A 66-year-old becoming a mother for the first time disturbs me
Dear Elizabeth Adeney,
At 66 years of age, you are set to become Britain’s oldest first-time mother in about a month or so from now. Having undergone IVF treatment in the Ukraine, there has been criticism of your actions on the basis of your age, but you have robustly defended yourself by telling the Sunday Mirror that your age was not important, claiming it is “how I feel inside” that matters. I strongly disagree and your selfishness – bordering on naivety – is extremely depressing to read about.
You said over the weekend that you felt as young as 39 at times and are fitter than some of your younger employees. “It doesn’t interest me that I’m going to be the oldest mum in the country,” you told the paper, before revealing you planned to give birth at a clinic in Cambridge. Most British clinics will not offer IVF treatment to women over the age of 50. You run a manufacturing business near your home and will be 67 in July, and said: “I have young girls working for me in my factory and I’m fitter than half of them. I don’t have to defend what I’ve done. It’s between me, my baby and no-one else.” Professor Severino Antinori, who helped 62-year-old Briton Patricia Rashbrook give birth three years ago, said he was shocked at the prospect of you having a child. “I respect the choice medically but I think anything over 63 is risky because you cannot guarantee the child will have a loving mother or family,” he told The Sunday Times. However, Dr Gillian Lockwood of the Royal College of Obstetricians told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that improved life expectancy meant a healthy woman of 66 would probably live another 20 or 30 years. Using donor eggs from a younger woman reduced the risks of miscarriage or abnormalities to the child and she said it would be “unfair” to discriminate on the grounds of age alone, adding: “We don’t prevent much younger women with serious health problems getting pregnant… even though they run much higher risks.”
As a Conservative, I believe that our most important ‘institution’ is the family. I believe that a loving mum and a loving dad give a child a better chance of growing up to be happy and secure than any other arrangement, and I have decades of research to support that assertion. People always accuse Conservatives of hating single parents and ‘clinging to the past’ when it comes to families, but statistically speaking there is no doubt that a loving mum and dad provide the best start in life. Ultimately, it all comes down to how good individual parents are, but your case raises some serious concerns. There is no father in the picture and by the time your child takes their GCSEs, you are likely to be in a poor physical condition and are statistically quite likely to be dead. The physical and emotional strain of bringing up young children by yourself is huge and your claims of feeling in your thirties will count for little when reality strikes, while your lack of earning power should not be ignored. The risk of birth defects is considerable beyond the age of about 50, and notice that Dr Gillian Lockwood’s optimism is countered by her tacit admission of a high risk of miscarriage and abnormalities that can only be “reduced” at your age. However, despite my opposition, as a Conservative I also believe in individual choice and thus I would never try to outlaw what you have done. In the same way that people can hop out of the UK and get plastic surgery abroad, you have done the same for IVF and it is not my place to force my opinion onto you through legislation. That said, I would only offer child benefit to families where at least one parent is aged 45 or under. In the same way that throwing extra money at teenage mums in the name of ’supporting’ them suffers from the law of unintended consequences by incentivising teenagers to have children, giving you taxpayers’ money may encourage others to follow suit and could present huge problems from a medical and psychological perspective for future children.
I obviously want your child to have a happy and fulfilling upbringing, but your circumstances are such that there is a real possibility that, as your child grows up, you will suffer from increasingly serious health problems of your own or, worse still, will pass away. The pain and misery that this could potentially inflict on your young child doesn’t seem to bother you, and I find that disturbing. For a young child to watch their only parent become increasingly frail and ill as they go through primary/secondary school is a cruel fate and my overriding fear is that this is precisely the future that awaits your son or daughter. I genuinely hope that I am wrong, for their sake.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
“..your selfishness – bordering on naivety..”
No-one who really wanted a child would consider for one moment bringing one into the world (artificially) at the age of 66. Her concerns are purely for herself.
Truly, a narcissistic, self-absorbed icon for our modern age.
Very reasonable, sensible post, LFAT. I entirely agree with what you wrote.
One other thing that surprises me about this story, though, is that Mrs Adeney doesn’t seem to have considered directing whatever maternal impulses, gifts for nurturing and apparently superabundant vitality she may possess – because, as you rightly imply, parenting is jolly hard work – towards fostering or adopting children who already exist, and whose prospects in care are not necessarily encouraging.
