60 year + fathers of young children neglect grandchildren

Older new dad: No time for grandparenting
StoryDiscussionFont Size: Default font size Larger font size By Abigail Trafford/The Washington Post | Wednesday, February 27, 2008 | No comments posted



He has gray hair, a wrinkled Clint Eastwood grin and an artificial knee, and he's wheeling a stroller to the park. Not gramps, but an older dad, a 60-plus father of young children — the New Nurturer on the block who says he's a better dad the second time around. His resume is fleshed out. He's more secure financially. With waning testosterone levels, he may even be kinder, gentler. Mainly, he has time to focus on children in a way he never could in his younger days.

This is the Hallmark greeting card image of the father who finally knows best what matters most in life. And there are advantages in having some maturity when confronted with a howling 3 year old.

But there may be a hidden cost: the grandfather-grandchild relationship. Most older dads have children from a previous marriage. Starting a second family late in life interrupts the natural evolution toward grandparenthood. As long as you are raising children at home, how can you get really involved in your grandchildren's lives?

And getting involved with grandchildren is the new challenge for the American family. Grandparents are more numerous and healthier than in previous generations. Thanks to those gains, they can exert a much larger influence on their families: Some provide hands-on care for grandchildren; others help out their adult children financially.

Most 50 to 60 year olds are discovering the liberated joy of being a grandparent. But if you're worried about your kid needing braces and learning geometry, when do you have time to go fishing with your grandson? A friend in this situation explains to me: As long as he's caught up in seeing his young son into adulthood, there just isn't much emotional room left for his grandchildren.

How sad this is. My three grandchildren are visiting this week, romping through the rooms, going on treasure hunts, playing make-believe. How wondrous it is to have a stake in yet another generation. But for older dads, when their youngest child finally grows up, the grandchildren from an earlier marriage have already grown up, too. Gone is the critical period when the grandchild-grandparent relationship is forged. A double loss: for the grandchildren who could benefit from the wise, doting presence of a grandfather, and for older dads.

Complicated marital histories lead to complications in grandparenthood. In a few instances, the wife of an older dad is the same age as the ``first'' children, and the children in the second family may be the same age as the grandchildren. Two toddlers in the sandbox: One is the uncle, the other the niece. But chronologically and emotionally, they are more like cousins. And who is likely to benefit most from the old man's softening ways? The dependent child is first in line. The grandchild gets what is left over.

Adam Davey, a developmental psychologist at Temple University, calls this family situation a demographic perfect storm. ``A lot of factors have to come together at just the right time for this to happen,'' he says.

But older dads make headlines, with a celebrity Methuselah-like TV personality, Larry King, whose daughter from an earlier marriage was past 30 when his two youngest sons were born. ``Having youngsters is the ultimate joy,'' declared King at age 73.

But that's what grandparents say about grandchildren!

Many factors affect the grandparent-grandchild bond: geography and frequency of contact, the relationship with the adult child in the middle, the personalities of all involved and past history.

Divorce and remarriage have a lasting impact on family life. Research suggests that the effects are greater when children are young adults at the time of these upheavals. Older dads in a second family tend to spend less time and money on their children. ``Marital transitions that occur when children are adults tend to reduce support from parents to children,'' concludes a recent report by Davey and his colleagues at Temple.

And that reduction in support is likely to extend to grandchildren.

The reverse is also true. The report found that divorce may reduce the likelihood that adult children will support older parents. Because men are more likely to remarry and move away, ``the odds are stacked against the paternal grandfather,'' Davey says. ``These decisions that are made within a generation have effects that cascade across generations.''

Yet families are resilient; they adapt. Much depends on ``what the relationship was before the new kid came along — and a good relationship with the stepmother,'' says David Carnoy of New York.

He and his father, Martin Carnoy, a professor of education and economics at Stanford University, wrote ``Fathers of a Certain Age: The Joys and Problems of Middle-Aged Fatherhood,'' (Faber and Faber, 1995) from the viewpoint of both the older dad and the first son.

After a divorce, Martin Carnoy remarried, and when David and his brother were in their late 20s, he and his second wife adopted a daughter. Today the girl is a teen-ager, and David is married with a 4 year old and a 2 year old.

``You've got an incredible panoply of relationships,'' says Martin Carnoy, who is also looking after his mother as he cares for his wife and daughter, all the while keeping in touch with his adult sons and grandchildren who live 3,000 miles away. ``There's enormous competition for time.''

``My father would like to spend more time with us,'' says David Carnoy, executive editor of the technology Web site CNET. But between conflicting school schedules and competing family responsibilities, ``it's much harder to coordinate.''

