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TH is talking about me!


Guest Doomed Harlot

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Guest Anonymous

Well, she's not talking about me, specifically, but older mothers with careers who conceive (or in my case, are trying to conceive) with donor eggs or sperm:

thinkinghousewife.com/wp/2011/09/one-more-example-of-child-abuse/#more-29570

It brightens my day a little bit to know that I am everything TH despises most in the world! But what about the children??????? The Housewife contends that children are entitled to vigorous healthy parents, not parents who can't join their children in play or who need elder care when their children are just starting their own adult lives. The Housewife incorrectly claims that these concerns were blithely dismissed as unimportant by the author of The New York magazine article under cirticism in her blog post. In fact, these concerns are not dismissed in the article, but thoroughly addressed.

The fact remains that we are living longer, healthier lives. I well remember my own grandparents playing long and vigorous games of baseball with me well into their 70s when I was a child. My own parents are in their 70s and show absolutely no signs of needing any kind of special care in the near future. My mother, who has more time to exercise, is more vigorous and active than I am. Certainly, I concede that having a child later increases the odds that one will die or become ill early in a child's life, but it's hardly a given in this day and age.

Finally, TH and her reader wonder what kind of identity a child will have knowing that he or she was conceived by ordering biological material in a consumerist fashion, rather than through a good old-fashioned rack session. Also how can a child conceived in such a fashion have healthy ideas about love, sex, family, gender and intimacy? Now certainly I would never presume to speak for any child I conceive on this issue; my child could well resent having been conceived by a biological father he or she will not have a chance to meet until at least age 18. But none of us have control over the circumstances of our conception. I was conceived the old-fashioned way but I certainly have identity problems when I look in the mirror and see the features of my abusive, biological father staring right back at me. I could blame my mother for her lousy taste in men, or I could accept that she did the best she could, and at least I'm here. I am hopeful that my child will see it the same way, but that's not to say that I think deep-seated identity problems are necessarily a given. I also don't think that the circumstances of my kid's conception will somehow warp that kid's sense of relationships and intimacy; I don't even see how that follows.

The problem with conservatives is their opposition to choice stems far beyond just forcing pregnant to carry pregnancies to term and give birth against their will. They also insist that those of us who want to be pregnant must do so only in an extremely narrowly prescribed way.

I would be the first to admit that having a mysterious sperm donor my child will probably wonder about throughout his or her childhood (and with whom he or she may not have a satisfactory meeting if there is any contact later) is not ideal. But the conservatives are also the ones always nattering on about how selfish the rest of us are for waiting for "ideal" circumstances before having children. I want to have a child precisely because we are so perfectly set up to give a child a very happy upbringing, but for our inability to conceive naturally.

(NOTE: I differ slightly from the women covered in the New York article in that I am only 40, not 50, and I am not undergoing IUI due to my age but rather due to my husband's infertility.)

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How is a 40+ year old having a first child any different from a 40+ year old having their 12th? If anything the former will be better able to care for their offspring.

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Why does no one protest older dads? As I mentioned in another thread, my husband is 20 years older than me. He was over fifty when our youngest was born. He is an active dad, taking kids on hikes and rafting and whatnot. I don't see why an older mother would be disabled simply because of her age.

When social security was created, 65 was set as the age because the average person did not live that long and those who did were truly disabled, as in unable to work in any capacity. Now, people are active and healthy into their eighties if they take care of themselves and have no major inherited problems. We have set the clock back by two decades. A 55 year old mom now might be in better shape than a 35 year old mom a century ago.

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ITA, Emmie. My dad was 57 when I was born and he died at age 82 while I was in medical school. While he didn't see my graduation or my wedding he was a vibrant, caring, connected, HARD WORKING father and I adored (adore?) him. Having 24 years with him had far more impact than many of my friends' younger fathers had - many are enmeshed or estranged.

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Huh. That's a weird argument.

I have personal moral and ethical beliefs that would forbid me from doing that, and I would take that side in a debate. But....not on the basis of "older parents aren't adequate". And as much as I might disagree with it, there are many things I disagree with but don't desire to ban. :/

Actually, her argument is rather along eugnic lines. Only vigorous healthy people should have children? That would exclude the disabled as well as the "elderly" (35+ according to OB's, lol).

