Never Say Never
Transport Minister Merav Michaeli, 54, surprised this week with a post that revealed the reason for her trip to the United States and made many headlines: She and her partner Lior Shlein, 43, became parents.
This announcement is shocking on several levels: First of all on a personal level — Merav Michaeli was declared childfree by choice with a clear agenda against surrogacy (although according to her post the initiative came from her partner, never say never …) and on a macro level — Michaeli brought a trend that is developing right under our noses to the front of the stage- parenting, and in particular mothers, for the first time in their lives, in the sixth decade of life.
Whether in surrogacy, egg donation or adoption, the phenomenon is still unusual but the numbers show it is rising. Of course, you see it first among the celebrities who are in the spotlight anyway: Janet Jackson gave birth to her first son at 50, Diane Keaton first adopted at 50, and Cameron Diaz announced the birth of her daughter at 47, and last May — supermodel Naomi Campbell (50) announced the birth of her first daughter.
Following Naomi Campbell’s announcement, the Daily Mail reported that last year, about 3 women over the age of fifty gave birth every week. The UK Health Service (NHS) has published this in absolute numbers: at least 139 women over the age of 50 gave birth in hospital last year — the highest number in the last five years — all of whom gave birth on their own and not through a surrogate. Those women are part of 669 women over the age of Fifty who have given birth since 2016 (93 of them have crossed 55).
There are also a number of pioneering celebrities in the trend in Israel: singer Etty Levy (52) said in June that she is in a surrogacy process, and model Shirley Boganim (47) was interviewed in a very revealing way this week and told about the long and tedious process she goes through in the last decade.
What was supposed to be a relatively simple and quick process somewhere in our early 20s was postponed (mostly) to the 30s in the Western world for career establishment reasons, a financial establishment, and finding the right partner. We have not yet gotten completely used to the fact that it has already been pushed into the 40s (+ tedious IVF treatments) and here we get another stretch for the age that can be started.
The technology, by the way, allows to bring children up to the age of 75, and a number of births of women of retirement age have already been recorded, but is that what we want?
The disadvantages are easier for us to think about and they revolve mainly around the wide age gap between parent and child and the fact that children will have to help their elderly parents when they are very young and even become orphans very early. This argument is based on life as we know it and ignores the fact that life expectancy (and quality) also continues to rise in parallel. Another disadvantage is the health risk to the woman. The advantages are that the parents/mothers are in a more stable financial situation and can take care of the babies, they have already gone through the race of their careers and it is more important for them to focus on raising the children and some even say they have no FOMO. Additional benefits found by studies have been an improvement in cognitive abilities, reduced risk of child injuries, higher mental readiness, higher likelihood of educated and tech-savvy children, and … longevity.
What are the tectonic consequences?
First of all, at the simplest level — mothers get to be criticized about their age (what can not be said about Quentin Tarantino who became a father for the first time last year at 57), the next level — as age increases — the process may be more expensive and instead of spending money on raising children and conceive them in the natural and “free” way, the right to have children is increasingly becoming the property of those who have the means, and at the mega-trend level — we are getting out of sync. Part of the synchronization was when to get married and have children, and as you can understand — this too is already happening in growing variability.
And on a more practical level — as the regulation of fertility treatments varies from country to country, we may see fertility tourism growing, maternity leave in pre-retirement ages, and of course — like any demographic change, it should also have implications for the pension and social security model.
Finally, I return to Michaeli’s post and quote from it: “It was a journey of many trials. I am glad I went through this journey, I now know first hand what it means and what it entails and what needs to work differently in this system of fertility treatments, but we will talk about it in another day. …. he (the baby) does not change anything of what I think about the inequality that makes motherhood a burden on women …. “.
Michaeli is an influential public figure who went through the process and now understands throughout her experience its complexity, and as she writes — she will talk more about it separately. Like Michaeli, some of the more anonymous women who become mothers at this age are in positions of influence in the company in which they work. Young wo.men in the organization are quieter about their needs because they are afraid for their place, and especially pregnant women — a very sensitive issue in the work world. Cheryl Sandberg (№2 on Facebook) tells in her book about the end of her pregnancy that it was very heavy and she couldn’t go far. In the days when she would arrive late at the office, only parking spaces far from the building remained and she had difficulty walking that distance. She turned to Zuckerberg and asked him to allocate parking spots for pregnant women near the entrance to the building, and so it was.
As the number of pregnant women in senior positions increases (there is still an age correlation, especially in giant corporations), they will have the power to change not only their lives but the attitude of the labor market to pregnant women and the inequality that makes motherhood a burden on women, as Covid reminds us.
