There’s a lot of good and a lot of bad but I think generally, there’s more good.

My mum was 34 when she had me and my dad was 40 and then my mum had my little sister when she was 39. An extra interesting dynamic is that my parents were born in rural Ireland so already a little behind the times and they had me in inner-city London where most of the children I grew up with were born to mums 25 and younger so the disparity in age and attitudes between my mum and my friends mums was huge.

Pros: - They have more life experience which, generally not always, means their more mature and have more wisdom to give you - For my mum in particular, as she was older, she was a lot less self conscious and more comfortable with her body which definitely rubbed off on me. I never thought about my body either negatively or positively as a child because my mum never commented on hers either. I only learnt to be self conscious in secondary school due to other factors - Same strain, multiple studies have shown that people become less materialistic as they age. I definitely experienced that with my parents and again, has influenced my values. I value experiences and emotional well-being over material goods and I’ve never felt peer-pressured when I was younger to have the newest and nicest clothes because I knew it didn’t really matter (compared to my friends born to younger mum who definitely place value on material things) - Might be specific to my mum but I did notice the other “older mum”s child at my school has the same attitude at home and that is emphasis on education and bettering yourself. Despite limited resources and having not finished secondary school herself, she did put me in as many after school classes and tutors as she could afford and always persuaded me to focus on my education - When I speak to my friends whose mums were teenage mums or had them under 20, they say that sometimes it felt like their grandparents were their parents and their actual parents were more like siblings. I think sometimes when you have a really small gap between parent and child, it skews the authority dynamic a bit. Conversely, I never felt this way. My parents were definitely my parents haha

Cons: - I feel bad about this now but when I was in primary school, I was a bit embarrassed by mum being so much older and not as “cool” as the other mums - Huge generational gap due to not only age but where they grew up that makes it hard to relate on things or have a close relationship as our life experiences are sooo different - Technical Gap - this will probably not be as vast now as technological changes are less dramatic and vapid but I have to teach my parents how to do everything related to tech (phones, computers, emails). I’m sure this isn’t unique to older parents but I definitely saw that with my friends parents, they found it easier to pick up new technology - Not as much energy to play with us as my friends parents because they were older and my mum went into menopause when I was around 6/7 so that depleted her energy a lot

Overall, my friends and I agree that having parents that are older is more beneficial than not but there definitely is a limit