I read this and thought this:
My sister always comments that I am an “older mom”. I find this amusing because I am about the median age among my peers with children of a similar age. And I can’t help but note a tone of resentment in her voice when she says it.
I was 32 when I had my first child. My sister married at 21 and had her first child a month after her 23rd birthday. Likewise, my mother was 23 when she had my sister, who was also her first child. Comparatively, my mother had me, her last child, at age 31. I have noticed that among my mom friends, many entered motherhood at roughly the same age their mamas were when they half consciously squeezed them out into the waiting arms of a scrub clad, masked spanker. I have no scientific data to support this equated age claim; it is anecdotal at best, but a curious observation nonetheless.
I neither would have nor could have had a child in my twenties. That decade was a time of lost and found. A raging period of self-indulgent exploration and healing that only after, emerging in my 30’s, was I stable enough financially, emotional and maybe even physically to begin my family. A choice. Or maybe it is just the way things worked out. Circumstances.
I have navigated my life by the course of my sister’s mistakes. I don’t mean this with any disrespect or in judgment of my sister; quite the opposite. The big sister I always look up to and admire offered cautionary life experiences to which I took notice and headed like mythical parables. I simply learned from her hardships struggling as a young mom with three children. That was not a life I wanted to live. Which again is not a judgment on choosing to become a mother in one’s 20’s. But in the 1990’s, as an urban, educated, middle-class, white woman, I was able to make my choice with nary an eyebrow raised.
And while working through issues of post-traumatic proportions in my 20’s, I also lived with the relish of a wanton grrrl exploring all that life has to offer. At the prime age of 20, I suffered through a disastrous break-up with my first “true love” (which I now consider a near miss [near Mrs.]). Otherwise the course of my life could have echoed my oldest sibling’s. In retreat, I partied through college, trekked across Europe, moved cross country and had countless potential life partners (ok, maybe two or three real contenders) before I felt ready to “settle down”. And at 27 I was ready, finally, to inventory my accumulated adventures and make a big change. I met my husband at 28, married at 29 and had Ivy at 32. My husband and I honeymooned by spending a month in Japan riding our bikes across the rural countryside and setting the stage for a life long cultural exchange. In other words: before Saturn returned, I had sown my proverbial wild oats.
My point is this: I would not trade my chosen path for one of different opportunities to have my children. And demographically, I insist I am in the norm and protest the “older mom” label. I have several friends, after all, who began their families in their 40’s. I have plenty of energy to chase my heinous monkeys around the living room or the neighborhood park. And I have the budget necessary to indulge them occasionally and keep them in the candy colored clothing proffered at the Hannah Anderson outlet. I am a better mom by having waited. I can be the mom I want to be.
