I became a father at 36, and I'm kind of sorry I waited

I really wish I didn't have to choose between parenthood on the one hand and both financial security and personal fulfilment on the other.

Here’s a picture of me being a dad. Credit: Laura Rowley

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Late last week, New York Times opinion writer Elizabeth Bruenig published a piece titled “I Became a Mother at 25, and I’m Not Sorry I Didn’t Wait.” The piece dives into the reasons people are having kids later now than they used to, and explores the author’s decision to become a mother at 25. I found this passage especially insightful:

With the exception of — perhaps — a few immutable characteristics, you are not something you discover one day through trial and error and interior spelunking; you are something that is constantly in the process of becoming, the invention of endless revolutions. You never know who you are, because who you are is always changing.

Bruenig’s piece quickly became a lightning rod, and generated something of a freak out among a certain subset of Twitter users — much of which response I think was unfair and unkind.

But in any case, my own experience offers a case study in the opposite decision: Unlike Bruenig, I waited until I was 36 to have my first child. And while I wouldn’t trade the life experiences I’ve had, the costs of waiting as long as I did are significant. Maybe more so than I had initially imagined.

Before I go any farther, I should note that, yes, the choice of when to have kids — or to have kids at all — is a privilege. Obviously. That said, I personally know many people who are now or have in the past wrestled with this decision, and the discussion Bruenig’s piece generated makes me think it’s on a lot of minds. So, I’m sharing my experience here because I hope to offer a window into a life that followed a different path — but wrestled with some of the same issues.

So here’s a little background: My wife and I met at Brigham Young University when we were in an English class together. We got married in 2007 when I was 25 and she was 22. That probably sounds young. It was. But at BYU — a conservative religious school — it was very typical.

What was less typical, however, was that we didn’t have kids right away. Two of the reasons for delaying kids that Bruenig highlights perfectly captured my thinking at the time:

When surveyed, most young people report that they elected to put off having kids because they wanted to make more money first […]

Millennials who had not yet had children and weren’t sure if they would told The Times in a 2018 survey that they didn’t want to sacrifice leisure time […]

In other words, I was concerned about money, and about the lifestyle changes parenting would require. Bruenig also wonders in her piece about having kids “before establishing oneself” and (like many other people) that was pretty much how I felt¹.

The financial piece of the puzzle was significant for us. As I’ve written before, I earned a master’s degree in English, which didn’t present an obvious pathway into the professional world. I eventually hustled my way into an entry level newspaper job, where I earned about $27,000 a year².

Lots of people have kids on less than $27,000 a year, or on the wages I earned as I progressed professionally, but I kept thinking if I just waited a little longer I’d end up having kids in an environment that included less financial hardship.

Then there’s the lifestyle question.

I grew up with loving parents in a stable home. But because I am a perpetually discontent person, I would sometimes climb up on my suburban roof, look at the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles way off in the distance, and think about all the adventure that (I assumed) lie just over the horizon.

I carried that attitude into young adulthood, and by the time I got married I was ready to have some adventures too. And so along with my wife, I did: My wife switched jobs and became a flight attendant, which allowed us to fly for free, and we traveled extensively. It was fun, eye-opening, and of course a tremendous privilege.

I also gravitated toward more adventurous professional assignments. Over the years I drove through a hurricane, attended a United Nations climate conference in Paris, and was a participant in a high speed chase, among other things. In many cases, my reporting assignments involved my editors calling me up and telling me to immediately get on a plane.

Whether I could have had these experiences and had kids at the same time is up for debate. But I certainly felt like my life wasn’t compatible with kids. And combined with ongoing concerns about money, I always felt like I didn’t have all my ducks in a row.

Interestingly, the path that I chose is exactly what some of Bruenig’s critics have suggested is a better option than having kids³: Travel, have a good time, and forget the slog of parenthood.

Eventually 11 years passed. We entered our mid 30s, and we (or, I) accepted that if we were going to have kids we couldn’t put it off forever. So our daughter was born when I was 36. A second child, our son, was born late last year when I was 38. Here we all are a few months ago:

Overall I’m content with the way things have turned out.

But there are some major costs, which I didn’t fully appreciate in advance:

1. I’m going to be relatively old when my kids are still young. My son will only be 12 when I turn 50, for example. Honestly I don’t feel any less spry now in my late 30s than I did ten years ago, but I’m sure that won’t always be the case. I knew about this all along, but I guess I’m just a bit more in tune with my mortality now.

