I was asked in the Q&A to comment on Anne Hathaway’s geriatric pregnancy. There has been an active discussion of this on social media, but I’m not sure there is much one can say about it. When women get pregnant, that’s wonderful. When babies are born, that’s also wonderful. However, unless a woman is extremely wealthy, it is crucial to remember that not only getting pregnant, but carrying to term, giving birth, recovering from the pregnancy, and caring for the child is enormously more difficult on the physical level at age 40 plus. Enormously more difficult. Every year of a woman’s age adds to these difficulties exponentially.
Of course, on the psychological level, if everything goes right, it can become enormously, and I repeat, enormously, easier to be a mother as you get older. This is not necessarily the case. What I say is predicated on consistent personal growth in a woman. But if that growth is there, being the mother of an infant, toddler, and preteen in your forties and fifties is the best thing ever.
So, yay for Anne Hathaway. I wish her a safe pregnancy and a joyful birth. I don’t particularly like her as an actress. I think she has no talent. But I want her baby to be born healthy and happy, as I want every baby to be born healthy and happy.
I also want to mention that people get fixated on the difficulties of getting pregnant in one’s forties, when getting pregnant is not remotely the hardest part of a geriatric pregnancy and birth. For me, the most demanding time was not even the high-high-risk pregnancy that I experienced with Klara, but not being physically able to care for my infant as I wanted to in the first months. For those of us who are not Hollywood starlets and don’t have an army of servants, this can be the hardest part of a geriatric birth.
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