Older Dads
I’m not obsessed with the love life of Nicolas Sarkozy. It’s just that I can’t avoid it. Even while holidaying overseas and devoid of the usual news infiltration, I still managed to hear about it. I also heard about Benazir Bhutto’s assassination (in an airport lounge in Denver), Britney Spears’ meltdown, Hilary’s tears, and that something went down at the cricket in Australia. All that and that, just five months after divorcing his wife who declared politics bores her, the French President is dating a former model who’s sporting an identical engagement ring (Dior sapphire) to his former wife. Then days later, the bombshell (discovered on-line in an internet café): Carla Bruni is pregnant.
America seems gripped by the story giving it almost as much air time as Britney, which is saying something, and rivaling their own Presidential Primaries. I was troubled by the news and not just because Sarkozy seems to have moved on so hastily (rebound, anyone?) nor that his new love has also dated Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger and Donald Trump (fame junkie anyone?) but because, at 52 he’s becoming a dad. Again.
I’m not happy for him and not just because I don’t know him. It’s just I fear he’ll become yet another role model to blokes the world over putting off childbirth as long as they can because, well, they can.
Male friends of mine in their late 30s show no signs of the angst of their female peers because of men like Sarkozy, bragging they have all the time in the world. Point one, they don’t necessarily. Point two, so long as they think that they’re limiting the options for women by running on a different time line. Sociologists call them ‘delayers’. How about avoiders?
Sarkozy’s not alone. Delaying fatherhood is a worldwide trend with the average age of first time dads at a record 33.1 in Australia and the number of men in their 50s having children up by around 20% in the past decade.
John Mangos, my co-host at Sky News, is a delayer (not an avoider) having just had his first baby at 50. He would’ve done it sooner, he says, given the opportunity, but to breed with the wrong person would’ve been worse than not to breed at all. ‘It’s a depth of love that doesn’t exist until you’ve looked into the face of your offspring’, he gushes, quoting poetry about immortality. John is pragmatic about the downsides of being an older dad – that he may not see his son marry, may never be a grandparent, and his knees aren’t what they used to be but it’s all worth it for this moment. Age brings patience, he points out, and more free time, and parenthood is incentive to stay youthful. ‘It’s true that fatherhood changes your life but it’s way beyond the superficial things like no sleep. You reassess your whole reason for being. Any ounce of selfishness just evaporates.’
There’s still an innate retro inclination among many men that they must be a good provider before they can even think of bringing a child into the world. They don’t feel worthy unless they’ve established their career, own their own home and can pay the school fees. And that takes time.
It doesn’t seem fair, does it, that men are blessed with such a luxury (time) and women aren’t, just by a sheer trick of nature? Here’s the good news, of sorts: With marriages lasting an average 12.1 years, that means more divorced men, and divorced men are statistically more likely to remarry and procreate much more readily than first timers creating a whole new market for aspiring mothers. Perhaps the solution is to bypass men the same age and aim upwards. Yesterday’s avoiders are today’s hands-on-dads with career trajectories, partying ways and bad women a thing of the past. So what if they’re a little slow on the uptake?