A 67-year-old woman in China gave birth to a baby girl on Monday, with the parents claiming to be the country’s oldest couple to conceive a baby naturally.
Zaozhuang city’s Maternity and Child Health Care Hospital told AFP that a woman surnamed Tian delivered a healthy baby girl by Caesarean section on Friday.
“The child was bestowed on the two of us by heaven,” Tian’s 68-year-old husband, surnamed Huang, told Chinese news site guancha.cn.
The birth of the child attracted a lot of criticism in the country which has had a long time ban on giving birth to more than one child. In 2016, the ban was lifted and authorities allowed couple to have two child.
After the news of 67-year-old woman came out, it drew criticism on China’s social media Weibo.
“The parents are too selfish,” one commenter wrote. “At their advanced age they have no ability to take care of a kid, and the pressure will be on the older siblings.”
“Poor child, he’s going to start taking care of his elderly parents by the time he’s 20,” wrote another.
Some even raised the point about the couple to be penalised as they have violated the rule of giving birth to more than two child.
As per the report by Economist Intelligence Unit, the age at which the average Chinese woman gives birth to her first child rose from 24.3 years in 2006 to 26.9 years in 2016.
The report further suggested that around 51 per cent of newborns in 2017 were second children as compared to around 40 per cent in 2016.
The two-child policy in China has had a smaller effect on the birth count in the country. It has promoted more older woman to consider having second children.