh wife at 66; Elizabeth Edwards, her last child at 50. This new gerontological voyeurism—I think of it as doddering-parent porn—was at its maximally gratifying in 2008, when, in almost simultaneous and near-Biblical acts of belated fertility, two 70-year-old women in India gave birth, thanks to donor eggs and disturbingly enthusiastic doctors. One woman’s husband was 72; the other’s was 77.
These, though, are the headlines. The real story is less titillating, but it tells us a great deal more about how we’ll be living in the coming years: what our families and our workforce will look like, how healthy we’ll be, and also—not to be too eugenicist about it—the future well-being of the human race.
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www.newrepublic.com
India isn’t the only place where new parents are getting older. In a recent New Republic cover story, Judith Shulevitz notes that having children “much later than we used to” has become “perfectly unremarkable” for most Americans.
But “unremarkable” is not the same as “without consequences,” which is why her article is entitled “How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society.” (see below)
.......................
www.lifenews.com
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How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society
The scary consequences of the grayest generation.
Over the past half century, parenthood has undergone a change so simple yet so profound we are only beginning to grasp the enormity of its implications. It is that we have our children much later than we used to.
This has come to seem perfectly unremarkable; indeed, we take note of it only when celebrities push it to extremes—when Tony Randall has his first child at 77; Larry King, his fifth child by his seventh wife at 66; Elizabeth Edwards, her last child at 50. This new gerontological voyeurism—I think of it as doddering-parent porn—was at its maximally gratifying in 2008, when, in almost simultaneous and near-Biblical acts of belated fertility, two 70-year-old women in India gave birth, thanks to donor eggs and disturbingly enthusiastic doctors. One woman’s husband was 72; the other’s was 77.
These, though, are the headlines. The real story is less titillating, but it tells us a great deal more about how we’ll be living in the coming years: what our families and our workforce will look like, how healthy we’ll be, and also—not to be too eugenicist about it—the future well-being of the human race.
..........................
www.newrepublic.com
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