There are, alas, a lot of such children about. Excellent fostering can transform their lives, giving them the emotional strength, educational support and long-term love that all children need. But fostering a child doesn’t make headlines, does it? Perhaps unfairly, all of this makes me wonder a little about Mrs Adeney’s motives, and whether attention-seeking matters more to her than the consequences of her behaviour for everyone else concerned, her own child first and foremost.
Julia, I agree that her actions reek of being self-absorbed.
Bunny, I would also like to see more people offering adoption and fostering because this country has a growing number of children and young people who desperately need a supportive and safe home. It sounds like Elizabeth has all the right intentions but has horribly misdirected them.
I completely agree with your post except for one teensy point and that is regarding the libertarian stance of a right to have a child. I agree with Bunny Smedley that so many children could benefit from adoption and yet we spent millions of pounds on helping barren couples produce children! Why? There is no need for more people on this planet and so much more could be achieved by adoption. Or get a dog from a shelter! 2 options that aren’t so sickeningly selfish as having a child at 66.
Depending on what family support she has around her – which sounds very limited – that child may have to look after a frail mother possibly with dementia or alzheimer’s etc. whilst still at primary school! And then, as LFAT points out, the mother could be dead by the time the child does their GCSEs and then what – into a home to be fostered! So then adding to the pressure on the adoption system when she could have helped out! Unbelievably pig headed!
IVF is something that I think I’ve posted about before, suffice to say that it shouldn’t be available in this country for 66-year-olds but they can still get in abroad, as in Elizabeth’s case. Removing any incentives for pursuing this same course of action is the best that a government can do short of introducing legislation against older people having children through IVF.
Reminds me of a bloke at school. We called his dad “grandad.” I guess his dad was about 60. his son would have been born when the man was about 45.
Extra cruelty coming up for some poor child.
Yup. I guess that comes under the issue of psychological development that I hinted at in the letter.
Most excellent post LFAT. You put a very fair and balanced point across. I’ve mulled this over through the course of the weekend.
I myself have elderly parents. I’m late 30’s and my dad is 81, my mother 78. Thankfully, they’re both in excellent health, very active with all their marbles, and with a 52 year marriage under their belts.!
All that said, I’m very conscious of their age, and there’s a perpetual nagging worry about their well being with every year that passes. This doesn’t bother me, because I’m more than old enough and stable enough to cope with the inevitable, and I have a partner and a sibling to lean on should anything happen.
If however, I was 20 odd years younger, I suspect that would not be the case. And it is that part of Ms Adeney’s decision that concerns me. As a Conservative I cannot deny her the right to choose, but I concur with you and JuliaM – surely her maternal instincts should have come into play long before now. Making a conscious decision to bring a child into this world knowing you could orphan it before it’s reached adulthood is purely selfish. I cannot condone what she has done in any way.
Her point that she’s fit and healthy now and therefore there is nothing to worry about is absolutely astonishing and compounds her selfishness. Since when can she guarantee that dementia, physical frailty, Alzheimers and cancer will all pass her by when they strike down hundreds of thousands of healthy people a year?
A fool and his (her) money…
The other thing in favour of adoption or fostering in her case is that she is really no better than a surrogate mother as it is not her own eggs.
A sad individual.
Reminded me of “Nadya Suleiman” somehow…sickening…
http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=456
Monoi, good point. Genetically she is not related to the child so fostering / adoption would have made little difference in that respect.
Sumantra, in terms of the difficulties that potentially lie ahead for the child(ren) involved, I take your point.
Regarding fostering/adoption – when people are turned down and refused the right to adopt because they smoke, because they’re over 40 or because some social worker dislikes some other aspect of their lifestyle, or decides they are the wrong ethnicity, what can you do?
THAT system, in and of itself, merits more criticism than is directed to a sad old woman with more money than sense.
Bill Quango MP wrote:
LFAT wrote:
A brilliant point!
Basically, she shouldn’t have a kid because people like “Bill Quango MP” were bullies when they were younger.
Pupils in my school were bullied on the basis of skin colour. Presumably it follows that non-white people in the North of England shouldn’t have children either, for fear of “psychological development issues”?
Yep Seeds . . .that’s about right!
How ridiculous!
Shaun, there are certainly a lot of related issues that need a good kick up the backside.
Seeds, of course that in itself is not the whole story, but we are discussing the possible outcomes for this child and psychological / social development. Bullying is simply one aspect of a much broader picture that does not bode well for this child.
