The real costs of delaying pregnancy
With age comes wisdom, stability, looming mortality
Some older mothers call it “midnight math,” the calculations they make while tossing and turning in the dark, figuring out how old they will be when their kids go on first dates, graduate from college, or have their own children.
At 18, Maggie Fisher isn’t an older mother. But she is a daughter and she’s been doing the math for many years — for her own mom.
When Maggie was born, Julie Morris was 41. As early as grade school, Maggie remembers wondering how soon she would need to have children so their grandmother would still be around to enjoy them.
“As I’ve gotten older and seen her with my little cousins, I keep thinking she won’t be able to be like that with my kids,” says Maggie, who was raised in Mississauga. The first-year history student at Queen’s University has seen both the pros and cons of being raised by older parents.
She is mature and articulate beyond her years, which may be a benefit of growing up as an only child of mature parents. Her parents were settled and she felt loved. But she also faced a great loss at 14, when her father, Jim Fisher, died at 86.
Julie Morris says while it was a blessing, her pregnancy at 41 was a shock. Fisher was 71 and retired, with two grown sons from a previous marriage.
The double standard surrounding older parenthood was quickly apparent: “Everybody congratulated Jim for being such a great old guy and looked at me like, ‘How did you let this happen?’ ”
Their experience raising Maggie reflected the findings of a recent study of 15,000 families by researchers at Indiana University. It found that older parents enrol their kids in more activities, save more for university tuition and tend to be more involved.
While less physically active, Morris and Fisher ensured Maggie did everything from sports leagues to summer camp. Morris was involved in the church, parent groups and Maggie’s school.
Life was stable, “and nothing matters more to kids than having everything the same,” says Morris.
Morris worked in graphics art before her daughter was born but quit to stay home until Maggie started school. She is now a Mississauga real estate agent. “We were not rich, but we didn’t have to do anything in our days other than raise that kid,” she says. “How many people have that luxury?”
Then, in 2003, Maggie’s father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He died four years later.
It made Morris consider her own mortality, too. “When she was 10, I had to sit down with her and ask, ‘If anything happens to me, what would you like to happen to you,’ It was a pretty hard moment for her.”
Maggie continues to feel the loss of her father. But her mother is a confidante she can come to with anything, and she’s grateful for that. The fact they are close is perhaps what makes Morris worry about the future. She works full-time, juggling tuition payments and saving for retirement without a pension. She finds herself wishing Maggie had a sibling and didn’t have to face her mother’s aging alone.
And it works both ways. Maggie faces the possibility of one day caring for her mother while also raising her own children.
Gerontologists warn that unless there is more investment in homeand long-term care for the elderly, women will bear the burden of later parenthood because they form the vast majority of caregivers.
Maggie is considering law school and feels pressure to have both a successful career and a family by her mid-30s. If that timing doesn’t work out “I can look back and say my mom did a really good job — and I can do a good job, too.”