The rising global population of women starting families after the age of forty is a living testament to accelerated growth in our biological potential—an ever-increasing life expectancy, fueled by the burgeoning powerhouse of scientific discovery in fertility medicine.
Back in the 1950’s, an average American woman’s life expectancy at birth was about seventy. Now, she can expect to live into her eighties. In fact, the last century has shown that we are required to raise the bar on the definition of midlife every few decades.
In the late 1970’s, we were fascinated by a medical breakthrough—the world’s first test tube baby. In the new millennium, in vitro (meaning, “in glass”) has become common parlance, and a woman can now choose to freeze her eggs early on in case Mr. Right turns up late for dinner.
From Pakistan to Poughkeepsie, women are now embracing midlife motherhood in unprecedented droves. And the choice of when and how is available on a sliding scare hitherto virtually unknown.
On the one hand, it is a neo-women’s liberation—this time, a painstaking squirm out of the tight-fisted grip of Mother Nature. On the other, the unhinging of a mythical Pandora’s Box.
This is the dawning of the age of Midlife Motherhood where mature women must grapple with the chimera of creation of new life versus encroachment of old age, all in the same body.
In the rise of granny-moms (mid-lifers giving birth and then raising children), this struggle has pioneered a new brand of maternal enlightenment. It is one that leads, inevitably, to a renaissance in our mother archetype as the fresh, ripe fullness of new motherhood is now fused with the rich wisdom of the old crone.
Welcome to the home of Flower Power Mom—a forum for women who gave birth after forty—where the truth about midlife motherhood is revealed.
And, if laughter truly is the best medicine, please join us on an adventure in search of a pound of cure for that ounce of modern invention that lead us to where (until now) only a few women had gone before—midlife motherhood.