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. 2025 Jul 11;26(1):95.
doi: 10.1186/s12910-025-01259-5.

"Age independent, but person dependent": a Swiss interview-based study on the meaning of good parenthood at an advanced parental age

Nathalie Bettina Neeser  1 , Andrea Martani  2 , Veerle Provoost  3 , Guido Pennings  3 , Bernice Simone Elger  2   4 , Christian De Geyter  5 , Nicolas Vulliemoz  6 , Tenzin Wangmo  2
Affiliations

"Age independent, but person dependent": a Swiss interview-based study on the meaning of good parenthood at an advanced parental age

Nathalie Bettina Neeser et al. BMC Med Ethics. .

Abstract

Background: Child welfare is one of the most important topics when it comes to parenting competence and the definition of good parenthood. This is widely discussed, especially in the context of treatment considerations for medically assisted reproduction (MAR) for patients of Advanced Parental Age (APA, here defined as 40 years and older). The aim of this study is to contribute to the exploration of how different stakeholders in this context envision the concept of good parenthood.

Methods: An explorative semi-structured interview study was conducted with a total of 15 healthcare providers, 12 aspiring APA-parents, 21 APA-parents and 20 adult offspring of APA-parents.

Results: After thematic analysis, results show that although the connecting focal point among participant groups is reproductive age, participants consistently emphasized that APA is not a determining factor to define a "good" parent. Instead, we identified three themes representing participants' views on this topic: (i) the difficulties in defining good parenthood; (ii) the family structure and context as inherent to parenting quality; and (iii) good parents as conscious adapters.

Conclusions: Participants expressed their views that good parenthood depends on the personality of the parent, rather than on one single characteristic of a parent, such as age. Our results challenge the focus on a singular parental characteristic in safeguarding the welfare of future children and therefore also the role currently attributed to parental age in decisions about access to MAR.

Keywords: Advanced parental age; Ageing; Child welfare; Ethics; Parenthood; Qualitative methods.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: This study was approved by the ethics commission Nordwest- und Zentralschweiz (EKNZ, BASEC-Nr. 2021–01429). All study participants provided written informed consent before participating in the study. The research was carried out in accordance with the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki. Consent for publication: Not applicable. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Thematic structure to define a good parent
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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