The oldest natural birth I ever heard of happened back in the 1930s in a country town. A woman had a 'change of life' surprise at 54. From how my family spoke of it the little girl led a sad and lonely early life. Her 3 siblings by then were married, and gone elsewhere. Their children, the child's nieces and nephews were all much older than her. People were 'old' in their fifties then and some people addressed the woman as the girl's grandmother and would ask what happened to her 'mother' in 'error.'
Social structures were different then. It was also a somewhat strange and by no means 'normal' town. Donald Horne, who wrote 'The Lucky Country' was an adjoining neighbour of my grans'. He too was a strange child, but that's another story. He also wrote about the bigotry, social structure heirarchy, and general class driven viciousness in that town. His father was the school Head Master (from memory) so his mother was accepted into the fringes of 'high society', the Golf Club, but only as the lowest, tolerated, 'servant' to the established toffs of the town. It was Snobsville.
The girl's father was a shopkeeper, kind of low/middling class as that town operated. The girl though was largely shunned as a freak by all but the 'lower' miner and labourer classes kids (my rels) in school and was given hell by the better off kids. Her mother died when she was around 10-11 and she slaved for her drunken father until she was around 16 and then vanished from town. As did everyone else who could get out of it.
My Grandmother said her mother used to cry for her and rued the day she hadn't aborted her 'for her own sake.' A terrible story, but a fact of life in a different era. My Nana had a special soft spot for her being the youngest of 9 children herself and also born 'late,' in her mother's mid 40s. She referred to herself often as "the scrapings of the pot."
... and that had nothing much to do with the subject but as I have no kids, and learnt as little about childbearing as it was possible to avoid, it was the best I could do.
