Late-life parenthood is not without serious medical risk. As women age, their pregnancies can be more complicated for both mother and child. Rates of pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes and miscarriage all rise. The frequency of Down syndrome jumps exponentially, too. Doctors have also found links between advanced paternal age and schizophrenia in their children.
Many older parents find themselves calibrating their limited financial resources, waning energy and failing health against the growing demands of an active child. Older parents, with comparatively fewer productive work years left, sometimes have to abruptly restructure their lives to meet the financial demands of even healthy children. For many, retirement becomes an unobtainable dream. And then there’s mortality. Older parents “worry that they won’t be alive long enough to support and protect their child,” says Joann Paley Galst, a New York psychologist. Kids often share those fears. “They make very private, very painful calculations,” says William Pollack, director of the Centers for Men and Young Men at McLean Hospital in Boston. “How old will he be when I start high school? How old will he be when I graduate?”
Many late-life parents, though, say their children came at just the right time. Kids of older dads are often smarter, happier and more socially attuned because their fathers are more involved in their lives. Having midlife children can be a chance to get it right. For that, you can never be too old.
