It's all very well pursuing a career when you're young and thereby delaying the time when you settle down into family life but I reckon people should be in some way discouraged from having kids if they can't really look after them properly. Same goes for grandparents who often want to step into the breach to help out - there's such a thing as being just too old to look after young kids. Everyone knows that the older you get the more disabilities you're likely to suffer from and the less likely you are to able to take proper care of children - 48 years is way over the top for looking after kids and by the time you're about 59, let's face it, you're on your last legs. Put it this way, if society wants to tolerate people having kids whom they can't properly look after and when the grandparents are too old to do so then it should be prepared to take them away and find young foster parents who might have a bit more energy for looking after them.

km

You would deprive children of a loving home and grandparents of filling the breech based on the concept that a human being reaches an age when he/she shouldn't be allowed to take care of a child.

My grandparents pretty much raised me. Your concept of age and ability would be considered shockingly judgemental ~ except that it comes from you.

Oh, wait. I get it. You're bored, right? Can't kick any life into any of your other topics, huh? With any luck, this one will sink like the stone it is.

And you are basing this newest burst of blinding insight on... What "everyone knows", or what Keymaker knows?

Sure, there are abusive or emotionally challenged parents who should not have children (although it seems they have more than anyone else). But to hang an age limit on child bearing and rearing? Man, I think Lea's right. You're just bored today. Go find something constructive to do. Like making a baby!! Or are you too old?

BTW, my new mental health policy: I offer one reply per thread to km from now on, so you can take my lack of response to your response as "winning the debate", 'k?

I wasn't really hanging an age limit on parents so much as suggesting they should be discouraged from having kids if they can't really look after them properly and if the grandparents are too old to help out. Don't forget that conditions like angina or diabetes tend to set in with older people which can make it really difficult for them to look after kids.

km

Well, adoptive parents can provide a loving home as well.

km

When my daughter was born, I was 47 (and her mother 32). Katrina will be 15 in July and I'm hitting 62 this May.

Four years ago, my daughte decided to stay with me, instead of returning to her mother in Canada and we have had some great years, because our talents and interests mesh so well and we have the same somewhat bizarre sense of humour.

A few years ago, I told her that if she was ever embarrassed by having such an old father, she could call me Gramps. She just laughed and told me I was the coolest Dad she had ever met.

Clearly, there are moments, when my ages shows. But in most instances, I am much calmer - remember she is in the midst of puberty - than I would have been 30 years ago, when my own career was topmost on my mind.

Chances are, I won't be around to meet my grand children, but I know that these years together have been and will be a tremendous value for her.
And I have been enjoying each and every moment with this young lady growing up next to me. It fits.

Not if they're gay, of course.

[ducks]

(The word in brackets is about the action I'm taking because I know what the response will evoke from KM. It's not intended to suggest that the avian species (that's plural because I don't think one species is any more important than another species of duck) are incapable of successfully becoming adoptive parents. Although, of course, I should have indicated "adoptive mother," since drakes seem to be rather lackadaisical about raising their offspring--no doubt hanging out in all-male flocks, which may be suspiciously like bands of gay ducks. And then we know already that single parents are to be eschewed because single parents can exhibit only one sexual mode of parental caring, and that's not good. So perhaps I do want to exclude the avian "duck" from becoming adoptive parents. Hmmm . . . given all this, perhaps they shouldn't be parents at all.)

Well said Eck

Hear hear, eck.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, but parents like a Grand Duc, it's just a quack...