The old (old!) man - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

You know in old movies - the ones in which the kids play stickball in the streets between trips to the malt shop - when they would refer to their mothers with a coarse, aggressive, “Mah!” and they would always call their fathers their old man? Well, let’s talk about the old fathers of the world.

 

This has been in the news as of late because storied actor Al Pacino is doing a big press tour for his new memoir. During this time, he has talked a lot about being the 84-year-old father of a 16-month-old. He and the child’s mother are no longer together, but he says they are co-parenting and that “it’s fun” to be a father at this age (he has three other grown children). The other two guys who have really been dinged for this recently are Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, who welcomed a son into the world in 2016 when Jagger was 73, and Pacino’s The Godfather: Part II co-star Robert De Niro who welcomed his most recent child last year when De Niro was 79.

 

So, let’s talk about old fathers. I consider myself to be an old father. At 42, I have two young children. We had the first when I was 38 and the second when I was 40. This is more common now than it was when I was a kid. Young people taking much, much longer to get established and get their feet under them well enough financially to even consider children, if they ever do, is a big factor, of course. 

 

I remember when I was a young boy and my mom talked to me about my friends’ mothers. She said they were all younger than her because she and my father waited so long to have children. My mom was in her late 20s when she had me and very early 30s when she had my sister. I know - scandalous!

 

With our first, Jess may have just snuck under the line, but for our second, she had what is called a “geriatric pregnancy” in women who are 35 and over. First, can we get a better name for this? It conjures up images of women squeezing in breastfeeding sessions between card games in the retirement community. Second, advancements in medical and scientific technology have made it possible for women to have children much later in life than they used to. Cost concerns aside, to butcher a famous line from Jurassic Park, just because we can have children later and later in life, does it mean that we should?
You can’t meet a bigger Al Pacino fan than I am, nor would it be wise for me to cross the man who played Michael Corleone, but what kind of fathering is my man doing at 84, really? Surely he’ll be able to afford nannies and young assistants who can help him change diapers and run around after the little guy, but it’s hard to envision much hands-on parenting. His would be more the role of a grandparent, you would think, spending some time with the little ones here and there.

 

In 2022, the life expectancy for an American man was just under 75 years, so Pacino has already blown through that checkpoint. I think the more relevant thought here is whether or not young Roman will grow up without a father in his life. Of course, there will always be buses that could run any of us over at any time, but this seems like almost a disservice to these young children, almost guaranteeing that, by the time they’re in high school or even earlier, they will grow up without a father.

 

It’s always fun to point the finger at the old guy having kids again with his much younger wife or girlfriend, especially in the tabloids and on entertainment news shows, but won’t someone think of the children? It’s the flip side of this coin that could lead to children missing out on life with a parent - a real shame.