Fathers of a Certain Age

Book excerpt: As patterns of family and work have changed over the last few decades, the decision to have children has often been delayed. Recent Census data show that more and more men in their forties and fifties are having children - either for the first time or in second families. In Fathers of a Certain Age, father and son Martin and David Carnoy interview dozens of these fathers, exploring how they feel about parenting small children in late middle age. As they talk with fathers from all over the country, and with their wives and children as well, the Carnoys ask questions at the heart of the issues. Do older fathers, secure in their careers and ready to make time for family, make better fathers? Or is parenting, with the energy and stamina it requires, best left to the young? Is the threat of an older father dying earlier in a child's life more or less valid than the threat that a younger father will be divorced from the child's mother and leave the family? Is an older father, more stable financially, better able to provide for a child? Or does he risk trying to finance his retirement and a college education at the same time? The answers to these questions - searching, honest, and sometimes surprising - are combined here with an examination of the social and economic pressures facing older fathers, and the personal adjustments that they and their families must make. The result is an evenhanded assessment of the challenges and rewards of older fathering that will reassure anyone contemplating or coping with having children in late middle age.