2. We’ve put a biological limit on our family size. Despite my dread that having kids would be the end of fun, I’m enjoying fatherhood. It’s a miserable slog sometimes, but not always. But after our son was born I think my wife and I have sort of gradually realized we’d maybe be open to having a slightly larger family than we (or, I) initially anticipated. However, the costs and risks of having more kids will go up considerably, especially for my wife as she eventually moves into her 40s. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but it’s a bigger gamble. And since we already have a couple of kids, at some point it may not be a gamble that for us, specifically, is worth the risk. I knew in advance about costs and risks, but I didn’t realize the first kid or two would make me more amenable to having more.

3. This is the biggest thing for me: Having kids later means it’s going to be harder to play an active, prolonged role in the lives of any future grandchildren. If my daughter waits to have a kid until she’s the same age I was when we got started, I’ll be 72. One of the core arguments of this newsletter is that my generation should be preparing to play an more actively supportive role in the lives of our offspring. But that’s going to be tough for someone feeling the effects of old age. My own paternal grandfather died in his 70s; I could literally be dead before I get a chance to do the very things I’m advocating in this newsletter.

So am I sorry I waited to have kids?

Kind of. I definitely wish I had thought more about the costs, particularly when it comes to multigenerational support.

But what I’m most sorry about is that I felt like I had to choose in my 20s between kids on the one hand and financial stability and personal fulfilment on the other. Which finally brings me around to the Nuclear Meltdown thesis: The reason this choice exists at all is because our completely anemic support system means that for many people, you can either have kids, or you can have a life. But not both.

It shouldn’t be this way.

As I’ve written in the past, prior to the modern period people lived in more distributed support networks. They had villages. Obviously they weren’t flying around the world, but men and women both had work to do and having kids wasn’t seen as some sort of competing life path that would derail everything else.

On the other hand, literally everyday I see a comment from a parent — usually a mom, because childcare still falls disproportionately on women — expressing frustration and burnout with parenting. We’ve placed the burden of raising kids entirely on one or two people, and told them they can’t do much else with their time to boot. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that parenthood seems like a bum deal to a lot of people when it means giving up pretty much everything else.

Of course parenthood always involves sacrifices and hardships. And solving this problem will probably require some political policy changes. But my hope is that at least for my own kids, my actions can make the choice of when to start a family less of an either-or between having children and having the good life.

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Headlines to read this week:

Why Millennials Can’t Grow Up

“Millennials, as just about everyone knows at this point, are a generation delayed. The pandemic recession has led not-so-young adults to put off having kids, buying a house, getting married, or investing in a car—yet again. But today’s economic conditions are not just holding Millennials back. They are stratifying them, leading to unequal experiences within the generation as well as between it and other cohorts.

Marriage is a prime example. Millennials are getting hitched later in life than people in prior generations did. The average age at first marriage has steadily climbed over the past half century, from 23 to 30 for men and from 21 to 28 for women. As a result, Millennials are less likely to be married than Gen Xers or Baby Boomers were when they were the same age; the marriage rate among young adults has fallen 14 percentage points since 1990.”

1. The fact that I was the oldest of seven kids when I left for college also probably played a role too. Though my sisters might remember things a bit different, my memory of growing up is filled with me doing lots of babysitting and childcare. I didn’t particularly like it, which led to a dim view of what raising kids would be like.

2. My wife was working as a part time art teacher, which was similarly rewarding on a personal level for her, but also not lucrative.

3. Here’s a comment on Bruenig’s story: “I had my first son at 21 and I regret it, even though my situation was so much better than that of most American mothers. I had a legion of relatives eager to help; I was enrolled in college: and I was back in school three months after birth. We lived in a country with free healthcare, so need to get into debt. And still, that was a stupid decision. I really wanted to go traveling instead of changing diapers, and I had to wait until my second son was a bit older until I could finally afford it. And most importantly, while I love my kids and enjoyed them immensely after they were out of babyhood, I didn’t find the experience of motherhood transformative or even particularly important in my inner development. Most of it was slog, punctuated by moments of great fun or later, justified pride in their kindness or their accomplishments. Physically, it’s easier to have kids in your earlier twenties. Psychologically, having kids at any age is traumatic and restrictive. So why to do it at all? Children don’t give your life meaning. And in the US, you are not even supposed to expect to have their care and support in old age. So my advice to American women: don’t. Have money in the bank and go traveling instead. It’ll be a much more transformative experience than being cooped up in a nursery.”