TW: I am Catholic, and as such am opposed to birth control, IVF, surrogacy, abortion, etc., all of which I will mention in this post.

This should be an easy one, lol. This post is more of a vent than a reasoning/figuring out type of post like some of my other SITVs.

Some people – quite a lot of people out there, it seems – apparently think it’s unethical for parents past a certain age to have kids. Unethical! Wow.

As a mom, I’m on the older side myself: I gave birth to my first when I was 30, and have had two more since, and, God willing, would love to have even more. But now, I’m officially in the dreaded “Mid Thirties,” when, according to the Internet, fertility takes a nosedive, and women are basically used up and devoid of value (unless, of course, you’re very rich and can afford to make yourself look 20something still). Past the Mid-Thirties, you’d better get your tubes tied or be on a reliable birth control (if any man still wants to sleep with you, that is, which, good luck with that, grandma), because any kid of yours has a super high chance of being disabled or different, and we can’t have that; how inconvenient, how un-glamorous. That is the prevailing attitude online.

And IRL, too, it seems. At least where I live. I’m in a pretty “country” area where most new moms seem to be in the 18-25 age range. And no, I’m not shitting on young moms, and yes, I know, 18-25 is “peak fertility” so that is a good and normal thing that most moms are that age. Yay! I love that for them! All moms are equally deserving and valuable.

I do think it’s weird, though, that so many moms in this culture boast that they are/will be “done having kids by 30.” I guess the idea is, they want to be able to enjoy their late 40s/50s in freedom without having kids/teens to take care of, and they want to be still pretty spry when their grandkids are young. That’s all fair, and I can definitely see the advantages there; but are those really good enough reasons to close oneself off to potential life after your 30th birthday?

Also, the “fertility peaks before 25” statement is very much a vast generalization, for one thing. Some of us dealt with physical and mental health issues that killed our fertility In our teens and twenties, so much that we can literally count on two hands the number of menstrual periods we had between 14 and 29; some of us are actually way healthier and more fertile in our 30s, thank you very much. And for that matter, many of us older moms did not choose to be older moms. We would have loved to have kids in our 20s, but life did not happen that way, and we are just grateful to be moms at all. So thanks, Internet, for rubbing in our faces what we already know and regret and can’t change.

“But moms over 35 are more likely to miscarry or to have a baby with genetic conditions.” For one, there’s always a chance of miscarriage or pregnancy loss, which is tragic, so if you are not in a place to be able to cope with that, then you should probably not get pregnant right now.

As for genetic conditions: parenthood comes with risks. It can be hard. It is not guaranteed to be smooth sailing. You are not guaranteed to get the healthy, perfect babies you dreamed about when you were a little girl. If you are not open to difficulty, to tragedy, to hardship, to a thankless, unglamorous struggle, you should probably not get pregnant at this time. People really think kids are only worth having if they fit into our mental image of a picture-perfect life. If you would kill your child for having Downs, then parenthood is not for you.

And besides, the risk does go up, it’s true; but the risk is still minute. The fearmongering about “old moms” is really out of control.

Women have been having healthy babies in their late 30s and 40s since the dawn of humanity. The idea that we are morally obligated to get sterilized or go on birth control past a certain age, is so twisted! First of all because birth control is a moral evil and no one should be on it. (I know there are some exceptions for health conditions.) But even if it somehow weren’t, the idea that it’s “immoral” or “selfish” to have kids past a certain age, is absolutely false.

Obviously, the use of IVF and surrogacy are immoral — but a mom who naturally gets pregnant in her late 30s or 40s? There’s literally nothing selfish about her having that baby, in fact she is doing what she should. God designed women to be able to have children from teenage through almost 50. All of those years are equally natural and valid times to have a baby. If you conceived spontaneously, in the normal way, then guess what, you are fertile, you are in your childbearing years, you are able to have a baby; anyone who tells you otherwise is sorely misguided!

But what about the argument that old moms are being selfish because they’ll be too tired to be fun moms, or they won’t be around to see as much of their grandkids, or their kids will be forced to watch them age and die while said kids are still relatively young?

Sorry, but that’s just part of being a human in a family, isn’t it: people age, people die. Women are generally fertile from teens through almost 50, therefore, some kids are born to younger parents and some to older parents. Their experiences of their parents are likely to be different. (But not guaranteed. Some older parents are in great shape, live a long time, and are involved with their grandkids; some younger parents die young. Nothing is guaranteed. If you plan your whole life around avoiding pain and suffering, you’re going to have a really bad time (take it from me, I have a clinically diagnosed avoidant personality). Nothing is guaranteed.) So what? So what if one kid’s parents are older, as long as they are loved and raised well? Should that child have been prevented or aborted just because his parents aren’t running around him in circles in the yard, or don’t keep up with his music or slang, or because he will have to see them age or die while he’s still only in his twenties or thirties? Do those circumstances make his whole life a waste, would he be better off never having existed?

It’s pretty absurd thinking.

I mean if you think about it, the whole “I want to be done by 30” is, in fact, way more selfish than being open to life for as long as you can. So your free time/vacations/hobbies are more important to you than the potential children that you could be devoting yourself to? I’m not shaming anyone who loves their hobbies and vacations or whatever, but surely it’s clear how that is a more selfish choice than someone who could have chosen to enjoy their personal leisure time, but instead decided to give that time to their child.

So while initially I was pretty shook by all the negativity and stigma out there around “old moms,” and worried that I may have made a mistake, I have since realized that that negative buzz is all just another symptom of a very sick and massively deluded society. “Unethical”? For a married woman to get pregnant and have her child? People have such a bizarre idea of what “ethics” even is, these days!

Obviously I can understand preferring to have kids in your 20s. Being a young mom is more sexy, it’s glamorous, it looks more fun and people say you can “relate to your kids more” or whatever (although, I’m not here to be my kids’ bestie, I’m here to raise them). Teen moms are nowhere near as stigmatized as old moms, IMO – people like young people better in general. So I can understand preferring to have kids young, it being more fun at that age. I would have loved to be a young mom! But, let’s be real, every mom is just as much a mom as every other mom, regardless of age, and all pregnant ladies deserve our respect, not judgment. There’s no good reason to go on birth control or sterilize oneself after 30 or 35 (or ever, unless, again, you have some health condition that requires it for non-contraceptive purposes).

Okay, rant over. Leave old moms alone!