OpinionRAISING THEM RIGHT
Women shouldn’t face a double standard for having children later in life, but celebrity pregnancies can create unrealistic expectations about parenting when you’re older.
Niamh O'Reilly
TWO-TIME OSCAR-WINNING actress Hilary Swank recently revealed that she is pregnant with her third child at the age of 52, and I say absolutely fair play to her.
She’s a fit and healthy woman who, having already given birth to twins when she was 48, is firmly in her mum era and seems to be clearly loving it.
But in the same breath, I also found myself saying, “Thank God that’s not me.” In fact, I would go so far as to say that I would rather pluck my eyes out with a rusty spoon than find myself pregnant again in 10 years’ time.
That’s not a criticism of her choice in any way. While ‘going again’ for the third time in 10 years’ time is definitely not on my bingo card, that doesn’t mean I don’t absolutely respect her decision, and if I’m honest, admire her for taking it on because motherhood at any age is full on.
The predictable negative commentary from those telling her she’s “too old” to have a baby, or that she’ll be the oldest mum at the school gates, as well as the “does she not realise she will be 72 when her child is 20” brigade, is just boring and reductive.
One rule for men…
None of them would bat an eyelid if a male celebrity announced fatherhood at 52. Who had anything negative to say about George Clooney becoming a dad for the first time at 56? If anything, he was lauded for waiting until he ‘felt ready’ to be a father. Women don’t get afforded that luxury; indeed, Swank has already come out to address the predictable slew of internet haters.
“There’s a lot of backlash women get for having children older but not men, which is interesting,” she told Drew Barrymore in a recent episode of her talk show. Swank recalled how one woman said to her, ‘How dare you. You’re too old! My dad was my favourite person, and he died when I was in my 20s, and it’s just devastation,” she explained about the criticism. “And I thought to myself, ‘Well, I would rather be born and have that person that was my favourite person and experience that than not at all,” the Million Dollar Baby star argued.
And I mean, she’s right, isn’t she? Any of us could get hit by a bus in the morning, so does it really matter that she’s having a baby at 52? Being in your 50s is not exactly like being inducted into the Golden Girls these days, is it? And it’s a far cry from the likes of men such as Robert De Niro and Al Pacino deciding it’s cool to father babies at 79 and 83, respectively.
The truth is that for a whole host of reasons, around career, finances, housing and lifestyle choices, women are having babies later than they used to, and it’s time we started to change how we view motherhood and age. Swank is not the only celebrity to announce a pregnancy in their 40s and 50s lately. If anything, it’s a bona fide Hollywood trend. Sienna Miller recently had her third child at 44. Natalie Portman had her third at 45. Cameron Diaz had her third child at 53. Laura Linney had her first at 49, while Janet Jackson had her first at 50.
Changing faces of pregnancy
The list goes on. It’s not just in Tinseltown either. The Central Statistics Office (CSO), reported that almost 40pc of babies born in Ireland in 2025 were born to mothers aged 35 or over, which, according to the medical profession, classifies a woman as a ‘geriatric pregnancy’ or of ‘advanced maternal age’. Both terms need to be put in the bin, immediately. In 2023, the CSO found there was a record number of 408 babies born to women aged 45 and over, an increase of around 81%, on the figure a decade previous in 2013.
Having done it and knowing all it entails, I take my hat off to them, but I honestly don’t think I’d have the energy or the willpower to revisit the journey down the nappy times in my 50s. But I’m not Hilary Swank, though, who was a former Junior Olympics swimmer and in her youth a US state-ranked gymnast. She’s clearly a super fit woman, who also happens to be a wealthy Hollywood star with lots of resources at her disposal, so it’s hard to compare our circumstances. However, motherhood at 52 might look significantly different for a woman or couple without that particular set of circumstances behind them.
The elephant in the room is not so much that women are getting pregnant at 52 or beyond; it’s the unrealistic expectation it lays down for younger women and their fertility. Getting pregnant naturally in your late 40s or early 50s is not impossible; it happens, but it is not the norm. If women in their 20s and 30s assume they can just wait until they are 52 to get pregnant naturally, with no complications or issues, then the truth is most will be left bitterly disappointed, as these occurrences are on the rarer end of the spectrum.
The reality of many situations like Swanks and the glut of other celebrity pregnancies like them is that some form of assisted reproduction plays a role. Again, there should be no issue with someone wanting to do that, and it’s not really anyone’s business, but the reality is, when someone announces a pregnancy at 52, people will wonder. And when you get hundreds of women in their late 40s and early 50s who are trying to conceive, commenting on Swank’s pregnancy announcement that it gives them hope, you have to question the legitimacy of that hope.
With IVF costing anywhere between €4,500 and €5,900 per cycle in Ireland, with one free round of publicly funded IVF or ICSI available only to those who meet strict medical and eligibility criteria, chasing the dream of having a baby in your late 40s or early 50s is a one that will remain out of reach for the many of women or couples wanting to emulate Swank’s good news.
Niamh O’Reilly is a mum and parenting columnist with TheJournal.ie.