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Stop Judging Women for Having Children Later in Life
A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a co-worker where I mentioned one of my former co-workers who had been pregnant in her forties when she ran a marathon. The feat of running a marathon aside, he replied in shock, “Pregnant? And she was in her forties?”
Slightly taken back by the blatant reaction, I calmingly replied, “Yeah”, and continued on with the conversation, choosing to omit the fact that my Mother was pregnant with me at the age of forty (And that was nearly three decades ago, when the norm for women was to have children much younger, typically in their early-twenties).
However, my Mother immigrated to the United States in her late-twenties, so starting a family was unfortunately something that had to be a bit delayed. After she immigrated to the States, she returned to her home-country to marry my Father who had not immigrated over yet. After they were married, she returned to the States and waited several years until my Father was finally able to arrive.
When they were reunited, it took several years until they were eventually pregnant with my sister at the age of thirty-five. They continued trying to conceive again for another several years until they finally gave birth to me at the age of forty. At that point, we capped at being a four-member family after I was born.