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Guest Anonymous

Ha ha ha. Housewife posts this comment from "commenter Alyce."

"You are a friend of women, and make me proud to be a woman also.

I don't know how any woman can read TH and reach this conclusion. Of course, TH often makes the argument that feminists "hate" women, because we want to drag women away from their baybeez.

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I dislike her argument.

However, I would be very hesitant to say that having children late in life, with a sperm donor, is a good idea. Full disclosure -- I was a "test tube" baby, and my parents used a donor due to my father's cancer. I knew I was one of the first 'test tube' babies, but I did not find out about the donor sperm until I was 24. Part of me has put that on a very long list of ways my parents have failed me, and part of me thinks it might have been better to wait until I was an adult to share that with me. I never had the identity crisis of wanting to meet my "real" dad or anything more than the standard issue "i wish I were an orphan" dream. HOWEVER, the fact that my dad was disabled my entire life made things very difficult for me. Not that I really mind, I think it forced me to be patient.

Having older parents (my parents are the same age as my SOs parents, and he's ten years older than me) was also difficult, when I was growing up, but now I think they are just weird and would be weird even if they were born in the "correct" decade for my age.

If you had asked me in high school my opinion on IVF, I would have told you that it was evil, against G-d, and that it should be banned and I should have never been born. Sometimes I still feel that way. I'm so out of step with my peers on so many things. It seems to me that nature sent a pretty strong message when it struck my dad with cancer and my mom with severe endometriosis. Clearly they were not supposed to have children together. The biggest problem I have with the donor sperm is that I spent 24 years of my life thinking that I had specific cancer genes and now I don't know. I also failed a couple of school projects on genetics because she said I must have done them wrong if I wasn't adopted. So there's that.

But you know, I know that I'm an exception and not the rule. There have been so many people who have had good experiences that I'm usually really hesitant to share this kind of stuff with people.

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My mother was 34 when I - her first - was born, which was very old by the standards of the time and of her social circle. I don't feel like I missed out because she was too tired to play with me. I had a sister to play with, anyway. Older parents can be an advantage: mine couldn't have sent me to a private school or been able to pay for driving lessons etc if I had been born when they were 22.

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My mother was 34 when I - her first - was born, which was very old by the standards of the time and of her social circle. I don't feel like I missed out because she was too tired to play with me. I had a sister to play with, anyway. Older parents can be an advantage: mine couldn't have sent me to a private school or been able to pay for driving lessons etc if I had been born when they were 22.

34 is not considered old to have a baby anymore. I had mine what is now considered "young " to have a complete family and had 3 kids by 31. Most of my friends had their first around age 30, 2 had babies in the 40+ age. Most of my friends are 32-50 and we all have kids in the same age range so it really varies now a days.

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The fact that the offspring of these old mothers will not have energetic parents and will be coping with the old age of their parents while they are in college or in their twenties just doesn’t concern her.

Well, I hope she gets right on the horn to Michelle Duggar and blasts her for all those poor babies she bore after age 35. After all, she's depriving them of an "energetic" mother, and forcing them to cope with her old age while they're young.

Oh, Wait. That's exactly WHY Michelle was still having babies. Because she already had a bunch of kids in their late teens and early 20's to take care of the new children AND take care of her and JimBob by doing all the household chores as well. So I guess it's okay to have "late" babies as long as you have surrogate mothers and trained help. Come to think of it, Michelle even has JB's mom doing her household work. So much for the "taking care of your parents in their old age." :roll:

Whatever. I just hope TH never finds out about my MIL, who had a "surprise" baby at age 48, the old-fashioned way. They got AARP discounts AND "kids stay free" deals when they went on vacation. Yes, everyone thought she was the grandmother, but she quickly set them straight. And that "poor child" had parents into her early 40's...not as long as she would've liked, I'm sure, but many people lose their parents at that age.

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I was conceived the old-fashioned way but I certainly have identity problems when I look in the mirror and see the features of my abusive, biological father staring right back at me.

This may not be directly on topic, DoomedHarlot, but . . . THIS! Whenever I go into the assisted care residence where my parents live now, people tell me "Oh, I knew you were related--you look just like your father!" They have no idea how painful that is to me. I would have loved to believe these people were not my real parents!