Not so sure about that.
I personally know a couple of people who were raised by their grandparents, and none of them became psychological / social failures. Anecdote isn’t data – and of course it’s not the precisely same situation – but it’s similar enough to cast doubt on some of the assumptions you’ve made. The child in this instance is wanted and will be provided for by its mother, who runs her own business and can afford IVF abroad.
Just because the child’s upbringing will not be exactly identical to that of its peers is not necessarily a cause for alarm.
Tory Poppins wrote:
Tory Poppins (née BNPoppins)?
There is no such thing as perfect data on this issue. It comes down to individual parenting skills in most cases – little (if anything) is guaranteed for better or for worse. However, the child in this instance will only be provided for by its mother if she is alive, fit and healthy. My point is that it is very possible that she will be neither fit nor healthy and possibly not even alive before her child even reaches adulthood, and that would be an extremely difficult situation should it arise. All of this is pure speculation, I never pretended otherwise, but I think there is reasonable grounds for being concerned about the future welfare of this child.
See, this is what always got me (until they abolished the dog license!):
1) You need(ed) a license to own a dog
2) You had to go through ridiculous hoops (not too fat, non-smoker, no antisocial habits, no extreme politics, ‘right’ ethnicity etc etc etc) to adopt an abandoned child, even while care homes were just holiday parks for pedophiles (Islington in the 1980s)
3) You can have as many bastards (technical term, and I am one so there!) as you like while living any kind of lifestyle you choose and its your human right.
So my basic question is: why does the state disallow people from adopting if they are, for example, fat, while providing IVF for near-identicle people? Where is the overarching logic behind our nation’s approach to raising/breeding children? And if (as my libertarian leanings suggest to me) you shouldn’t have one, why should adoption be treated differently? Surely the ability to fill out a form and do an interview with social workers is a notionally better guide to being a decent parent than being able to drink 14 pints before impregnating Waynetta Slob?
On that basis, at the risk of going back on topic, I think a 66 year old transhumanist weirdo granny will STILL make a better parent than your average sink-estate chav. Or Katie Price for that matter!
Unless you’re saying the state should intervene to prevent her having a child, your opinions about her actions, though absolutely riveting, count for diddly squat.
I see what you’re getting at, Larry. This post was indeed about the limitations of a Conservative outlook on the family as much as anything else.
‘as a Conservative I also believe in individual choice and thus I would never try to outlaw what you have done.’
You believe in ‘personal choice’ yet you write a whole article telling a person why their personal choice is wrong. Perhaps ‘Personal Choice’ is only for people you agree with?
‘That said, I would only offer child benefit to families where at least one parent is aged 45 or under.’
Do you think £19 a week is going to bother anyone with enough money to fund overseas fertility treatment?
‘Reminds me of a bloke at school. We called his dad “grandad.” I guess his dad was about 60. his son would have been born when the man was about 45.Extra cruelty coming up for some poor child.’
Indeed Bill Quango MP, and I wonder what they called you.
“You believe in ‘personal choice’ yet you write a whole article telling a person why their personal choice is wrong. “
Yes. Only if he’d called for her to be prevented from making that personal choice by force of law would he be wrong. Is that so hard to understand?
@ JuliaM:
I am not calling the author ‘wrong’, everyone is entitled to their opinion. Ms Adeney’s choice would not be mine – but I truly believe in ‘personal choice’, that means that I do not feel the need judge her actions. Her life and choices (if lawful) are her business.
I feel the article is in conflict with itself – wanting to defend the freedom of choice to go abroad for treatments (although did the word ‘bugger’ add anything?), yet suggesting retribution by method of denying a universal benefit to children….
But by all means judge away if that is what you feel you must do – it is your personal choice to do so, even if as Larry Teabag says it counts for ‘diddly squat’.
Meh, with all due respect, 99.99999999999% of all opinions expressed by political bloggers counts for ‘diddly squat’. I write these letters because I want people to debate, challenge, question and discuss both my opinions and those of my commentors – since when was political blogging anything other than this? I can “judge” whoever and whatever I want, as can every other blogger!
And no-one can stop an individual going abroad, but you can stop a government incentivising their behaviour through child benefit (and theoretically through housing beneit and maternity pay etc etc) and that’s where politics comes in (and, mercifully, that’s pretty much the only way that the government could step in here). There is no conflict in what I said.