Can older parents, over 55 years of age, raise young children satisfactorily

Having experienced loss and grief, like most people of my age, I’ve got life in perspective and that is something that is, I think, getting passed onto my girls. I have nothing to prove any more, I constantly make mistakes, but hey, that’s human, so I feel my kids are picking all this up and certainly seem more relaxed about things than their friends. If used wisely, life brings experience and learning. Having an older parent gives children the chance to frame that at an earlier age than those with younger parents.
I think the other issue, is that as an older parent I really appreciate what my children have brought to my life - after experiencing loneliness and the many struggles that life has sent my way, I see them clearly as special little people who are now with me and nothing has ever felt as good. So yes, I think we older parents can do just OK with it all.

My husband was just shy of 60 and I was nearly 45 when we had our only son. We were in a situation where we could devote our time, attention, and a reasonable amount of money to ensure our son enjoyed growing up. Neither Warren or I felt ready to have a child when we first married … we waited 20 years. Even then, we didn’t plan it out.
Some younger parents might feel constrained with staying home or the commitment to find a babysitter if you wanted to go out. We’d BEEN out! It’s not that we never went to dinner or the theater again, but we seriously found raising our son to be fun and enjoyable. Our entire way of life changed; however, we grew together as a family. We certainly didn’t have to scrape together money to buy clothes or formula. Working on having other kids over to play was fun in itself. It didn’t detract from anything.
My husband was the older one and he thrived on being a dad. This brings up a negative … he just passed away and our son was 27 years old. I tried to let him know he was lucky in that his dad was able to devote so much time to him as a child. Warren was the stay at home dad. When Warren and I were young, our fathers worked 50–60 hours a week and so time with the children was a fraction of what Vincent enjoyed.
When we were younger and newly married, we traveled and if we felt like eating out, we just went. If we wanted to stay up all night and sleep until noon, we just did it. With children, your life changes … you’re up at 6–8 am and you need to plan meals and activities.
We didn’t care about the changes, we loved it!
I also know folks who struggle with finances. In our situation, we weren’t rich or even well off. Even so, we had enough money to ensure Vincent was well fed, clothed, and got to travel and enjoy various activities.
On the other hand, there are young parents who do just as well. It just depends on the individual family. I do believe that older parents can do a great job and younger parents are excellent, too. It’s all up to the individual family unit.

My husband and I met each other when I was 45 and he was 46. A year later we were married. This was our first marriage on both sides and neither of us had any children. One year later at the age of 47 I fell pregnant with my oldest daughter. This was a daunting period for me because I had to listen to all the old women’s tales about what a big mistake my pregnancy was. According to everyone’s advice there was no way that this baby was going to be normal and healthy. Older parents allegedly give birth to deformed children. I was assured that this baby would be born with Down Syndrome. My friends told me that it was very important to perform an amniocentesis to ascertain whether the baby was normal. If there were signs of abnormalities I was encouraged to abort the baby. I panicked and asked my gynecologist to perform the amniocentesis. He asked me who the doctor was? He flatly refused and told me that there was no risk. He delivered hundreds of thousands of babies and knew what he was doing. He was a very successful abd well known gynecologist. He asked me to trust him because the scan would show any irregularities if there was something wrong with the baby’s spine. The baby was normal and I was healthy. The only thing he warned me against was not to eat for two people and to limit my sugar intake. I carried the baby full term but the gynecologist decided to deliver the baby by Caesarean section two weeks before the due date. He said I was too old for natural birth abd that could possibly create complications should I lack the strength and energy to push. My healthy beautiful daughter was born. My husband was in the delivery room and I was totally exhausted and too too tired to take care of the baby initially. My husband was concerned that I may be depressed and rejecting the baby. Two days later I was able to breastfeed her. She loved being breastfed abd all my attempts to wean her from breastfeeding was unsuccessful. She was breastfed until I fell pregnant with my second baby who was born when I was 52 years old, and last baby was born when I was 57 years old. She was also a healthy baby born through Caesarean section abd breastfed until the age of three when she politely declined to continue being breastfed. Both of them were born on Saturday morning abd had the exact same measurements and weight.
Today I am an older parent, aged 72 and my husband is 73. We have these two daughters aged 19 and 23 and two sons aged 14 and 16. I believe that we wouldn’t have had the maturity level or financial means to raise them well had we been younger when they were born. By the time we had them, we were financially stable with good positions and education levels. We were able to assist them with school work and where we were unable to, we employed tutors to assist them. We were able to take them on numerous international excursions. They visited most countries with us during school vacations. They highly value these experiences because they feel it improved their cultural exposures. We were able to afford private schools and universities. Our eldest daughter is studying for her final year in medicine in Europe. God willing she will graduate in June 2020 as a medical doctor. Our youngest daughter who managed to complete a four year course in Accounting in three years will be graduating at a Californian university in May 2020. God willing she will complete her Masters Degree in Accounting as well as her CPA in 2021. We don’t think that we did a poor job in raising them. In fact they confirm that they will not be in a hurry to have children until they can give them the same lifestyle they enjoyed.