The Starkraving Hussy is a great example of something that drives me crazy about fundies: their total inconsistency. Basically, they'll pick up anything as a stick to beat people they don't like. If someone they like did exactly the same thing, it would be a sign of virtue. When I was a Catholic kid, there were tons of non-BC-using women who conceived menopause babies when their cycles became irregular. Sometimes the baby came out all right; sometimes they were born with birth defects due to problems of older eggs or older bodies not supporting pregnancy and labor as well. Yet those mothers were praised as examples of wonderful devotion to Our Lady of Perennial Reproduction. Nobody said it was a problem that those parents were approaching retirement and still had young teens to raise and educate.

My husband's mother died when he was a baby. His father remarried and he and the new wife were in their forties when they had my husband's two stepbrothers. I don't think either one of them ever played with the children. Keep them clean and pop them in the playpen was more their style. But since they were squeaky-clean white midwesterners of German descent and devout evangelicals, I'm sure it was A-OK for them to spawn late in life.

Yeah, every child is "entitled" to have young, vigorous parents who are happily (and heterosexually!) married, have jobs and nice houses and are not physically or mentally ill. I guess the rest of us should never have been born.

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My mom was 33 when I was born, which doesn't seem early or late to me. But she's almost 60 now and as energetic as ever! She baby-sits several different kids and they've never complained about her not being energetic enough. I've even known some people who were raised partly or completely by their grandparents and while some of them have had complaints, I've never heard them whine that their grandparent just wasn't energetic enough. It's not like everyone turns boring the second they reach whatever age counts as "old".

I can't help but see the disablism in this too. What about women with CFS or joint pain? They might not be able to play with their kids as much as completely healthy women, but does that mean they shouldn't have kids at all?

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I used to babysit for a family whose first child had died of Jeune Syndrome (a kind of dwarfism where the body basically suffocates itself, a terrible way to die) and with a 25% chance of passing it on to each child, they opted for a sperm donor for their other kids. They now have two healthy, gorgeous kids. What were they supposed to do- have two more babies who were possibly doomed to short, painful lives?

My parents were 54 and 38 when I was born, and I do not regret a single thing about it. They are who they are, and they were NOT selfish to have me. People who call older parents this should really think before they speak.

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My was 34 and a half when she had me and several people thought that was too old to have a child. My mom's mom was 38 when she had my mom and so my mom had nieces and nephews 8 to 15 years younger than her. After my mom had me one of her nieces said that my mom screwed up the generation gap in our family. That comment annoyed my parents back then and it annoyed me later on when my twunt cousin said that. sometimes hate when people knock people in their mid 30s and older for having kids.

My boyfriend's uncle had three kids in 50's. He is now 62 and he is pretty healthy and does a lot with his younger kids. He has two kids from a previous marriage. He remarried at 47 to a woman 18 years younger than them. He and his wife had twins girls and then a son.

As for sperm and egg donors, that is what people choose to do and it is their business. Sperm doesn't make a person a dad and eggs don't make a person a mom. Love and nurturing make people parents.. TH likely doesn't know anyone who has been the situation in which they needed sperm or egg donors for different reasons, but some people that she knows that are younger could have used a sperm or egg donor and TH might not know it. Some people keep things to themselves. There was incident I read about that happened years ago in which a couple used a sperm donor because the father was sterile and they didn't want to go through adoption. They had a daughter who later had leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. The sperm donor was a match and they family choose to reveal the truth about the daughter's conception.

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Why does no one protest older dads? As I mentioned in another thread, my husband is 20 years older than me. He was over fifty when our youngest was born. He is an active dad, taking kids on hikes and rafting and whatnot. I don't see why an older mother would be disabled simply because of her age.

When social security was created, 65 was set as the age because the average person did not live that long and those who did were truly disabled, as in unable to work in any capacity. Now, people are active and healthy into their eighties if they take care of themselves and have no major inherited problems. We have set the clock back by two decades. A 55 year old mom now might be in better shape than a 35 year old mom a century ago.

'Cause we're WIMMIN. :roll:

(Confession: I love to use the rolling eyes smiley here!)

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Guest Anonymous

Cpennylane, I really appreciate your story as I have been trying to read as much as i can from the perspective of donor-conceived children.

