I always wanted children late; I had my first daughter at 39 and the second at 45.
As an older dad you can certainly get down on the floor. The problem is can you get up again?
My mother was 45 when she had me, so when I was in high school my parents were the same age as my friends' grandparents.
You cannot properly bring up children when you are 69 or 70 and they are 12 and at the height of their madness. You can physically do it, but I don't think it's morally justified.
A lot of older parents worry about being older parents. I hear people say, 'I don't want to be too old to play baseball with my son.' They worry that their kids will be embarrassed by their parents' age.
To have a child when you're older, it wrenches you up out of your nap and makes you look at things, you know, afresh. It forces the world on you. And I think it's a good thing.
My parents are older, and they lead a somewhat sheltered life. It was difficult to talk with them about things that were embarrassing to me, and that I had never spoken to them about.
On the average, older parents are more flexible, tolerant, understanding, and happy in child care.
My mother and my father have always supported me. Now in their eighties, they actually clamor onto the tour bus with me once or twice a year so they can watch the performances and hear the crowds. Traveling with eighty-something-year-olds on a tour bus... there has to be some sort of reality show in that.
I think I'm going to pull a Charlie Chaplin and have kids when I'm 60.
I was very sheltered, very bookish and, basically, skittish about life. My parents were both older when I came along and they didn't do things like take vacations.
My parents were older than normal when they had me, and had been very into the politics of the 1960s, so I was brought up in that atmosphere.
My husband was 50; I was in my late 30s. We had lived adulthoods that did not include infants, except as metaphors. And then, like so many in today's America, we had a baby in later life.
I had babies later in life, and it's harder for me. You don't realize how often you're picking them up, and then your back goes out. You need the energy.
Thank God I didn't have my children until I was a little bit older.
As America is growing older, there are more and more families caring for older parents and grandparents, and it's extremely expensive.
My last kids were born when I was in my forties, so I still had little kids around me, which gave me the illusion of feeling younger.
