Better late than never
Jan 23, 2005


How does the news of a 66-year-old single Mum weigh in with all the other shockers that have made the headlines recently?
By Alan John

WHY should I care what some woman in Romania decides to do, and how she lives her life?

What is it to me if she decides she wants to be a mother and goes ahead to have a baby? It really is no concern of mine.

But Adriana Iliescu was something else last week, proclaiming the joys of motherhood, declaring herself the living proof that women are born to have babies.

'Today is a happy day for me, because I can see my daughter. I have touched her hand and she squeezed my finger,' she said. 'It is completely different from when you touch someone else's child.'

Well, great for her.

Except that this gushing single Mum is 66 years old, appears more wrinkled than your average 60-something, and totally unapologetic in the face of some pretty harsh criticism.

She made headlines around the globe last week for being the new titleholder for The World's Oldest Mum. Previous oldest Mums have popped up in India, Italy and the United States, aged 60 to 65.

It has been simply too hard to remain non-judgmental.

I wouldn't have a problem with women having babies in their 60s if they expected to live to 120.

So, looking at pictures of Professor Iliescu and her infant daughter Eliza-Maria, I kept thinking: Crazy woman. Insane doctors, who helped her.

And now that they've gone and done this in Bucharest, how old will next year's oldest Mum be - 70, 75, 80?

Should we banish the thought, or ban these old women from having babies?

News of Prof Iliescu's achievement sparked howls of protest in several countries, from religious leaders, medical ethicists and women's groups too.

Here's some background, quickly.

She is a university professor of literature and a writer of children's books, a dedicated career woman who never had time for a family in her 20s, 30s or 40s.

Then, in her 50s, about 10 years ago, it dawned on her that what she really, really wanted was a baby.

And she took that thought through nine years of fertility treatments using donated eggs and sperm that led finally, last week, to Eliza-Maria.

This baby was one of triplets, but one foetus died at 10 weeks, and a second died in the womb earlier this month.

It took Prof Iliescu half a century to figure out that what she'd missed in life, what she needed most, was a baby.

'Each person has a mission on earth. My mission was to prove that women who want to have children can do it,' she declared in the face of the outcry.

To everyone sputtering away about her irresponsibility and selfishness, she said the baby was her concern and nobody else's.

'This child has the chance to be raised in an intellectual family,' she said. 'I am a modern person, and the child will be a modern person.'

I can't imagine her running after Eliza-Maria in the playground in five years' time.

Or keeping up with her daughter, the teenager.

The protests have included calls for clearer and properly enforced guidelines to ban assisted pregnancy treatments for women who are deemed too old.

Menopause is a good cut-off point, several specialists and concerned lay people agree, and women should accept that they ought not be having babies when they've arrived at the age of grandmotherhood.

Prof Iliescu's doctors have been condemned too, for misusing the technology available to help women conceive artificially.

In short, these treatments were never meant for ageing women who might not survive to see their ba bies become teenagers.

Poor Eliza-Maria. When she's 10, her mum will be 76. When she's 14, Mum will be 80. When she's off to university, Mum will be in her mid-80s.

Even with longevity on her side, this Mum will be dead sooner, not later.

But is an ageing mother any different or any more deserving of condemnation than an ageing father?

Are we just being sickening sexists when we think the worst of Prof Iliescu, but regard with some admiration a Rupert Murdoch who becomes a Dad in his 70s?

Somehow, it isn't the same. The ageing tycoons who make the news tend to have new young wives on their arms, and it figures that at least Mum will be around if Dad should conk.

Would the news of Eliza-Maria's birth have been more palatable if we were also told that her ageing Mum had a 30-something husband? Maybe, though some might have choked on that morsel of information too.

Perhaps Prof Iliescu is simply the best ad for motherhood in a long time, if only younger women listen and act sooner.

For here she is saying that at the end of the day, job and career matter less than the joy of bringing a new life into the world.

Maybe, too, once we get past the idea of new motherhood at 66, we might be able to see that Eliza-Maria is not as badly off as we fear.

At least this child has a mother who has wanted her desperately and is confident she possesses the means to love and raise her well.

Perhaps we should care more about so many other children whose lives go so wrong even before they are born, and right under our noses too.

Eliza-Maria is better off than the infants born to teenage Mums, some of whom get so desperate that they abandon their babies or toss them down rubbish chutes to die.

We have so many teenage Mums and teenage abortions right here in Singapore.

With a mother who loves her, Eliza-Maria is more fortunate than the babies who don't live to see their first birthday or have an awful childhood because of abuse at the hands of those around them, including their parents.

