Just because you can.... should you?

[monster]

Just idle musings on a rainy day, really....

The British PM is a dad again -at 55.

Running around with/after 5 year-olds is pretty exhausting at 35, never mind 60. It's not unusual for children to be primarily raised by only one of the parents and/or staff, but...

Assuming a 55 year-old father continues in reasonable health, when his son is in his teens, when parenting is arguably its hardest, he will be an old man. This doesn't seem fair to the child or the mother, but mum knew what she was getting into and the child will never have any other experience to compare it to...

And then, when the young man is at college or starting to raise a family of his own, when he's old enough to appreciate and young enough to still need the advice of a father.... his father will die. Younger parents die too, but with older parents, it's a given this will happen.

Of course every case is different and in this particular case, this is the first child for the new mum whose body clock must've been ticking loud enough to replace Big Ben's chimes and hopefully weighed up the pros and cons....

...but I can't help but feel bad for the child. Many older parents chose the same schools we chose for our children. Schools with big parental involvement. But they weren't able to get down in the sandpit or run along holding the back of the bike. And that's ok, they knew what they were signing up for. But I saw their kids not understanding why their parents weren't doing those things like the other moms and dads.

Then again, those parents generally had more money to provide amazing experiences and more time to talk with the kids as they got older whilst I was a frazzled wreck relying on the public schools for things like music tuition. None of my kids have been skiing and we live in the frozen North...

You only ever get to do it one way and I have never heard an older parent say they regretted it, even the oops parents, and now they are older, my kids' peers with older parents seem cool about it, but this made me wonder if there are adults whose parents were older who feel a bit cheated now? (for want of a better phrase)