Is Anyone Here the Child of Parent(s) Who Were Older (Having Children at 50 or Above)? What Do You See as the Pros and Cons?

Hey Everyone,

The discussion in the Age Differences (within relationships/marriages) thread has me thinking. We've been talking about whether or not there is a moral objection to large age differences between partners/spouses... While the general consensus seems to be that there isn't anything morally wrong on the surface, I did post the one concern I would have regarding children:

(Taken from a post I made in that thread.)

I do think there comes a point where large age gaps can become a moral problem.

I wrote a thread years ago asking if a man insists on marrying a woman half his age, who does he expect to take care of her and their children after he dies? Most especially if he has always been the sole breadwinner and leaves her with no real job skills or means to support their family.

I can't remember a single person answering that the older man should be in charge of leaving his wife and children an inheritance, and I can understand this, as I am NOT AT ALL trying to advocate that women should only marry men with money. But what really shocked me is that I think maybe only one guy at most even thought to mention a life insurance policy. This had me wondering, "Does anyone think about/worry what will happen to their family if they die? And if so, what do they do about it?"

What I found disturbing was that this seemed to imply a feeling of, "I can marry this young hot thing, but when I die, that's her problem to deal with. She's no longer my responsibility, and neither are our kids." How much does God hold a man (parent) responsible for his (their) kids, even after death? The Bible says that parents are to store up an inheritance for their children.

If someone is several years older, has, and/or develops life-threatening medical conditions, I would think this would bring up some very serious moral questions about the couple's future, especially if they want to have kids. Now of course, you could run into the classic gold digger scenario as well.

But (the posts in that thread) seem centered around the insistence of age-gapped couples who genuinely love each other, so let's go from there.

I grew up in a family with a stay-at-home mom and a dad with a very stressful job. One of the things my parents talked about regularly (even though they were only 2 years apart,) was savings and life insurance, because my Dad's biggest fear was keeling over from a heart attack and leaving my Mom destitute with a young family. I don't know if this is an anamaly in Christian families, but I never hear anyone else talking about it.

Yes, of course God can miraculously heal, but I wouldn't bet a future family on just hoping for a miracle. Years ago I read about a Hollywood celebrity who was much older and passed away, leaving behind a young widow and their young son. He left her plenty of money to survive on, but the thing she was having problems with was finding any kind of support or community for women who were left widowed with a child at age 33 (except, perhaps, for military spouses -- but even then, her situation was quite unique.)

This raises all kinds of questions about the morality of the age at which one should be able to parent a child. If a man is 70 and has a serious heart condition, should he pass himself off as a perfectly viable father to a 25-year-old who wants children?

If he marries a woman who already has very young children herself, what responsibility, if any, does have towards them if/when he dies?

And as I think you can deduct from my posts, I am a firm believer in moral dilemmas going both ways. Years ago, I read about a woman who insisted on every available medical treatment to become pregnant in her 60's. She had twin boys -- only to die 2 years later and I don't think she even had a partner or husband, leaving the boys as orphans. This might sound cold of me, but I don't think she should have pursued motherhood in those conditions.

No, we can't know the future, so we have this uncomfortable line to walk of not being fearful, but also considering the best interests of everyone involved. I think we have to made responsible choices with the information we have, no matter what age.

And of course, it's a different picture if both parties are adamant about not wanting to have children.

But I've seen more than one Christian marriage fall apart because they both SAID they didn't want children when marrying, but then one changed their mind after some time, and eventually decided, "If you can't/won't give me children, I'm going to go find someone who can."



I would like to know:

* Does anyone here have a parent who had children in their 50's, 60's and up?

* What would you say are the pros and cons to this? Would you recommend it to others?

* Were there any large age gaps between the couples? What effect did that have? Did the older spouse die when their child(ren) were relatively young? How did the spouse who was left behind cope?

While everyone is welcome to answer, I'm particularly interested in hearing from any adults whose parents had them when they were much older and how it affected them.

Of course, parents could die at any age and I've known several people who lost a "normal-aged" parent while they were young. But here I am specifically thinking of when older people purposely decide to have a child, knowing full well that they might not be around to even see their child become a teen.

I'm trying to think of how I would feel if, let's say, my hypothetical father was 60 with serious health problems, but decided to have a child with my hypothetical healthy 30-year-old mother anyway, then dies at 65, leaving my mother to raise me alone, along with 2 other young half-siblings she brought into their marriage.

I know myself well enough to know that I would have been angry at my father for, as I would see it, being selfish. Now maybe I couldn't judge him -- maybe God had chosen that I would be born from them in that way, and I would have no right to judge. But I would still feel abandoned, angry that we now had to struggle so much, and jealous of those who got to grow up with parents of "normal" age.

