At age 42, Charlotte Standish is one of the oldest parents in her daughter's kindergarten class and about five years older than any of the parents at her 2-year-old's daycare center. And in June, she will most likely be the oldest mom in the delivery ward when her baby boy is born.

Like a growing number of women, Standish chose to delay parenting until later in life when she was "more settled."

"Spending my 20s as a single person helped me to 'get to know myself,' go to school and work," says Standish, who works part time as an office administrator. "My husband and I didn't meet until I was 30 and he was 31. [He] was in graduate school until he was 35 so we started out late in terms of having much money to buy a house and other things."

Material things aside, many midlife moms feel they have acquired valuable life experience that makes them particularly good parents.

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