Prime Time Dads: 45 Reasons to Embrace Midlife Fatherhood

Author

INTRODUCTION

When faced with first time fatherhood at the age of 49, I didn’t know whether to celebrate with champagne… or hemlock. The news was a surprise, like an unexpected slap across the face (yes, I’ve earned a few of those), and my immediate reaction was fear, a primal, mind-racing, where’d-I-lose-my-wallet peaking-panic fear.

Would I have enough energy for fatherhood? How in the world could I give up my leisurely latte freedom for dirty diapers? Would I live long enough to make a proper go of it? Would younger parents mistake me for grandpa? Would I sit on bleachers at little league games dozing and drooling and dreaming of Woodstock?

As it’s turned out, those fears proved to be the unfounded, paranoid phantoms of a mind skewed by our society’s irrational rush to celebrate youth over wisdom. What I discovered through midlife fatherhood was a deeper, richer reality lived daily at a profoundly more exciting and satisfying level.

Midlife is Prime Time for Fatherhood

I found out that my 40s and 50s were actually my best time, in fact my prime time, to appreciate and accept my role as a new father. These are my prime years, when I’m emotionally mature enough to handle parenthood’s dogging demands, wise enough to find deeper meaning and humor amidst the chaotic kid circus, and crafty enough to scheme and deal from the bottom of the deck if and when necessary.

Whether we call it midlife, later-in-life, mature, late blooming, or just plain wacky fatherhood, prime time was the perfect time for me to focus – unencumbered by youthful passions and demands– on being the best dad I could be.

And the benefits of becoming a dad a bit later in life came as such a surprise to me that I wanted to climb the highest hill and shout out my euphoric eureka for other men and women to hear. PRIME TIME DADS: 45 Reasons to Embrace Midlife Fatherhood is the result.

I’ve been tested and challenged with regularity over the last 13 years of fatherhood, and for the most part, I’ve surprised myself by rising to the occasions. By becoming a prime time dad, I discovered a more authentic, more talented, multifaceted, and interesting me, and I opened the door to the most exciting years of my life.

A Bit of Background

I was previously married without children and divorced. My current wife, Lucy, was aged 36 when we learned of our pregnancy in 1999. We hadn’t planned for a family, mostly used birth control, and news of the gestation manifestation came as a complete surprise.

Living and working in northern California’s high tech Silicon Valley, I was accustomed to my freedoms, enjoyed my lack of familial responsibilities, and relished my ability to spontaneously pick up and go to Starbucks or Aruba or chill in my man cave listening to the entire Beatles Anthology just about any time I so desired.

I’d always wanted a family and figured it would all fall into place someday, but as the years went by and my relationships did not mix up the right magic, I’d settled into a mellow mindset in which kids were great but it seemed the universe had ordained them to populate other people’s lives.

But lightning struck. That fickle universe dialed my number. We had a choice, and we chose to make a family. We now have a 13-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter who share our genes and dreams. Even at the late-blooming age of 49, becoming a father was the best choice I ever made.

Turning the Paradigm Upside Down

Society subtly programs us to think and act in certain ways, but paths are winding and wanderers vary. It’s often the challenge to orthodoxy and new ways of looking at familiar paradigms that make the exploration interesting.

That’s the way fatherhood worked for me. Sure, I knew what the proper program was, that I was supposed to get married and have children in my earlier years, work hard to make enough money to raise them, and then enjoy myself in my later years of retirement in an empty nest.

But I enjoyed myself in my earlier years. A lot. I lived and worked adventurously, traveled, partied, and did many of the things I imagine people who have children early on long to do but postpone because of their familial responsibilities. And I had an empty nest for three decades. I now enjoy having a full house, and I’m looking forward to a future filled with close body contact.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating that all men should wait until their 40s to have children. I know that most prime time dads are fathers of second families, and that biology works differently for men than it does for women.

But I’d drifted so far off the traditional path of fatherhood that I figured it was no longer a viable option, and then when it suddenly became a living, breathing, eating, excreting reality, I figured it was the curse and burden and penance I had to pay for living my particular brand of freestyle life on this planet.

Vast Reservoir of Talents

But I was joyfully wrong. I discovered that I, and most mature men in their prime, have an enormous reservoir of unique skills, talents, and life experiences that can be tapped to help us not just survive but thrive as great fathers.

