Looking for Interviews!

First, let me tell you that I'll leave the entries for the giveaways open until next Thursday.  That's a long time, but then I'll be back in town, post-conference (leaving tomorrow) and settled and ready to make a trip to the UPS store, okay?

Now for the big question and call for your help.

I want to write an article about becoming a new mother at or over the age of fifty.  By "new mother" I don't mean "first-time mother" though that's a possibility too.  But what I mean is entering a new mother-child relationship at or after 50.  For example:

-a biological mother via ART, whether IVF with donor gametes or through surrogacy

-an adoptive mother to a new child whether an infant or older

-a foster mother who has taken in new children (of any age) at or over 50

-a grandmother adopting/fostering her grandchildren

-a new stepmother, married to/moving in with a custodial parent

-anything else you know of that I haven't thought of

The mother relationship doesn't have to be legal, but should be daily or very nearly daily care of/responsibility for a child under 18.  In other words, standing "in loco parentis" or being a "de facto" parent counts too.

And I want to focus on mothers, because it is less examined in our culture than men becoming fathers after 50, but if you are or know a father in an interesting new parent situation at or after age 50, I'm okay with throwing one in there for extra insight.

I developed an interest in this topic when Selina arrived about two months before Cole's 50th birthday and looked around and saw little but condemnation for women becoming mothers over age 50.  If you are an "expert" in this area for whatever reason (you can define your credentials), I'd like to hear from you too.

I would love to get at least six strong interviews with women who fall into as wide a variety of situations possible.  I plan to do long-form open-ended questions, rather than trying to accumulate any "statistics."  I plan to pitch the story to a few major parenting magazines.  I pitched it to the AARP magazine in the fall and they gave me the silent treatment, but my interest in the topic remains, so I figured I'd get started on it and find a publisher as I go.

Thanks for your help!

Comments

[Leah]

What a fascinating topic! No personal experience here to share, but please do let us know where we can find the article once published. :)

[deb]

What Leah said!

[malinda]

O.M.G! Shannon! I just met you at the AAC conference and we exchanged blog addresses, and now I see I've been reading you all along! How cool is that?!

[Kate]

My partner was 57 when our first shared kid was born, and 59 with the second - not quite one of your scenarios as I'm their bio-mother. I'll ask her if she might be interested, if a foreigner would be acceptable interview fodder?

[eeka]

That's interesting, because AARP has a support/outreach program aimed at just these folks, although the publicity stuff limits it to grandparents who are raising grandchildren. We just had a presentation at work by a couple of Boston-area groups of grandparents raising grandchildren, and there's quite a lot of resources out there, though also quite a lot of cracks that have yet to be filled. A google search brings up most of the resources on which they presented.

Since you brought up fathers, I'd love to see a piece on bio hetero couples where the bio father is considerably older than bio mother. Even in the clinical literature, basically all there is on this topic is essentially "ew, gross, cradle robber, power imbalance, etc." Sure, this is often the case, but I'm sure there are also perfectly functional families in this demographic, and I'd love to hear something about what it's like to be an older father in terms of everyday life, dealing with schools and pediatricians and whatnot, instead of just the focus on pathologizing these couples. (I've never been a fan of this angle, because it's like, even if it is effed up, it's not really anyone's place to go there, and these families are already here, so why not just be helpful?)

[eeka]

Oh, and if you wait a couple years, I'm sure Michelle Duggar will be giving birth over 50. ;o)