Her future is already infinitely more secure than that of the millions of babies born to the world's poorest mothers, for whom access to clean water, basic meals and medicine is a struggle.

You don't hear any hue and cry ringing around the world over the shame of children getting pregnant, of children being beaten or abused, or of the wretchedness poverty wreaks on mothers and their babies.

The annual reports that tote up those figures just wash over us most of the time.

I may still recoil at the thought of a 66-year-old having a baby, but far worse happens around us, all the time.

The writer can be reached at alan@sph.com.sg

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tick! tock! tick! tock!

or so goes the biological clock... THAT shld show those making noise for me to get married and have kids while i still "can"... :]

i'm sorry to those who think i'm over the hill @ 24!

in an ideal situation, of course it'd be good to have both sets of parents caring after a child... but a child can be orphaned at birth... and sometimes it doesn't take death for a parents not to care for a child... as the write said, what abt those teen pregnancies and all... some... heck... a great number of the kids in my sch are victim of this... taken care by grandparents who are to old to even provide for them, let alone be able to connect well... uncles & aunts who feel rather resentful of having to part with their hard-earned money for children who are not theirs yet can't bear to let them go to strangers at a home...

i think as long as the parent/(s) really care fr a child, he/she they would make sure he/she is provided for in the best way possible... but other circumstances may prevail? i think that's bull, frankly... i have parents with a household income of $600 and 3 sch-going kids, who manage to make do, make sure their kids clean up properly, eat enough, have books, sch fees paid... and i have parents with just one kid, household income of $1000, who always asks for help, claiming not enough money and thus kept their child away from sch...

ok... different families have different financial demands and all, but i think some of these parents just have no sense of priority whatsoever... i have another set of children who havent been in sch since sch started bcoz the family moved and the parents are trying to find a sch... the month is almost ending! and tehy moved for months! and yet it's when the new sch term started taht it occurred to them to get a nearer sch for the children??

some pple think i'm so unsympathetic bcoz i dun understand where tehse families are coming from... pple seem to have an idea that i come from a well-off, educated, dual-income family... some even speculated that both my parents are teachers (LOL... i think there's an idea that the educated malay youth have educated parents... and teh most commonplace job for such scenario is teacher-parents)... i was so surprised when i first heard it...

what? just bcoz i've had tertiary education, hold a good job and dress "contemporarily" (as a colleague once told me... i think that was due to my preference for pantsuits rather than baju kurung, but i just like pants, ok? i hardly wear skirts too)?? well, actually my mum's a housewife, dad's a driver, he earned barely $1000, and he still he managed to put me & sis thru uni, with sis helping out during my JC-time, a scary time for the family then bcoz my dad got retrenched and nobody else wanted this fella who have a wealth of experience, remarkable resume, but is aged 51... i'm very grateful for all my parents did, and i never forget where i came from... but... bcoz i manage to succeed, that's exactly why i can see through all these parents excuses... and i feel for the kids who are deprived of an education bcoz of the irresponsible parents... :/

coming back to the article... my mum was 36 when she had me... so what right? but that was an old age to have just your second child then... and throughtour my childhood years, especially that year i was 10 and i lost both my favourite cousin and my maternal grandma, i was secretly terrified of losing my parents before i finished school, imagine being shuttled around relatives (whom i wasn't particularly close too and baulked at the idea of having to live with them!)... then when i was in JC, a close cousin lost her husband to cancer in barely a month after the birth of their first daughter... she's living in malaysia... and my parents was down there to support her and her three kids, the eldest son then was still in P6 i think... and for once in my life, had to elarn to take care of my meals, washing up, cleaning up by myself... it hought i was pretty independent... then i discovered i've taken for granted how much my mum the housewife did... whatever time i had off school was spend with my cousin and her kids... the eldest seems to be coping well, understanding what happened and protective of the family, and already used to not having the dad around for most of the time due to his wk committments that had brought him to other states most of the time... i felt so sad for the daughter, whom the parents had wished for desperately for so many years, who'd be deprived of knowing her dad, and i was alternately infuriated and sympathetic with the middle son, who still thinks the dad is coming back and was trhowing tantrums and generally being difficult to divert attention from his previously-held-title of the youngest child...

seven years forward, they are doing fine... and whatever economising the mum do to be able to provide for 3kids on her own, i try to reward them with nice clothes, books, toys, whatever things i dun think the mum would usually get them... in an ideal situation, of course it'd be good to have both parents... but as long as the child is cared for, i think he/she will do just fine...