My grandmother was actually 46 when my mother was born in 1915.
--
Robin August, Ph.D.
MODERATOR NOTE: This is the end of this thread

On an 1888 passenger manifest 7 children’s ages were lowered by 3 years to get a lower fare for all.  My grandfather became a one year female which was as low an age that he could go.

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Diane Jacobs, Somerset, New Jersey

While it is possible, be aware that for various reasons children sometimes misreported their ages to appear younger. If a 15 year old told a ship they were 8 to get a lower fare, their mother would appear to have been 7 years older when she gave birth. I'm not saying this happened in your case but it is something to take into account.

Frank M. Cook
fcook@...

My mother was 45 years old when I was born in 1950. I am the youngest of six children.

Michael Israel

I have a sister-in-law here who became pregnant at age 46, without aiming to. So a birth at 45 years old is certainly possible.

I think (at least here in the US) that we hear news stories about women over 40 who have difficulty conceiving. But of course, we don't hear news stories for those women who don't have these difficulties and who are able to conceive.

On a related note - I once knew a Jewish social worker, who told me that back in the 1950s in the US, it was considered dangerous for a woman over 30 to give birth, which was why so many women hurried to get married and have children. Boy, that would have been news to our great grandmothers.
--
Michele Lock

Lak/Lok/Liak/Lock and Kalon/Kolon in Zagare/Joniskis/Gruzdziai, Lithuania
Lak/Lok/Liak/Lock in Plunge/Telsiai in Lithuania
Rabinowitz in Papile, Lithuania and Riga, Latvia
Trisinsky/Trushinsky/Sturisky and Leybman in Dotnuva, Lithuania
Olitsky in Alytus, Suwalki, Poland/Lithuania
Gutman/Goodman in Czestochowa, Poland
Lavine/Lev/Lew in Trenton, New Jersey and Lida/Vilna gub., Belarus

Just FYI, yes, there are a finite number of eggs, but it is way more than will ever be ovulated. A woman is born with about a million eggs, and is down to around 300,000 at puberty. One per month times perhaps 40 years of fertility would only use about 480 of these, so there are plenty left in normal circumstances whether or not she was pregnant. Menopause stops the eggs from ripening, due to hormonal changes rather than the hormonal changes occurring because there are no eggs left. Here is a link: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/9118-female-reproductive-system#:~:text=During%20fetal%20development%2C%20you%20have,age%20and%20menstruate%20each%20cycle.

Marijke Bekken, Reno, NV

My mother was 44 years of age when my youngest brother was born in 1952.

Michael Hoffman

Borehamwood,
HERTS, UK

--"change of life" babies are a known thing (called that because it happens when the woman thinks she is in menopause but isnt quite done yet) and there would be women who had later menopause. 


Susan Watchman
Phoenix, Az

Yes, my great grandmother had twelve known children (her eldest son claims she had 14 - but I have not found the other two, one may have been born and died on the boat when migrating), one in Rajgrod in Poland in 1865 (when she was about 20 years old) and the other eleven in Hull, UK between 1870 and 1895, when she would have been 50 years old. 

Large families meant they started young and finished late. She was still having children at the same time as her eldest daughter (b 1865) was having her own children. My grandmother was 10th out of 12 (or 12th out of 14) and she was born in 1887, two years before her eldest aunt married and started having children herself. My great grandmother had her last child at the same time as her daughter was having her third child.  

This situation was repeated with my great grandmother's much younger sister (by 20 years!) - she also had 12 children, all in Hull, over a similar sort of time frame of 25 to 30 years. 

Jill Whitehead, Surrey, UK

The record for a natural pregnancy (conception via the normal method, not IVF) is age 59 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1562591/Worlds-oldest-mother-thought-it-was-cancer.html
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Stephen Weinstein
Camarillo, California, USA
stephenweinstein@...

I know more than one person who gave birth after age 40 and even closer to 50. My mother-in-law had 9 children. My husband was third from last. His eldest sister and eldest brother were adults when he was born, meaning his mother was at least 40. Two more sons were born several years apart after him, making her closer to 50 by the last one. The last one was born in the early 1940s. 

A childhood friend's mother was about 50 when my friend was born in 1947. There were two adult siblings in their 20s at that time. 

I suspect that many Chasidic women also give birth into their 40s and even late 40s. I know one who had 2 school age children and after a hiatus of at least six years, gave birth in quick succession to several more children, the last ones being after she was 40. 
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Barbara Sloan
Conway, SC

My great-grandmother was 43 when her youngest son, my grandfather, was born in 1903. She had had 12 children born over a 25 year period.  There's no question at all about her age.
Janette Silverman
Phoenix, AZ & Santa Fe, NM

I have one cousin who was born in 1939 when her mother was about 44. Although my cousin refuses to believe it, I have found all the records on her mother from her arrival manifest and most census and marriage records. Her mother got progressively younger at each step! Arrival in 1900, age 5; 1905 census, age 10; 1910, age 15; 1915 census, age 17 (lost 3 years!); 1936 marriage, age 29 (lost 12 years!!!)

More recently, my ex gave birth to her latest daughter at the age of 45.
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Jeff Goldner
Researching Goldner, Singer, Neuman, Braun, Schwartz, Gluck, Reichfeld (Hungary/Slovakia); Adler, Roth, Ader (Galicia); Soltz/Shultz/Zuckerman/Zicherman (Vitebsk, maybe Lithuania), Wald and Grunfeld (Secovce, Slovakia fka Galszecs)

It is definitely possible.
My father was born in 1922 when his mother was 48. His 5 older siblings were all born 2-3 years apart followed by a gap of 8 years until he was born. If I saw this in the record I probably would have been skeptical, but I knew all of these people when they were alive and a confident in the data.
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David Bernstein

Possible.  But information in the records can also become distorted (whether inadvertently or intentionally).

My grandfather's official birthdate is six months before the official birthdate of his older sister (same parents).


-- Ken Ryesky
Petach Tikva, ISRAEL

On Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 03:03 AM, Miriam Deutscher wrote:

Why not?

I personally know someone born to their mother when she was 47 about 60-70 years ago. And a woman who had a child at the age of 48 when she already had many children. I.e. naturally and not the result of modern fertility treatments.

Miriam Deutscher

Definitely likely. The women had large families until they couldn't have more. It is very common in Chassidic or Agudah families and was very common in Europe. Feigie Teichman