Being A Dad At 50

So what has it been like, being a Dad at 50+?

This last year has been a whole new ball game to start with. Life revolves around His Lordship and that has been a huge culture change, the biggest since I met my wife some 18 years ago. Although we still do lots of the things we used to do like go to restaurants, it's fair to say that we rarely go out in the evenings and we have babysitters only twice so far in the last 11 months. We have had two holidays, one in Crete with my wife's family which was great and one in Spain which was mixed with business and not so brilliant. Neither provided any real relaxation.

That's the obvious part. The second is that whenever we enter a room, automatically one or other of us 'Has the Conn', i.e. we are in charge of the little one as he moves around at will, particularly since crawling. We are now elevating all items which could be of use to him in every room while watching him like a hawk for crashing into corners of tables or chairs.

While this is normal for any parent, it's actually a huge change for a 50 year old, steeped in tradition of just sitting down and relaxing or playing with the dogs. It means that you rarely relax and you also find that you have little time, when you are in charge, to do anything from make a cup of tea to answer a telephone call to send an email to go to the loo. It's that all-consuming and that's a massive culture change, particularly for a 50 year old guy who was used to do pretty much as he wanted.

The big result of all this is that fatigue is major part of your life. Even as I write, I have to get up very early in the morning and stay up late just to catch up on things like doing my accounts, writing blogs, emails or even just reading things. With getting up in the middle of the night a routine that cannot be changed, it means that interrupted sleep is all you get. This builds up and I don't care what anyone says, for a 50 year old it really begins to drag you down. It would help if I could allocate time to go to the gym, but that really is unrealistic as in the order of priorities in the house these days, personal fitness is not near the top. Even walking the dogs has been cut down as time just gets consumed plus in the Winter the concern about excess dirt coming into areas where the little one is crawling is high.

Then there is the general worry. As you get older, the chances of your career ending or changing dramatically are much higher and this is an underlying pressure. Back in 2006, I took the decision to work on contracts and I have had an excellent run on this in the main. However, this produces a high degree of pressure as I cannot afford to take holidays as time off is unbillable and to take a break between contracts is a false hope as you spend any such time worrying how you are going to get another contract.

Lob in the concern of having a child and the pressure starts to intensify as the overwhelming urge is to provide for the family in terms of bringing in the 'bread'. With my wife on unpaid maternity (she is self-employed), this doubles that underlying pressure. As she is again pregnant, it means that we are probably looking at two years on a single income, which is a precarious one. This is a pressure that sometimes manifests itself in short temper as I feel the need to do something about it, either to change back to permanent employment or to find more lucrative contracts (which is nigh on impossible). All this magnifies as each day passes, as I know that no matter what legislation is in place, there is a very active discrimination of 50+ year olds in my kind of work and market sector. It means you have to work harder to prove your worth and that means not just doing the hours but going well beyond.

Here's another curious thing and this may just be me. Sometimes when I am out with Scott alone, I am acutely aware of my age. I see young mothers and fathers with their children and I dwell on the fact that by the time my boy will be in his teens and wanting to kick a ball with me or ask me to bowl to him in the nets, I will already be in my sixties - grandfather not father age. I get a very real feeling that I will create a stigma for my son (and new one on the way) that I saw when I was young and at school at a time when older parents were very rare. This may be unfounded but I guess being 50+ I am of the era when older parents were less prevalent whereas the modern era is different. This does gnaw away at me and I also feel the nagging little concern when I am with my friends who, while they are genuinely delighted for us, clearly feel having another child is just going a step too far at our age. Or at least that's how I play it in my mind.

When I consider all the apparent downsides listed above, it does not even slightly tilt the balance against what we have. Little Scott is not only precious but he does help me feel younger in his presence even if I get aware of my age in some respects when chasing him around. The fact is, I have always been a kid at heart and now I have the perfect excuse to behave like one. A 50+ year old behaving like a child does look daft, but I don't care about that.

I have been busy, when I have the time, writing up the bedtime stories I tell Scott and I have started a blog at http://babyscottstories.wordpress.com to keep them safe for him now and in the future. My mother always urged me to write and Scott has given me that perfect driver to do so. Whether they are any good or not is neither here nor there to me. In general, he hangs on my every word and, as every dad knows, that won't last too many years!


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