I personally have a bias towards telling the child as soon as possible that he or she was donor conceived, and providing as much info. as you have about the donor. And preferably choosing an open donor that is willing to be contacted in the future. Not that that necessarily solves every issue but i would hate to spring that on an adult kid. Or have my kid fail genetics!

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The sperm donor was a match and they family choose to reveal the truth about the daughter's conception.

They were very lucky to find the identity of the sperm donor. The majority of artificial insemination with donor sperm is anonymous. There are thousands of children and adults conceived this way and they will never know their biological father. Many have never been told they were conceived this way. Their birth certificates list the mother's name and her husband, whether he's the bio father or not. We considered becoming parents via this route as my DH was sterile. In the end I couldn't do it. I wanted my children to know who their bio father was, and I also did not want the risk of hundreds of half siblings. In medical school several of my DH's classmates were donors at an infertility clinic, they were frequent donors. There was recently a situation I read of where one donor had over 150 offspring. This just is not ethical. Talk about brave new world. Using donor sperm also makes it easy to lie by omission, not telling a child he/she was conceived this way. Donor egg implantation in another woman also makes it easy to lie to the child who never knows his mother isn't really his genetic mother. We went the adoption route, and our now adult children know both families.

Nell

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This hits close to hpme with me. When I was born my father was 40 and my mother was 42. Keep in my mind I wasn't a test tube baby, the pregnancy was accidental. Having long fertility periods runs in the family..

Anyway, my father was wheelchair bound and my mother is currently disaled(but she wasn't when I was younger)

However, My father was the one who did most of the child raising, from his wheelchair and I had a wonderful childhood. So it hurts me when people are against disabled people raising children.

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Guest Anonymous

Nell, I definitely appreciate all those concerns!

Atropos Heart, I am glad to hear about your experience. My husband has a disability, and actually, a main motivator for me to want kids is that I think he would be an amazing father. I have to say I have no concerns whatsoever about my children having a father with a disability.

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My mom was 39 and my dad was 38 when I was born. Even though I was conceived naturally, the point is my parents were "old" to be having their second (and totally planned) child.

It didn't make them worse parents. In fact, in my opinion it made them better parents in some ways because they had much longer life experiences to gain wisdom that they later imparted on me.

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In a closed adoption, a child may never know his/her bio parents, and may never be privy to family medical histories. A child concieved by donor sperm would be in a similar with regard to the bio father, but would know his/her mother's family medical history. I don't see how it's that much different.

The people who raised me, who I consider my parents, were actually my grandparents. They were 44 (momma) and 52 (papa) when I was born. Papa died of lung disease when I was 15 (he had a couple pack-a-day habit for 50 plus years) and I lost momma when I was 26 (cancer). Sure, they were a little older than my friends' parents, but I never thought that much about it, to be honest, and still don't think their age made any negative difference. It was certainly much better for me to be raised by either one of my bio parents.

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Guest Anonymous

I do want to mention that donor conception is not necessarily anonymous or lacking in information. You can choose an open donor who is willing to be contacted once the child is 18. You also receive your donor's childhood pictures, a questionnaire completed by the donor containing a complete family medical history (the donor, parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles), questionnaires completed by the donor regarding his life, interests, and goals, and an audio recording of an interview with the donor. Some donors provide art projects, musical compositions, poems, or other creative work.

Of course, if I were donor conceived, I would be madly curious about my donor parent, and this information wouldn't be enough to satisfy all my curiosity, but I think it is better than the child receiving no information and no option to contact the donor eventually.

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In a closed adoption, a child may never know his/her bio parents, and may never be privy to family medical histories. A child concieved by donor sperm would be in a similar with regard to the bio father, but would know his/her mother's family medical history. I don't see how it's that much different.

The difference is that even in closed adoptions the identities of the parents is known by the agency and the courts. More and more states, slowly but surely, are allowing adult adoptees access to their original birth certificates. Most states allow adult adoptees to do a search through the agency. I was a court mandated intermediary here in MN and helped 100 adoptees and birthparents to reconnect. Thousands of adoptees find their birthparents every year. My adult children all had closed adoptions, they are still reunited. With sperm donors the records are not nearly as complete as with adoptions, there are no laws covering revealing his identity, and many adult children conceived this way don't even know this was how they were conceived as parents lie by omission to them. Also, most birthparents relinquished one child. Sperm donors can have more than 100 offspring.

Nell

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