Like Paris Hilton, I’m a mom in my 40’s and most of what they say about us isn’t true
It was almost impossible to ignore the constant mention of Paris Hilton’s age in the headlines as she announced the arrival of her first child via surrogate earlier this morning.
it declining, right? The 41-year-old, who has made no secret of her desire to start a family with husband Carter Reum, announced via Instagram that her yet unnamed son was finally here, with the caption: “You’re already loved beyond words . ”
It’s clearly something Hilton has wanted for a long time — in February 2021, she announced she was undergoing IVF treatment.
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Although I too was a “geriatric mother” who became pregnant at 41 and gave birth at 42, I suspect that Paris and I will experience motherhood in very different ways.
And while her age deserves a lot of mentions, Paris will probably still be happy to hear that becoming a mother at 40 isn’t the hottest topic these days.
Here in Ireland it will certainly be less remarkable. The number of women aged 40 and over giving birth rose by nearly a third over a 10-year period, according to data from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released in October.
In 2020, there were 4,700 births to women in this particular age group, 29.4 percent more than the 3,631 births in 2010.
The further I get on this journey as a parent, the more I realize that everything we’ve learned so far about becoming a mother at 40 isn’t entirely true after all.
Firstly, it has long been said that motherhood at 40 is “tiring”, much more so than for our younger colleagues.
I’m not sure if I agree. I’m bone tired, sure, but all parents go through insomnia, anxiety, and the daily boredom of caring for a child the same way.
The next thing you often hear is that older parents are “financially more stable” than their younger counterparts, which supposedly puts them in a more comfortable position to raise children.
In today’s climate, that’s not necessarily always the reality. We are currently renting and at the mercy of Ireland’s steep housing market and unlike in our 20’s we are concerned that our mortgage approval is aging.
You’ll also hear how many parents in their forties are realizing how much more settled they are and how emotionally suited they are to parenthood in their older years.
And it’s true – those waiting to begin their journey as parents have often done so with a lot of thought.
But does older and wiser make you a better parent? I easily and often lose my head in the battles of will with my daughter.
Now I meet younger mothers who become parents with the ease of a Buddhist monk. They seem a lot more confident in their abilities than I ever was.
I can attest that, much like Paris, I got a lot of my partying and non-parenting fun out of my system before I became a mom.
I’ve had about 40 years of doing as I please and going into mother mode was a shock to the system. I had to reevaluate my identity and who I was, at a point where most people have gotten that whole duty out of their system.
The debate about moms in their 40s is getting out of the heat, and not prematurely. Most people understand that turning 40 does not affect a child or their parents’ ability to be better parents. If a woman is in good health and can provide a loving home, what exactly is the problem?
I can only assume that Paris Hilton will have no problems at all in this regard.
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Barry Keoghan with Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inisherin.
Barry Keoghan is the perfect role model for young Irish men
Amid the cheers of Ireland’s record-breaking Oscar nominations this year, the story of Barry Keoghan’s earlier years went viral on social media, and rightly so.
By anyone’s standards, it’s a remarkable development: in 2003, after Keoghan’s mother died, he and his brother spent seven years in foster care in 23 different homes.
In 2010 he responded to a small casting ad in a Dublin shop window and reportedly didn’t have the bus ticket to make it to his first casting call.
As actor Michael Warburton noted on Twitter earlier this week, “He was given nothing, he wasn’t meant to achieve”. “I use it positively to push myself…it gives me drive,” Keoghan noted in a 2019 television interview, referring to his earlier years.
At 30, he earned his first Oscar nomination for a phenomenal performance in The Banshees by Inisherin. According to several critics, the first of many.
It was a real pleasure to watch Keoghan rise to the top of his game.
Now settled with a partner and young son, he’s without the Rolex watch swagger and alpha male romp of many young men who’ve had a nosebleed ride to the top of their game.
He was charming and magnetic on the red carpet. At a time when people like Andrew Tate are being mentioned in the classroom and we often worry that decent role models for young Irish men are scarce locally, we really don’t need to look that far.
Eating With The Enemy serves up some very tasty debates
Virgin Media’s Eat with the Enemyalso known as Twitter With Starters, was something of a revelation.
Confronting people with polarizing values over dinner means that many of the conversations were marked by tension, condescension and hostility.
And yet the conversation between sex worker Kate and the more conservative Laura was filled with respect and empathy.
They exchanged their opinions and lived experiences around sex work and abortion and ended up meeting halfway on many points. That’s exactly how we should be having these conversations.
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/like-paris-hilton-im-a-forty-something-mum-and-most-of-what-they-say-about-us-isnt-true-42312866.html Like Paris Hilton, I’m a mom in my 40’s and most of what they say about us isn’t true
