DATE: Friday, May 2, 1997                   TAG: 9705020011

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Keith Monroe 
                                            LENGTH:   82 lines

WHEN YOUR MOMMY IS A GRANNY, THINGS ARE CREEPYWHO WANTS A CHILD'S CAREGIVER TO HAVE A TUBE UP THE NOSE AND AN IV IN THE ARM? INSTEAD OF A TRIP TO MCDONALD'S, HOW ABOUT A VISIT FROM MEALS ON WHEELS?

Fans of the grotesque got a new poster girl last week, a 63-year-old California woman (where else?) who had herself artificially impregnated and gave birth. Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is now stranger than the National Enquirer.

A number of rational people were made queasy by the idea of this ancient mother. But supporters were quick to claim a double standard was operating. They said that when 77-year-old Tony Randall or other wizened men became fathers belatedly it was regarded as cute, but when a 63-year-old woman became a mother it was denounced as unnatural.

As a public service, I am prepared to demolish the double standard in this instance. Anyone over 40, no matter their gender, who has a child is of questionable sanity. Anyone over 60 who becomes a parent should have a net thrown over them.

Ethicists worry that if medical science helps women in their 60s to get pregnant it isn't creating mothers, it is creating orphans. Good point.

Tony Randall appears to be bearing up remarkably well for someone who, according to the actuarial tables, should be dead. But how long can this go on? Assume he expires at 85. His child will be just 8.

And if the last years for parents coincide with the first years for children, the picture of family life that emerges is creepy. Is it really doing a toddler a favor if Daddy and Mommy, who are supposed to be teaching him to talk, are also babbling incoherently? Who wants a child's caregiver to have a tube up the nose and an IV in the arm? Instead of outings to the zoo, how about a fun day at chemotherapy?

And if oldster parents aren't as well off as the Tony Randalls, who will pay for the upkeep of the kids after the parents go on life support? Social Security wasn't designed to pay for the infant offspring of senior citizens. Having children assumes a breadwinner will be around for the next 20 years or so, toiling ceaselessly to buy Barbies, CDs and nose rings.

In part, we may be witnessing the latest eruption of Frankenstein science - the itch to do whatever can be done no matter how bad an idea. Hydrogen bombs, sexagenarian moms, voice mail, leaf blowers, talking toys.

But there's also a hint of the kind of blithe hubris that made the 1960s such a mixed blessing. It was sometimes asserted then that all social conventions and restraints were simply artificial nonsense imposed by the fuddyduddy dead hand of the past. Get rid of them. Tune in, Turn on, Drop out, Do your own thing.

But it turned out that there's no such thing as a free lunch. And free love comes with a price as well. Marriage turned out to have its uses as the epidemic of out-of-wedlock births has amply proved. And meddling with the natural order of things can have unforeseen consequences.

There are obvious, practical reasons, for instance, why humans are encouraged by tradition and hormones to spawn in their teens and 20s and to have grandchildren in their 40s and 50s. So the kids will have parents and grandparents who aren't too enfeebled to perform the appropriate duties.

Having kids is exhausting. Having them late in life can be terminal. Not to mention hopelessly confusing. If you have children in middle age, as so many of my boomer generation did, when you are planning retirement you find yourself planning for their college. Grandparents, on what is supposed to be a relaxing cruise into the sunset, are shocked to discover mewling and puking grandchildren underfoot. And just when you're getting the kids out of diapers, you're getting your parents into them.

That's bad enough, but having your own kids in your 60s could mean that you can share diapers with them. It also means the kids will never have grandparents. And, for kids, those are an extremely useful alternative to a steady diet of mom and dad. Having kids when you are a codger could also mean that if you can bestir yourself to roughhouse with the little nippers or shoot some hoops, you risk hip surgery. On the upside, you may be too deaf to hear their vile music.

Clearly, the idea of old crocks having young sprouts is absurd - a bizarre stunt, a triumph of hope and vanity over realism and sanity. Luckily, it's bound to be self-limiting. There may be a few nut cases and media hounds willing to do anything to make the pages of Guinness, but how many of your 60-year-old acquaintances would be anxious to start the whole family thing up at a time in life when the natural preoccupations are perfecting the putting game, collecting Social Security and picking out a nice cemetery plot? Not many. MEMO: Mr. Monroe is editor of the editorial page of The Virginian-Pilot.

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