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

## TL;DR

This study explores how people define good parenthood for parents over 40, finding that personality matters more than age.

## Contribution

The study challenges the emphasis on parental age in determining good parenthood, highlighting the role of personal qualities and family context.

## Key findings

- Participants emphasized that good parenthood is defined by personality and context, not age.
- Three themes emerged: defining parenthood, family context, and conscious adaptation.
- Results suggest that parental age should not be the sole factor in MAR decisions.

## Abstract

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.

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.

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.

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.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12910-025-01259-5.