Naomi Campbell has welcomed a second child at the age of 53. The British supermodel, who welcomed her first baby two years ago, told her Instagram followers: “It’s never too late to become a mother“.
Although Campbell’s late motherhood is still relatively uncommon, she is not entirely alone. In 2021, 2,064 mothers gave birth over the age of 45. In England and Wales, there are now twice as many women giving birth over the age of 40 as there are young mother’s in their teens.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that in 2021, there were 28,478 births to mothers aged 40 to 44. Meanwhile, in the US, the birth rate for women aged 40 to 44 rose by 4 per cent in 2022, a record high.
The reasons for this shift are multi-layered and personal. Here, women share why they chose to have a baby later in life, and what that was like.
Mari Clark, 48, Brighton
I was 40 when I had my son. I just wasn’t ready at all before that. It wasn’t really even something that I was thinking about in my early thirties. I was very happy just living my life and I had not found the right partner.
Of course, I had always grown up with the idea that I was going to have two children. I was going to have a boy and a girl. They could wear matching outfits. But that just completely fell off the plate for me. I was doing stand-up comedy, which isn’t a conducive lifestyle for bringing up babies. I was also doing acting jobs. I was having fun and I loved my job. I loved my life.
That was until I met Paul at 38. I knew we were going to be together forever. All of a sudden I realised I was going to be 40 soon, so pretty quickly we decided to try for babies. There was no waiting. For me, it was all about finding the right person. My headspace completely changed when that happened.
Older mothers are not represented at all in the media. We just see these beautiful images of idyllic, youthful motherhood. Every time you Google “mother and child” there are only just photos of young mothers. My friend Lena Koskela and I set up the blog Geriatric Mothers. We really want to change that.
I think waiting for the right partner is absolutely the right approach. Women increasingly want to be with somebody who takes responsibility. Someone who is an equal parent, and who’s going to do half the chores. Someone who agrees with you about how you raise a child. Having a child is a huge thing.
I would have been a terrible mother when I was younger. But then it’s also a double-edged sword. When my son is up and down at night and I am exhausted, I often wonder, would I be this tired if I was five years younger? But of course, being a mother is tough at any age.
Mary Doyle, 51, Manchester
I had my first and only child when I was 42. I never had an overarching desire to have a baby without a partner. I think I was always afraid that I wasn’t going to be a very good mother, so I needed someone to support me if I was going to do it. Then I met my husband when I was 31. He proposed pretty quickly after meeting me. We met in 2004 and married two years later.
Various things meant that having a baby wasn’t on our list straight away. At first, we just wanted to enjoy our early married years. Then my dad’s health started to decline and we needed to spend a lot of time and energy looking after him. There was a lot of stress beginning to come into our lives around then. Issues started to crop up with my mum, and our relationship became very fractured.
My father passed away in 2010, and my relationship with my mum got worse. My body just didn’t respond well to stress, and then because of the issues with my mum, I was actually beginning to become more fearful about the prospect of becoming a mother myself. I was getting older and I was very conscious of that too. I really started to think, maybe I can’t do this.
All that pressure was lifted when my mum was put in a nursing home. We went to Barcelona and had a lovely summer enjoying all this pressure that had been lifted. Shortly after that, I was pregnant. My body relaxed, and I think it finally felt open to pregnancy.
I was very self-conscious about being an older mother. I had a few bad experiences with some doctors who were very dismissive of me, but then I met a lovely female doctor. She told me she hated the term “geriatric mother”. She really empathised with me and I felt a lot better about it.
I am never going to be the young, hip mum, but I’m glad I waited. I needed to be in the right frame of mind to have a baby.
Lucy Baker, 47, Lincoln
Society has its set reasons for why women should have babies at a certain age, and often they are a load of nonsense. When I got pregnant at 42 with my third baby, everyone asked me if it was a mistake. They just assumed it must be. Then they asked me if it was IVF. I was really shocked at how many people felt comfortable enough to ask me that.
I was really lucky to fall pregnant naturally. We had been trying to expand our family for a while. I had always wanted three children, and my husband also wanted a big family. We didn’t want to put too much pressure on it, so we said if it happens, then it happens. Five years after having my second child, we fell pregnant again. So many women want to have babies and really struggle. I was very mindful of that when I was sharing my news.
In my twenties, and my early thirties, I had no confidence. When I became a mother for the first time at 34, I still didn’t have confidence in myself. I definitely wasn’t ready for a child in my twenties. I really wasn’t very sure who I was. I didn’t have self-belief. I lived in London. I was partying. I was having fun. Job hopping, moving around and having relationships that didn’t last. I was just being an erratic twenty-something. Then when I became pregnant at 34, we left London. I had to settle into a motherhood role overnight. I literally don’t have a choice.
Now I’m a confidence coach. I help women feel good about themselves and for six years I have also been working on myself. Feeling happier probably played a part in wanting to expand my family again.
Having a baby in my forties was a whole new experience for me. I entered into motherhood with a completely different perspective on parenting, on work and on life generally. I am 47 now and I feel better than I ever have. I’m at a really good point mentally. I am so much kinder to myself and that trickles down into my parenting as well.
I am not saying I was a bad parent in my thirties because I wasn’t, but I wasn’t feeling completely brilliant. Now I have the energy to go to the gym and I am looking after myself.
My little boy was ill last week. That could have been enough to tip me over the edge before. But because I’m looking after myself a bit more, I can cope with that kind of stuff. I can stay up all night while he is sick. Things come out of the blue to test you, and I can cope with them far better than I could have done before. I feel so much better at 47 than I ever did at 27.
