Olivia was born when I was 38, and Audrey arrived just before I turned 41. That makes me a little young for this crowd, but I can still relate.
Paul McCartney had a baby when he was well past 50. So did Rupert Murdoch, Larry King, Cary Grant, Tony Randall, David Letterman and Dr. Michael DeBakey. Writer Cormac McCarthy has said he wouldn’t have written The Road, the novel that won the Pulitzer Prize, if he hadn’t been inspired by the son he had late in life. Older parenthood “wrenches you up and out of your nap,” he told Oprah Winfrey.
Overwhelmingly, making babies is the work of younger men. The National Center for Health Statistics reports just 2.7 live births per 1,000 men 50 and older, compared with 104.9 for men 25-29. The norm is that young people grow up, marry partners close to their own age, have children and then grandchildren.
I became a father at the right time for me to become a father. I’m pretty good at it, if I do say so myself, in a way that I don’t think I’d have been when I was younger and more of a knucklehead. Sure, I worry that my daughters won’t know their ancestry as well as I do mine, but that’s just how it is. No such thing as a do-over in this life, so you make what you can out of what you’ve got. I’d say we’re ahead on balance.
Dr. Steven Mintz, a history professor and director of the American cultures program at the University of Houston, says older fathers make some adults uneasy. They don’t like men more interested in personal growth than growing up.
“We tend to be a judgmental society, and we want people to act pretty much according to our proper calendar,” Mintz says.
“We’re living through kind of a revolution in adulthood, and no one is quite sure how it will play out. … It seems the rules have broken down.”
I call that a feature, not a bug. We could stand to have a few more of those rules break down, if you ask me.
Happy Father’s Day, from my family to yours.