How would others feel in this situation?

I would be very interested in hearing people's thoughts about this topic.

I don't know about any of your sub-questions, but you seem to be leaving God out of the equation on your main question. While life insurance and leaving an inheritance likely have their place, ultimately it is up to God to provide.

I mean I am a single woman who lived with another single woman from my church. Neither of us have ever married so have never even had a husband to provide for us in the first place. A few years back God allowed us to have a year without any job or regular income source for our household. It was difficult but God used it to grow our faith by providing for our needs in spite of it all. When our faith was sufficiently exercised, God reinstated financial support.

I know from other things He has taught me, that God expects us to do our part, and He makes up the difference. I see no reason why fatherhood/husbandhood would be any different. The Bible even says in Psalm 68:5, "A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling." So it seems clear to me that while a man should do his best to provide for his family, and seeking God's guidance on marriage is wise whatever a person's circumstance (financial means is no guarantee either), no follower of Christ should make decisions about family life based on fear of dying, or any fear really.

I don't know about any of your sub-questions, but you seem to be leaving God out of the equation on your main question. While life insurance and leaving an inheritance likely have their place, ultimately it is up to God to provide.

I mean I am a single woman who lived with another single woman from my church. Neither of us have ever married so have never even had a husband to provide for us in the first place. A few years back God allowed us to have a year without any job or regular income source for our household. It was difficult but God used it to grow our faith by providing for our needs in spite of it all. When our faith was sufficiently exercised, God reinstated financial support.

I know from other things He has taught me, that God expects us to do our part, and He makes up the difference. I see no reason why fatherhood/husbandhood would be any different. The Bible even says in Psalm 68:5, "A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling." So it seems clear to me that while a man should do his best to provide for his family, and seeking God's guidance on marriage is wise whatever a person's circumstance (financial means is no guarantee either), no follower of Christ should make decisions about family life based on fear of dying, or any fear really.

My goal in life is to be of as little trouble to others as possible, and to hopefully help out when I can.

I was all set to castigate you for making a big long post without a single scripture in it...

But...

*sigh

This is the most Christian sentiment I have seen on the forum so far this year.

Oh well. Next time.

I was all set to castigate you for making a big long post without a single scripture in it...

But...

*sigh

This is the most Christian sentiment I have seen on the forum so far this year.

Oh well. Next time.

I've written several posts over the years as to why I don't try to jam Scripture into everything I write. I seem to have a bit of an "Esther" calling -- which seems fitting, as we both started out in life as orphans. Esther revealed her faith in a strategic way, for a specific purpose, and this seems to happen to me a lot as well.

Pardon my French, if I may speak bluntly -- I'll often get people who will start telling me were being raped from the time they were a toddler, and I've just never felt that pummeling them with Scripture right off the bat was the right approach (unless they had a background to which it would mean something.) Most of the people I run into have little to no Biblical reference to even know what I'm talking about. Rather, I got to know them over time -- and once I knew theie stories, then I started asking about their spiritual backgrounds.

After spending a lot of time getting to know a particular co-worker, I once asked if I could pray with her for her kids (which is unusual for me, as I usually pray in private,) but afterwards, she was tearing up and said, "You remembered my kids' names." Of course! I had been listening to her tell me about them for many months before this. Eventually, I asked them to church -- and she eventually became a member. I went with her to all the new member classes because she was afraid to go alone. I went through the entire initiation service up front as if I was a new member, too, because she wanted and needed someone to be with her.

One of the things being single afforded me was the time it took to go with her through the whole process.

But people don't see this part of our lives. Rather, they see posts on a forum that only say so much, and then judge our spiritual character according to what they conclude is missing.

Which is exactly why I said I keep most of my spiritual life private. When I go to my spiritual fellowship group, I'm not bombarded with repetitive, cliched questions or accusations of having a weak faith because the people there know my spiritual history and don't bother asking things they already know about me.

Rather, they're able to cut right to the chase and offer truly helpful suggestions. And when I have unanswerable questions (of which I have many,) they offer Scriptural reminders tailored to what I'm asking, not reprimands for how weak in faith they think I am for asking.

But the people on the forum?

Old timers here will remember when I used to write a lot of threads about trying to heal from sexual abuse, because at the time, I felt that's what God was directing me to write about. And it's still an important topic to me.

But nowadays, I feel like God leads me to write about more mundane, every day things, because people need a little pick-me-up in the midst of their busy lives.

So currently, people see a person who writes polls about peanut butter and jelly, why Santa Claus didn't bring her anything this year, and polls about polls.

And for now, that's just the way I'm liking it.