Reply to Those in your 40s and 50s, if you had kids later in life, do you regret it?

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Reply to "Those in your 40s and 50s, if you had kids later in life, do you regret it?"

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[quote=Anonymous]Had my one and only at 37. I'm mid-40s now and it's great. We contemplated having a second but when I hit 40 without having conceived, we decided it was time to stop -- my first pregnancy was hard on me and at 40 I started doing the math on college and retirement, plus if our child needs help early in adulthood. We could have made two kids work, but this way we feel confident we can be the parents we want to be. If we'd had kids younger we definitely would have had two, I think.

But in terms of being a parents and our life as a family, I love being an older mom. As other PPs have said, I am a better parent at this age than I would have been when I was younger. More patient, better understanding of myself, better at setting boundaries and also taking the long view on things.

The squeeze with aging parents is real, but I'm going to get really honest with you now -- I am glad our parents were too old to be really involved grandparents by the time we had a kid. Our parents weren't amazing parents. They aren't bad people, just come from kind of hard backgrounds and have lots of unresolved issues. They can be very selfish and childlike themselves. So I'm often grateful that they aren't younger and more involved because it's less for me to deal with. It does mean that we often have to deal with caring for them as well, but with just one kid I haven't felt this overwhelming -- as DD gets older and more self-sufficient, I have more time and energy for doing things for my parents and MIL (my FIL passed a few years ago). And I think DD has a better relationship with them than she would have when they were younger. Maybe not as close, but because they aren't serving in a caretaker role for her at all, they can just kind of be pleasant friends without her having to deal with their many issues. DH and I still have to deal with those, but we can handle it.

I think being an older parent is great and it's actually hard for me to imagine it any other way. I'm glad I'd evolved into this version of myself before I had a kid.[/quote]

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