Timing is everything

There was a brief...uh...."spirited discussion" on the Dillon list this week about older mothers, initiated by a negative comment about older parents. At 48, I am one of them. Although parenting was always my plan, I had to wait to implement it. There were many reasons to wait. I wanted my situation to be as perfect as I could make it, emotionally, financially. I never felt pressured by time in terms of fertility because I always knew that adoption was an option. .

I have a strong faith that everything happens for a reason and that life takes you where you were meant to be. Every door that closes in your life leads you in the direction that you are meant to go. If life had worked that way I wanted (instead of the way life wanted!) I would have loved to have 4 children within the framework of marriage. That hasn’t happened and I am convinced that the reason is that I was being gently pushed in the direction of adoption, to that child who is meant to be mine.

I spent a lot of time babysitting in the last 15 years., mostly because I get a great deal of joy from the kids and because it has been a tremendous learning experience for me. My experiences babysitting, getting to know these families, and observe their interactions, family dynamics, relationships, and results have been an invaluable experience -- aside from being tremendous fun! I can see the difference between these kids and me when I was young - they are, for the most part, so confident, so sure of who they are, where I was so shy. And I can see what the parents are doing that gets these results. It has been invaluable to me to experience ways of parenting other than what I experienced. My relationships with these children keeps me aware of the wonder of the world -- everything is so new and exciting and wonderful to a child. I enjoy being able to maintain that perspective and my relationships with these children and their families are precious to me. And observing a lot of these marriages, from the really special, to the good, to the nightmares, has also taught me a lot about healthy relationships.

Practically speaking, I wasn't financially ready. The last few years, I’ve made very deliberate decisions in my life with the eventual aim of having a child. The benefits my job provides include $2,000 towards an adoption and they will cover 50% of my childcare expenses. After 10 years of service (July 1 of this year), I am guaranteed health care benefits for the rest of my life. (My company also has an office in Vietnam. I like knowing that I have colleagues in Vietnam who could be of help during the process and make it easier for me to someday return to show my child the land of his birth.)

When I was ready to purchase a home almost 5 years ago, I chose a 2-bedroom condominium in a very diverse neighborhood undergoing gentrification. Jersey City is a vital mix of cultures. There is a public elementary school on the next block and a daycare center run by Franciscan nuns half a block away.

I have several close friends who have adopted – one family has two children adopted domestically, another a son from Chile and a daughter from Mexico. Yet another has a biracial son. The more I talk to people about my adoption plans, the more people I learn are adopted themselves (there are at least 4 people in my office around my age who have shared the fact they are adopted with me. I imagine this unusual number is due to the stigma of unwed motherhood in late 1950s and early 1960s.) They have all been invaluable resources to me. I’ve been able to watch the kids grow up and struggle with their adoption issues, and talk to the adults who’ve experienced it themselves. I’ve been very lucky.

I am confident knowing I have close friends parenting both adopted and interracial children for support and guidance. And that my child will have a built-in network of kids who will know exactly how he feels, because they have been there themselves.

I do understand the concern expressed about lifespan of older parents, but, really, do any of us have a guarantee at a long life? All parents need to make guardianship plans for the children, no matter their age. I have one for mine.

Should I have been irresponsible and had a child when it would have meant financial disaster? Should I have "settled" and had a child with the wrong man? In an unhealthy or unhappy marriage? I did spend several years trying to get pregnant and had two miscarriages. The person I was in a relationship with at the time had a child from another relationship and, as time went by, and she got older, he realized he did not want the responsibility of another child. Should I have have gone ahead and had a childwith a man who did not want me to do so? The very last thing I would do is to have a child with someone who did not want that child. That was a dealbreaker for me and the relationship ended. Should I have had a child before I knew who I was, and knew what it was to be emotionally healthy? It would have absolutely been wrong on so many levels for me to have had children when I was younger. I come from a highly dysfunctional family and needed these years on my own to heal, to learn, to experience other ways of being. Would any of these scenarios be preferable to having an older parent?

The world has changed and older parents are not an oddity. 50 today is not what 50 was 20 years ago. Of all the parents I sat for, none of the mothers was less than 40 when they had their first child, all having established careers in the environmental field. Of my charges that are now in college, one got early admission to Brown, one is at Duke, one is finishing a semester abroad in South Africa. They are lovely, intelligent, politically and socially active children.

So, here I sit. A parent to be who could not want to be a parent more! A parent to be with a secure job, who owns a home in a diverse neighborhood. A parent to be with years of experience with children and families. Who has traveled both within the US and overseas, who is comfortable with and open to the "different". A parent to be who has spent her adulthood getting to know who she is and becoming who she wants to be. Who is happy and secure in herself and her life and her relationships. What could be better?