Opinion of people having children when they are past middle age?

[angus]

I have no problem with old men and women having children.  Those I have known have been generally good parents.  Also, there are distinct economic and social advantages that the child will enjoy if you wait till you're older when you have children.  Moreover, the argument about a child born to young parents having parents when he's in his 20s doesn't really hold.  For example, by the time I was in my second year of grad school I was an orphan even though my parents were only 27 and 30 when I was born.  One cannot predict the year of one's death.  Waiting until later in life to have children also eases the global population burden.  At least if everyone does it.  

It is not a certainty that children born to older parents are less healthy in general.  You point out an in increase in the likelihood certain chromosomal disorders in children born to older mothers, but these problems are not encountered by most women in this age range (1 in 100 is very small!)  The CDC also has reported that older mothers are 40 percent less likely to have babies with major congenital malformations.  

Recently the Max Planck Institute studied 1.5 million Swedish men and women born between 1960 and 1991. They found that people born to mothers over the age of 30, including mothers as old as 45, were taller and healthier, had more education, were more likely to attend college, and performed better on standardized tests than children born to mothers younger than 30.

There are many, many other benefits as well:  the marriages of older parents tend to be more stable, older parents of babies often are more experienced with children than younger ones, older parents are relaxed, appreciative, and communicate in a mature manner with their children, etc.

I think you will have a hard time convincing me that the advantages to the child of having young parents outweigh the disadvantages.