Steve Braunias: When is it too late to have children? A dad’s perspective

Al Pacino and Robert De Niro had children at the age of 83 and 79, respectively, but is becoming a dad late in life a bad thing? Photo / Getty Images

OPINION

Steve Braunias considers the ups and downs of becoming a father later in life

I said, “So how old were you when your youngest was born?” We met this week at a fairly cheap and definitely cheerful Sri Lankan joint in Sandringham. One of the chefs cooked our meals on a row of gas rings next to our table, and smiled every time I looked at him. We ordered lamb biryani and a thing called a dosa – a kind of long tortilla filled with spicy potato, about the size of a trumpet, so immense that the ends hung off either side of the plate. The wall of the restaurant was covered in an interesting mosaic of pictures of life in Sri Lanka, and the golden lion on the Sri Lankan flag roared from a wall in the kitchen.

He said, “60.” We have been close friends for all of our adult lives, and although we only see each other rarely – he fled Auckland for a better life with his wife and kids up north, where he enjoys morning walks on a cliff above the sea – it takes us no time, not as much as a fraction of a second, to fall back into the same familiar happy pattern of excited chat we’ve always had. I love him. He’s a great friend and a truly good guy.

I said, “Woah.” The biryani was very spicy, and I kept getting up to pour myself ice-cold glasses of water. Maybe I went up more times than necessary. I am an anxious person at the best of times. I seem to prefer the agitated life, always put myself in situations where happiness seldom remains stable, and I find ways to complicate it. I don’t like spicy foods. I don’t like states of agitation. And yet there I was, constantly up and down, drawing from the well.

I said, “So how old are the kids now?” While we were sitting back and scoffing hot food, my 16-year-old daughter was suffering an NCEA Level 2 history exam. Three hours on the causes and consequences of the Vietnam War, and the development of first and second wave feminism in New Zealand – I am a contemporary of these histories, remember their chaos and their challenge, their shock and their force. I told my daughter about moving to Wellington in 1980 and seeing a second-wave feminist message painted in capital letters along the side of a wall in Aro Street: ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS.

He said, “Five and nine.” I was 46 when my kid was born and up until then I was someone insubstantial, someone without meaning. New Zealand columnist Elle Hunt wrote in the Guardian this week, “All my life I’ve felt fairly sure that I don’t want children of my own. This is convenient, given that I’m 32 and single. And yet, without my bringing it up, the question seems to keep rebounding on me, like signposts along a highway warning of the last chance to turn: am I sure?” All my life I was absolutely sure I wanted children. One would do.

I said, “Woah.” Just the idea of running around after kids that young felt exhausting. Mick Jagger had a child at 73, Robert De Niro at 79 and Al Pacino at 83, but they likely have quite good nanny services. My friend talked about how tiring it was. He also said that of course he loves his kids to pieces, and wouldn’t have it any other way. Truly good guys make truly good dads no matter the age. But what about truly agitated guys? I was gasping for more water. I put my head in my hands and peered between my fingers at the Sri Lankan lion. It roared, and I trembled at the prospect.