28 July, 2012

More people are putting off parenthood. What will that mean for their kids? - The Washington Post

More people are putting off parenthood. What will that mean for their kids? - The Washington Post: The irony is that when you have a child at 45, you’re ensuring that your children will grow up faster than you ever had to. It guarantees that your kids will have a little less of the freedom you enjoyed because they’ll be taking care of you a little earlier. Having an older father means I don’t feel right leaving New York or turning off my cellphone for three days. I push away fantasies of pressing the reset button on my life and moving far away. Even if my dad were in Olympian shape, I still wouldn’t want to squander my last decade with him living thousands of miles apart. Losing my mother in my formative years was gut-wrenching, and all of my grandparents had died by the time I turned 25. (My father, whose mother had him at 19, didn’t begin this parental caretaking process until he was in his early 60s.)

It’s one thing to decide to have children late or not at all. It’s another thing to feel that you have no other choice.