The experience, knowledge and wisdom of men in midlife supply an abundance of specific tools that can be used to build a solid fatherhood foundation, framework, and future. To me, prime time fatherhood is not an issue of being better late than never. It’s an issue of actually being better later.

Ladies, Listen Up!

Attention women with a prime time, mature or late-blooming husband, boyfriend, son, grandson, nephew, colleague, buddy, bodyguard or boy toy who you think might make a great dad.

While PRIME TIME DADS is written by a man for men from a male point of view, I’m acutely aware that the majority of men probably won’t buy a book like this, let alone read it, without your help.

So it’s up to you ladies out there to read and laugh with it, think about the messages behind the madcap, and then give it to the prime time men in your lives who may need an encouraging, sly and wry shoehorn to facilitate their reluctant steps into the big boots of fatherhood.

Stuff this book into his golf or bowling bag, place it by his toilet throne, tell him it’s nighttime reading before afternoon delight. I don’t know, hide it in the sports pages or wrap it up in fried bacon, but get him to look at it.

Use PRIME TIME DADS as a rattle prod to shock your routine-rutted bull into considering new pastures. This book just might change his attitude about fatherhood, and change his life, and yours, for the better.

What is Midlife?

For the purposes of this book, prime time midlife for a man is somewhere between the ages of 40 and 60 or so. And while many of the reasons to embrace fatherhood discussed in this book can apply to men of any age, they all made a distinct impression on my over-40, but most certainly not over-the-hill, brain.

Now, many of you ladies out there reading this who’ve witnessed how we men behave at football games, or fuel up at all-you-can-eat buffets, or noticed how our focus instinctively shifts from the menu to the waitress’s décolletage, may be asking yourselves, You call that a mature man?

Some men mature earlier, some not at all. My contention is that most men who’ve approached or moved beyond the age of 40 will relate to the observations in PRIME TIME DADS.

But again, this book is for everyone, any age, men and women alike, who are considering parenthood, who are parents, or who were of parents born.

Truth, Not Youth-Obsessed

I was truly intimidated by the prospect of later blooming fatherhood, yet discovered it was the best thing I ever did. This book presents an important, alternative point of view, almost entirely neglected in our youth-obsessed culture. This message deserves to be heard and considered.

The issue of midlife fatherhood is particularly pertinent today as U.S. life expectancies rise, as women who have postponed motherhood due to career or relationship decisions hear louder the ticking of biology’s clock, and those who for health or other reasons may now be considering adoption a bit later in their lives. And as our country’s divorce rate remains high, many men face the prospect of prime time fatherhood within a second marriage or blended family.

We’re so brainwashingly bombarded by images of perfect parents in their 20s, that it’s only right and fair play that mature men (and especially the millions of women who love them and may wish to encourage them to envision the rewards of fatherhood) get a real life view of midlife fatherhood.

What this Book is About

This is not a scholastic book of sociology or psychology or a how-to book of proper parental advice. It is not a book filled with the latest research and census data.

It is a series of unabashedly optimistic, hopefully humorous, stereotype-smashing, personal point-of-view essays from my heart. The material is based upon my own real life experiences, offbeat observations, and Visine-eyed views from the foxhole of prime time fatherhood. I figure there must be others out there to hear, appreciate and maybe even benefit from my story.

This book is intended to give men who are in their prime years a laugh or two, something to think about, and a positive, encouraging look at how their life experiences provide them with abundant critical skills they can employ to excel in their role as a prime time dad.

It explores advantages we older guys have over younger men on this crazy, exciting journey of fatherhood.

It’s the Run, Not the Race

I enjoy a 10K run as a healthful exercise, a pursuit of personal goals, and a shared social event, not primarily as a competitive race. The training process, pre-run excitement, body and esteem benefits, camaraderie, new scenery, and pasta loading are more important to me than the finish line results.

This book’s 45 Reasons are divided into loosely chronological sections— At the Starting Line, Off and Running, Establishing a Rhythm, Savoring the Burn, In the Zone, and Pushing Forward the Finish Line— that underscore the philosophical notion that it’s the overall journey of midlife fatherhood that really matters, not any preconceived destination.

Required Disclaimer

Not every man who can grow hair more effectively from his ears than on his scalp should become a father. Parenthood is serious business, and the world already has enough part-time parents and delinquent dads. But men who are sincere about considering the awe-inspiring responsibilities and rewards of midlife fatherhood will find encouragement in PRIME TIME DADS.