Is 50 too old?

[Jean and Tonic]

Sorry to ask again .. as I know there's a thread somewhere with this question ... but I can't find it.

Is 50 too old to have a baby?

I found a newpaper report of the drowning of a three year old child which may belong to my relatives .... it's between the census ..so I'm not quite sure.

Jean

[Mary from Italy]

It's possible, but unusual.

[Little Nell]

Some women don't start the menopause till their early 50s. But the older a mother is, the more the chances of some genetic problems, and also of miscarriage, so I would say its unlikely but not impossible.

[Jean and Tonic]

Thanks Mary ..... it was maybe someone passing through between the 1881 and 1891 census ... because there's nobody in the area with the same name as the father .... except mine. Her last child was born seven years before so it does seem strange.

Jean

[Harrys mum]

I come from a long line of women who don't even start menopause till their mid 50s, so have many bubs born after 50.

A few i had doubts about and bought certs, but unless fibs were told to the registrar they were legit. I have living siblings and cousins born to mums in their 50s. I thought the oldest was about 53, but have found one definite for 56!!

The only known baby born with a genetic abnormality is my grand daughter and her mum was 18.............

Now I'm more believing of older mums found on census.

[Jean and Tonic]

thanks Nell and Harrys Mum ....... now that's thrown the cat among the pigeons ..... I'll have to send for the cert if I want to know for certain ........ it would have been my gran's youngest brother if it's right ..... so maybe I should send for it!!!!

Jean

Thanks again all

[Penelope]

Redacted

[Olde Crone Holden]

Plenty of "ewe lambs" in my tree who are really grandchildren. I always look hard at any teenage unmarried daughters if mum suddenly produces a child in her fifties, after many years with no births.

Sometimes the baptism tells the truth though, as people were less likely to lie to the Vicar than to the Registrar - and the Vicar was more likely to know the truth, anyway!

I suppose in the days before official adoption, you could say the grandparents weren't telling all that much of a lie if they registered the child as their own because by doing that they were accepting legal responsibility for the child. Perhaps one or two Registrars turned a blind eye, who knows.

OC

[Penelope]

Redacted

[Stella]

My maternal gt grandmother had a child at aged 52. My late mother told me about how she went to the doctor, thinking it was her menopause and found she was pregnant. Didn't quite believe it until I discovered it when doing my research.

[Canadian Cousin]

... Family in trouble for thieving. They spent a LOT of time in the village pub, according to newspaper accounts of their trial for thieving...

:D Sounds like a couple of my Cornish ancestors (or at least their families)! :D

Tim

[Jean and Tonic]

that's all very interesting .... the eldest daughter would have been 15/16 in 1884 when the child was born. She died in 1885 age 17 ..... the child was drowned in 1887 aged 3.

So maybe I should send for the daughter's death cert first, to see why she died .. it may have been complications of childbirth. Then maybe her parents took over the parental duties.

Stella ... I had to laugh at your gt. grandmother ....... my own mother went to the docs with suspected gaul-stones ........ and my youngest brother was born ..... just a few months later at 9 pounds 7 ozs ........ she was only 42 though. How on earth she didn't know, we'll never understand.

Jean

[zoejg]

Just to add that in some cases the child didn't even know her parents were actually her grandparents. Most certainly, my "great aunt", actually the child of my real great aunt, was not told until she was 18 that her "sister" was her mother. I find it amazing that it didn't get back to her through villiage gossip, but there you go...

[Olde Crone Holden]

zoejg

I think there was an unspoken conspiracy between the mothers of unmarried daughters!

Brave would be the woman who would cast aspersions on a neighbour's daughter as she would never know that her own daughters might not be in the same situation next year! (Or already had been)

OC

[Christine in Herts]

Such children were/are sometimes known as "Change babies" because the mother thought that her menopause had come so she need not take any precautions, and didn't think it odd when her menstruation stopped. Swelling belly could be put down to menopause effects as well.

There were some twin contempories of my younger son (now 28) whose mother was more like a generation older than I - and she had made the same mistake in diagnosis, even that recently.

Christine

[Olde Crone Holden]

Christine

In those days, there WERE no precautions to take, other than abstinence!

OC

[Christine in Herts]

Christine

In those days, there WERE no precautions to take, other than abstinence!

OC

I believe that there were - but highly unreliable, and not very aphrodisiac! - and not widely available, of course. (Try googling)

Christine

[Olde Crone Holden]

Christine

Yes, there were (useless) contraceptive methods, but no "decent" woman would have even known of them, let alone used them.

The church still had a very strong moral hold and women were led to believe that their role was as a baby-making machine. Anything which interefered with this process was ungodly.

Until 1988, (yes, that is 1988,) either spouse could take the other to court in order to enforce "marital relations", so even a headache was no use as a contraceptive!

OC

[Merry Monty Montgomery]

I often wonder how it is that the more "middle-class" elements of my tree suddenly reduced their family sizes in the later part of the 1800s to maybe three or four children? It's as if a huge swathe of the population suddenly realised if they could have less children without losing them to illness, they could provide them with better education/upbringing/diet etc etc etc, yet it's not as if they would have been reading such info in the papers, so how come so many seem to have drifted in the same direction at the same time? And erm....how did they go about having less children? Was it abstinence or something else? If something else, who brought up the subject and who decided on family size?

[Olde Crone Holden]

Yes, Merry, I have noticed exactly the same thing happening in my family as they became upwardly mobile, lol. I cannot work out whether this climb up the social ladder was possible BECAUSE they had fewer children, or whether they decided to have fewer children in order to climb the social ladder!

I think that in the major conurbations - London, etc, there were a few women pioneers quietly teaching poorer women the advantages of contraception (much of which didn't work, but there you go) and those poorer women didn't need telling twice about the advantages of not having 19 consecutive pregnancies, I don't suppose!

The upper classes would have had access to doctors who would tell the young married woman how to avoid becoming pregnant - and her new husband might already know, having travelled abroad and sown his wild oats, as it were.

Possibly, the push for all classes to suddenly limit their own fertility was down to the increased wealth and opportunities which presented in the late 1800s.

However, the rural areas continued to produce unlimited numbers of children, through lack of access to the knowledge of how to prevent them, and partly to the die-hard attitudes of the rural poor, who often tended to be very conservative - and possibly the subject of nosey questions by a mother-in-law, who might get the Vicar onto the poor woman if she failed to produce a child regularly.

Many people thought it a sin (and still do, of course) to limit their family size by artificial means.

OC