Flowers in the attic, anyone?

June 21, 2001 12:02 AM

Flowers in the attic, anyone? "A 62-year-old woman who last month became France's oldest mother has revealed that her brother was the biological father of the baby."
posted by lia (16 comments total)

It was kind of the BBC to include that visual graphic thingy explaining exactly what happened, because I wasn't confused enough with just the headline.
posted by ZachsMind at 1:10 AM on June 21, 2001

I'm generally in favor of letting people do what they want with their own bodies but a 62 year old woman having her brother's baby and raising it with him is just too weird. No analysis here. No attempt to advance a solution. I just want to say that this is too strange.
posted by rdr at 2:02 AM on June 21, 2001

My take? Ewww.
posted by black8 at 2:25 AM on June 21, 2001

The details of this case have shocked French people.

Excellent, looks like we may be able to add to the MeFi demographics if this thread gets lots of 'I find this shocking' posts.....

I can't wait till tomorrow (or later 'today' for that 48%).
posted by davehat at 2:47 AM on June 21, 2001

Well, how is it weirder than a woman bearing her own grandchildren to term? They've done that with in vitro.

I'm not all that shocked. It isn't as if she had intercourse with him. Of course, I'm more or less committed to that vasectomy at this point, so maybe it doesn't matter what I think.
posted by Ezrael at 2:52 AM on June 21, 2001

Actually, now that I think about it, the most popular sitcom in America had a whole subplot about a woman giving birth to her brother's triplets.
posted by Ezrael at 2:53 AM on June 21, 2001

If you can't keep it in your pants, at least keep it in the family.

(Hey, I'm from Indiana. That's how it works here)
posted by ttrendel at 2:55 AM on June 21, 2001

What about her age? Having children this late in her life, to raise herself, is the height of selfishness and irresponsibility. She's 62! By the time the children are entering high school, she'll be dead! Worse, she may be suffering from Alzheimer's, just plain senile, bed-ridden or incapacitated some other way.

Unbelievable what people think is ok to do, just because they can.
posted by Spanktacular at 3:30 AM on June 21, 2001

I'm not terribly shocked about the brother part. She's not the biological mother, and she wanted to have a kid with some of her genetic makeup, so why not use her brother as donor?
Her age, though....
posted by hazyjane at 3:32 AM on June 21, 2001

I do love that graphic... I had no idea that women came from eggs, and can transform into turtles, ...them merge back together and form Wombzilla!
posted by aki at 4:04 AM on June 21, 2001

That is one spooky Gamera-esque graphic. I will gladly concede that.

And as to her age...well, a lot of kids are raised by their grandparents. Yes, it was selfish, but if we stop allowing people to have children for selfish reasons, we would be stopping a whole lot of people from having children. Maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't, I couldn't say.
posted by Ezrael at 4:13 AM on June 21, 2001

HAHAHAHAHAH

Good one aki

Basic surrogate mother here. Someone else's eggs, brothers sperm, in vitro. The age factor is really the problem. Spanktacular hits it home. I think they are a bit too old to properly be raising children. The woman will be 70 with an 8 year old. Not too mention the teenage years. Good luck to them!
posted by a3matrix at 4:15 AM on June 21, 2001

Forgive the "pat on the back" post, but aki-- you slay me. *dies*

And just to make this post legit in some manner or other-- why, I'm even more shocked by this than the French! How could something like this have happened!?

Guess that's the kind of thing that slips under the radar when you're busily tsk-tsking at other countries over capital punishment. *whistles*
posted by precocious at 4:24 AM on June 21, 2001

Thank you Aki. The graphic makes perfect sense now.

This link reminds me of that weird sign that I see every time I go to the Dallas Zoo. See it's actually a wall mural. On the wall are several pictures of near extinct species, and how few there are left and where they're located on the planet. Then above it all is a marquee sign that has emblazoned in large red LCD lights just how many human beings there are on this planet. Last I checked the number was over six million.

And the number continuously increases as you stare at it. They add one number to it every 1.5 seconds. On the average, that's how often a baby is born somewhere on Earth. One whining crying babies is pull from some woman's womb every second and a half. Amazing.

So gee, in order to keep that big display of human beings skyrocketing into the stratosphere, we need women like "a retired teacher from Frejus in the south of France." If only there were more like her. We haven't converted all those pesky rain forests into parking lots for condominiums yet.
posted by ZachsMind at 6:13 AM on June 21, 2001

Oops: scratch million. I meant to say Six Billion. My mistake.
posted by ZachsMind at 6:24 AM on June 21, 2001

My favorite part of the story is in this article

She says "I may be 62 and my brother 52, but we are better able to bring up the children than a couple of drug addicts with a kid who are living off welfare. Why judge us and not them?''

Oh, and yet there's this small factor: Jeanine revealed on Wednesday that the children's father was her brother Robert, who has been blind, facially disfigured and partially paralyzed since he put a shotgun to his face and tried to kill himself in 1992.

Anyone else see a problem?
posted by witchstone at 1:12 PM on June 21, 2001