Nevertheless, they all make the effort. That's the first rule of grandparenting: making the effort. Older dads aren't exempt.

20s Are The Prime Years for male reproduction!

This baby looks fine, but on a population level there is more autism, more schizophrenia, more breast cancer, de novo Huntington's chorea, more Alzheimer's, more prostate cancer, etc. in offspring of older fathers and mothers who had older fathers.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=512724&in_page_id=1770





20s
These are prime years for male reproduction. Men have the maximum amount of mature sperm cells and the least DNA damage. The risk of producing birth defects or causing other problems in offspring is as low as it ever will be.

The study comparing outcomes of teenagers newborns versus old men is really misleading. Why has it gotten so much press? IT IS NOT TRUE AT THE HEADLINES IMPLY THAT OFFSPRING OF OLDER DADS HAVE BETTER HEALTH


Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said: "It would be easy to point the finger at younger father's sperm and say that they were inadequate in some way.

"But that bucks the trend of many studies that have shown there are increasing sperm DNA defects as men get older.

"A far more convincing explanation for the finding in this study is that older men are simply better able to provide for their pregnant partners than younger fathers. It makes sense that babies born to older fathers probably have a better start to life."


http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/older-fathers-have-healthier-offspring-779146.html

Why does the study compare births to men under 20 rather than in their 20s and why does it not look at outcomes over the years to find out about autism, schizophrenia, cancers, and mental retardation that increase with paternal age 31+ compared to those in fathered by men in their 20s?

Dr. Susan Bewley is now more aware of the issue of the age of the father and the health of the offspring

Women who delay babies until late 30s get health warning· Mothers advised to stick to 20-35 childbearing age· People have become blasé, warns consultant James Meikle, health correspondentFriday September 16, 2005The Guardian
Women who delay having children until their late thirties are "defying nature and risking heartbreak" as well as building up public health problems for the future, senior doctors say today. Those who want families and room to manoeuvre in their life and career choice should not wait that long before trying to have a baby.
Doctors and healthcare planners should urge women to achieve "biologically optimal childbearing" between the ages of 20 and 35, say the authors of an editorial in the British Medical Journal.



Susan Bewley, consultant obstetrician at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London, and colleagues, are urging doctors and health agencies to do more to tackle the "epidemic" of middle-aged pregnancy. Pregnancies in women older than 35 have increased markedly in western countries and with that has come more age-related fertility problems for women, especially for the over 40s. Delay also affects partners, as semen counts drop gradually every year, and children of older men have an increased risk of schizophrenia and genetic disorders.
More than one in seven women in England and Wales now conceive over the age of 35, and more than one in 40 conceive over 40. Increasing numbers are turning to IVF, but seven in 10 women fail to achieve a pregnancy that ends in a live birth in their first cycle of treatment and 90% of the over-40s fail to do so.
Although most pregnancies in the over-35s still have successful outcomes, obstetricians and gynaecologists have been witnesses to tragedies too, say the three doctors, two of whom are women.
"The pain of infertility, miscarriage, smaller families than desired, or damage to pregnancy, mothers and children is very private, particularly when women blame themselves for choices without being fully aware of the consequences.
"It is ironic that as society becomes more risk-averse and pregnant women more anxious than in the past, a major preventable cause of this ill-health and depression is unacknowledged.
"Public health agencies target teenagers but ignore the epidemic of pregnancy in middle age.
"Women want to 'have it all' but biology is unchanged ... Their delays may reflect disincentives to earlier pregnancy or maybe an underlying resistance to childbearing as, despite the advantages brought about by feminism and equal opportunities legislation, women still bear full domestic burdens as well as work and financial responsibilities."
Reasons for difficulties lay not with women but "with a distorted and uniformed view from society, employers and health planners".
The other authors of the editorial are Melanie Davies, consultant obstetrician at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and University College hospitals, London, who is president-elect of the Medical Women's Federation, and Peter Braude, head of the women's health department at Guy's, King's and St Thomas' medical school, London, and chairman of the scientific advisory committee of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
Dr Bewley, chair of the ethics committee of the college, said: "I think people have become slightly blasé." The biological window for the best age to have a baby "has not moved despite the fact celebrities are having their babies older and Cherie Blair has her baby older".
Patients "used to think they were old at 30, then 35, and now it is 40, but their bodies are exactly the same as 20 or 30 years ago. I think people know the health hazards but it sort of drifts past them".
Women doctors were as bad or even worse than others interested in a career, Dr Bewley said. "I look at my own consultants' body, and largely men have children when their wives are in their 20s and early 30s, and largely women have children in their 30s and 40s."