Hilary Swank is 52 and is expecting her third child.
She shared the news on The Drew Barrymore Show, and it came with comments about her age. She’s already a mother to the twins Aya and Ohm, who were born in April 2023, when she was 48. During the conversation, she recalled a woman telling her she was too old to raise children.
Her response wasn’t a technical defense or an argument about statistics. It was more intimate. Hilary lost her own father when she was a young adult, and ever since then she’s understood the value of that bond. She’d rather have had the chance to experience it, even if time isn’t infinite, than never have known it at all.
Drew Barrymore backed her up with an observation that left the room silent: men can have children at 80 and no one reproaches them, but she also received unkind comments when she became a mother at 40.
Perhaps that’s the underlying question: why is the same decision celebrated in some and questioned in others?