This week on Insight we explore the trend of the older parenthood. Is it better late than never?
A 62 year old Tasmanian woman recently became Australia’s oldest new mother by giving birth to a baby girl after becoming pregnant with the help of IVF. It’s her first child and her partner is 78 years old. The AMA president Dr Michael Gannon labelled the decision madness, selfish and wrong.
His comments raise the question of how old is too old to have a baby? And now IVF technology has created more opportunities to have a baby later in life, should we?
While Australia’s overall birth rate continues to fall, older mothers are bucking the trend. The fertility rate for mothers aged 45-49 doubled between 2004-2014.
Babies have always been born to older mothers but, in decades gone by, they were accidental, and usually the last of many. Now the children born late are often the first-born and desperately wanted.
More older couples are turning to donor eggs and embryos to have babies into their late 40’s, 50 and 60s despite the risks of older pregnancies. So what are the age limits and who’s setting them? What are the societal costs? And what about the rights of the child to have a parent who’s around to see them through to adulthood?
We speak to older mothers like comedian Mary Coustas, who became a mother via IVF at 49; older fathers like Kevin King who became a dad again at 70; and the children of older parents like Ozzie Colley whose father was 92 at the time of his birth.
Credits
- Presenter: Jenny Brockie
- Producer: Alex Tarney
- Associate Producer: Sarah Allely
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