It isn’t only the likes of Mick Jagger, Rupert Murdoch, and Al Pacino who are fathering children later in life. Six older fathers share the unexpected joys and pitfalls
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The first time Gary Jenkins became a father, in 1995, his priorities changed in an instant. “I was a sales director, on the crest of a wave,” he says. “Becoming a father seemed to complement the full set: the car, the house, the job, the good life.” Holding his new daughter, however, he realised that he had never truly loved anything until that moment. “Suddenly, here I was, plunged into something beyond words, beyond my comprehension.”
When, 21 years later, his second child, a son, was born, everything about that first experience came back to him: the sleepless nights, the nappy technique, the feeling that he had a new vantage point on “the circle of life”. But this time around, fatherhood felt more “visceral”, as he puts it. “The poignancy is much more real. I’m aware that I’m at the end of that loop as another life is coming into it. My time with my son feels much more limited and hence much more precious.”
The principal difference is that the first time he was in his mid-30s and living in Surrey with his first wife, and now he is 66 and living in the Czech Republic with his second wife – and three extra decades of life lessons to draw on. Speaking to me on a video call, Gary looks fit and active, relishing his second chance at fatherhood. He has just spent the morning making an electronics kit with his son, Ben, who is eight. Ben doesn’t know anything about his father’s other family and Gary has no contact with them. After a divorce, he says he lost contact with his daughter. “I’d never experienced anything like it. Suddenly, all of the things that had defined me weren’t there any more. I spun out.”
I don’t know if I appreciated the miracle of it as much the first time around. We all complain about how little sleep we get, but I’d forgotten what a joy it is
Ultimately, what this meant was that when he met “the right partner”, many years later, he didn’t hesitate to create the family life he had always wanted. “It was primal. It was a pretty easy thing to do. I asked her if she’d like to have a child. She said yes. And that was that.” There was the matter of his age. But then he read about Mick Jagger fathering another child at 73, and figured he’d be able to cope.
“I was worried about energy levels. I don’t worry about that now,” he says. “I’m more concerned about the limited time I have to impart my love and my lessons for life to my son.”
You may have noticed many older fathers in the public eye, such as Jeff Goldblum, 71, father to Charlie, nine, and River, seven. “I don’t know what’s true across the board, but if you make it this far, I guess you have a perspective that is soul-enhancing,” he said when I interviewed him last year. He’s a spring chicken compared with Robert De Niro, 81, and Al Pacino, 84, who are both parents to toddlers. Rupert Murdoch was 72 when his youngest child, Chloe, 21, was born. Even Donald Trump, 78, is the father of a teenager, Barron, 18, whose insights were apparently crucial in winning the male Gen Z vote.
It’s generally assumed that we live in a monogamous society. Actually, polygamy is common among western elites. The men just do it sequentially, fathering children by many different partners throughout their lives. Mick Jagger has eight children born between 1970 and 2016 to five women. Nor is advanced fatherhood a modern phenomenon. A few years ago, I met the late art historian John Richardson, then in his 90s. He proudly told me that his grandfather had been born in 1812 – a two-century leap that it took me a while to realise was the result of two successive septuagenarian fathers.
We can only guess at how adept Pacino is with the wet wipes. (“I want to be around for this child,” he recently told an interviewer. “And I hope I am.”) But when I spoke to a range of older fathers, they said that the business of fathering has become more hands-on in recent decades – and generally more rewarding, too.
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Christopher Ennis, 70, with his one-year-old son, Séamus. Photograph: Peter Flude/The Guardian
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