Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 19, 1993 TAG: 9312190080
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: E-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
When she had a daughter four years ago, Grossman joined a play group for new mothers. But instead of feeling solidarity, she suddenly felt very alone.
"Most of the mothers were 25 to 32, and I felt like somebody's mother," she says. "There was no talk about careers or issues outside of the children. These women were young, and their experiences were very limited."
Indeed, then 44, Grossman could have been many of those women's mothers.
The American family portrait has changed so dramatically in the past four decades that we hardly recognize it. The framed smiles of today's nuclear family belong to brown faces paired with white faces, women alone with children, men and women with no children.
Then, there are the graying couples, their faces lined with age, beaming alongside fresh-faced babies.
Their pictures tell the story of tens of thousands of women and men in their 40s, becoming parents for the first time.
Like Grossman, the mothers are ambitious women who have spent the past 20 years building careers and enjoying their freedom, the women that some in society have worried about, felt sorry for, shook their heads at in dismay.
For these women, early adulthood was a big laboratory. The cultural revolution of the 1960s left them with so many options. Some said they weren't going to have children; there was no time.
Now, they are creating a minor revolution.
"These women are just blazing their own trails, totally negating what we're supposed to be doing at certain ages," says Sharon Hymer of New York, a psychologist who has worked with parents and children and who herself had a child at 40.
The number of women having children in their early 30s fell in 1991 for the first time in nearly two decades, according to the latest figures from the National Center for Health Statistics.
But the rate of 5.5 births per 1,000 women aged 40 to 44 was unchanged after several years of sharp growth. From 1980 to 1989, the birth rate among these women rose steadily from 3.9 per 1,000 to 5.2 per 1,000, or from 24,000 to 46,000.
The fertility problems facing women over 40 are well-documented, but there is little research into how these women and their families fare, about how they differ from younger family units.
There can be a downside for the children as their parents get even older, including frustration with mothers and fathers who can't keep up with the demanding schedules of active kids.
Age may bequeath wisdom, but it takes away other things - like the energy to run after toddlers and swoop them off slides, and the vibrant skin and glowing cheeks that define the traditional image of the new mother in all her glory.
Because the generation gap for these families will be wider than ever, it also remains to be seen how the parents will cope when a teen-age daughter announces she intends to dye her hair green.
And when these parents are on the verge of retiring, their children will be in college, a potential financial drain at a delicate time.
But the overwhelming advantage of older parents, many experts note, is their maturity.
"Older parents are more competent in general," says Judith Myers-Walls, an associate professor of child development at Purdue University. "They tend to be more responsive, less distracted by their own needs."
For years, these older mothers were in the thick of the endless search for the gratifying weekend. They could pull a boozy all-nighter talking about life, or curl up in bed with a Raymond Chandler novel, order in Chinese and turn off the phone. They could spend lazy days with their husbands, essentially doing nothing.
It was an easy, self-indulgent life, but that was the point - they satisfied their own needs before they took on the responsibilities of a child. Hymer says they probably will be a lot less inclined to look to their children to fulfill dreams.
"I am the best parent I could be now," says Bonnie Burt, 48, of Piedmont, Calif. "I can't even imagine having a child in my 20s, or 30s."
Burt and her husband, Mark Liss, had their child, Adam, seven years ago. Burt lived in San Francisco and Mexico during the freewheeling '60s, then moved on to Cambridge, Mass. She had a 12-year career as a psychotherapist before she became an independent video producer.
"Looking back, I needed that time to focus on myself and resolve my own issues," she says. "We're really not taught anything about parenting. The message is, `OK, you had parents, now you be a parent.' So age and experience make a big difference."
by CNB