Actor and broadcaster Jason Hoyte, right, joins One Day You'll Thank Me to discuss what it's liking raising four children! Photo / Supplied.
Actor and broadcaster Jason Hoyte, right, joins One Day You'll Thank Me to discuss what it's liking raising four children! Photo / Supplied.
Welcome to the Herald's parenting podcast: One Day You'll Thank Me. Join parents and hosts Jenni Mortimer and Rebecca Blithe as they navigate the challenges and triumphs of parenting today with help from experts and well-known mums and dads from across Aotearoa.
Amid an impressive acting and radio broadcasting career, Jason Hoyte, host of The Big Show on Radio Hauraki, has also raised four daughters.
On today's episode of the Herald's parenting podcast, One Day You'll Thank Me, Hoyte shares what it's really like to be a father to four girls and makes an unexpected revelation about having one child compared to many.
Hoyte's girls are now aged 25, 24, 21 and 14. But he can still vividly recall becoming a father for the first time.
"I remember when my eldest was born and one minute I'm Jason Hoyte, 'Guy', and the next minute I'm Jason Hoyte, 'Dad'. And that's quite a lot to get your head around. I know it's a cliche to say but you don't get taught, really, you don't have lessons in being a parent. So you have to do it through experience.
"Early parenthood, in terms of having your first child, is just an exercise in paranoia and anxiety ... you freak out about everything. If they cough you think, should we go to the A&E? If there's the slightest sort of mishap, you go into panic mode.
"Certainly, with our first, it was a massively anxious time. I was constantly freaking out."
However, hosts Jenni Mortimer and Rebecca Blithe, both mums-of-one, were surprised to learn that, for Hoyte, when it came to having more children, it wasn't exponentially more difficult.
"What I found, quite honestly, was the more we had, the easier it became. You learn, as you go along, not to be so paranoid."
In fact, providing kids with siblings can be beneficial to a parent's own time, he says.
"When you have siblings, they distract each other. So it's not just all about you. Particularly my first three girls, because they're kind of in the same age bracket, so that was really good in terms of their being able to have their own company."
The fact that Hoyte has four of the same gender raises the question, was there an intention to "keep going" until he had a son?
"So many people ask me that," says Hoyte, laughing. "'Oh, you'll be hanging out for a boy, Jase'. But I never did. And, quite genuinely, girls are the bomb, as far as I'm concerned," he says, sharing he had plenty of insight into the opposite gender thanks to his education at an all-boys boarding school.
"All that ever mattered to me and my wife was having a healthy child ... but being honest, as well, I don't know that it was always an absolutely conscious decision by us to have four. But I wouldn't have it any other way."
One challenge Hoyte and his wife have experienced, aside from having to drive "some pretty ugly people-movers", has been the impact of an age gap for their youngest daughter.
"We kind of feel sad that there's been that gap because all the other girls had each other ... whereas she almost feels like an only child because they've all left home and she's stuck with her parents.
"But what I will say for my youngest daughter is she's benefited the most financially. Because we're much more financially secure than when the girls were really young. So her elder sisters are outraged at the stuff she gets. But my older girls are really nurturing and motherly."
Hoyte says, in his experience, having smaller age gaps means children will "have things in common, they'll entertain themselves, bond with each other. If you've got sisters and brothers there's a lot more going on. So my philosophy would be, if I'm going to have lots of kids, to have them all together."
