Family, Self

5 GREAT Reasons To Have A Baby After 60 (And 5 Reasons Not To)

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The Pros And Cons Of Procreating After 65

Back in 2009, Elizabeth Adeney, then 66 years old — and also a divorced businesswoman — give birth and made history. She became the oldest person to give birth.

According to The Daily Mail, Adeney's do-it-yourself pregnancy was most likely aided by a fertility clinic in the Ukraine that she visited the year before. British clinics, for the most part, don't provide reproductive assistance to women over the age of 50.

A friend of Adeney's told The Daily Mail, "She was desperate for a child. She was over the moon when she learned that she was pregnant and has been quite open about it — it's not the sort of thing she can hide." But unlike her friend, Adeney was less willing to talk to the press about her situation, knowing, perhaps, that her decision would confuse and angere a lot of people.

But was Adeney's decision really such a bad one? Aren't there pros and cons that come with every life choice? We're pretty sure there are. And so, with Elizabeth Adeney in mind, here are some of the benefits (and drawbacks) of knocking yourself up after age 65.

The Pros

  1. You can finally be a member of a legitimate old boys club: the one made up of guys who have fathered children after age 65. Other members include Alec Baldwin, David Letterman, Paul McCartney, and Steve Martin.
  2. Kiss those worries about passing on your potentially damaged "old" genetic material goodbye; the baby you'll be having will most likely be built out of another not-so-old woman's genetic material.
  3. Now more than ever you can build up a college fund the easy way: through Social Security checks.
  4. A person knows a lot by age 65 — a lot that can be shared with a kid, like which pharmacies carry generic equivalents and how to play Sudoku.
  5. At last, you'll have the chance to share diapers with your kids.

The Cons

  1. You may very well be dead by the time your kid is old enough to graduate from high school.
  2. If you aren't dead, you might be senile, in which case your kid will have to spend his or her youth taking care of you and/or reminding you how the two of you are related.
  3. Baseball and soccer are much harder to play from the non-swiveling seat of a Lark scooter.
  4. Nobody at Bingo cares about your baby's teething.
  5. You thought dating after 65 was hard? Try dating after 65 with a two-year-old in the house.