Older parents good for children

I often wish I were a twenty-year-old mother with small children. For many obvious reasons: I would cope better with the little sleep.  I could run around effortlessly with them. And, I would look better.  Think of 33-year-old Angelina Jolie: gorgeous, thin, and already thinking of adopting a seventh child! She’s almost a whole ten years younger than me.

A young mum I am not.  I find myself hoping that one of my daughters will do a Bristol Palin on me. If this were to happen, I could possibly be knitting booties before my eighties. But I suspect my opinion on sex education might work against me on this.

The good news, fellow older parents, is that  ‘delaying parenthood to get the best qualifications and a career first gives children a better start in life’. Ok, I might not have spent my youth getting a PhD and climbing the corporate ladder but delay parenting I did do – it took me a damn long time to find my prince.

The Guardian’s report on the Millenium Cohort Study, a survey of more than 15,000 children born in the first two years of the decade, lists many interesting findings about younger and older parents. Older parents are generally better educated and wealthier. We spend more time reading to our children. We have better routines (some of us, not me, are more likely to read and to follow the queen of routine-parenting Gina Ford). Apparently we feed our children breakfast and avoid obesity. Children of older parents do better at school too.

All this is good news, but I still think being younger and more energetic would benefit my children in other ways. Their offspring would have a hearing, seeing and living grandmother.