Assisted reproductive techniques and the laws of other countries allow women to be mothers even after the age of 60. This is the case of Ana Obregón, who at the age of 68 has decided to welcome a girl through surrogacy in the United States, just as Baroness Thyssen did at the age of 64 in 2007. But there have also been cases of pregnant mothers during the third age, perhaps the most notorious was that of María del Carmen Bousada de Lara.
This woman from Cádiz was the mother of twins at the age of 67 at the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona in 2006. She then became the world’s longest-lived pregnant mother after undergoing in vitro fertilization in the United States. She acknowledged that she lied about her age so that the doctors would subject her to fertility treatment, and the twins Pau and Christian were orphaned at the age of three when Bousada de Lara died of cancer.
Critics of late motherhood allude to the fact that these mothers who are going through old age will not be able to care for their children in subsequent years, as was the case with Bousada de Lara, but there are also examples of women who have not fared so badly and they seem to enjoy, both they and their children, a happy life. Like Baroness Thyssen, whose twins are 15 years old and their mother is far from dying, or the case of Adriana Iliescu, whose daughter turned 18 after making international headlines for giving birth to her mother at 66. She is now 84 years old. Or Lina Álvarez, who became a mother at 62, and it seems that after 6 years she has not lost her energy.
In the case of men, things seem to change if they are parents at an advanced age, since the times that a famous elderly man has had a new child has not generated so much scandal. Julio Iglesias has not had a bad image for being a father at 64; Mick Jagger, at 73 years old; Richard Gere, at age 70; Robert De Niro, at 68; or Steve Martin, who was at 67. It is also true that all of them had much younger partners, and therefore the matter is still sexist.
In a society in which medical and technological advances are increasing life expectancy more and more, and assisted reproduction, and in particular surrogacy, allows women in their old age, not old age, to have children without the risk of pregnancy at your age, who decides who can be a mother and who can’t? Should we still rely on biological age to consider a woman old to be a mother?
Another thing is that being a mother is considered an inalienable right of human beings at any age, since the laws for the protection of minors should prevail in this matter. Accidents or deaths of parents that are more premature than others can happen in all cases, which is why in the West there has always been the figure of the godfather, or in the legal field in Spain, the appointment of a legal guardian trusted by the parents, who will be the one who, in the event of the death of the parents, will ensure the well-being of the minors and their property.
