When I became a father, I was the oldest first-time dad I knew

Around the kitchen table, I ask my boys for a score for almost everything. Dinner, dessert, their day, a rating for life so far. A number out of 10 – what do you give it?

It’s part-game, part-conversation starter, but also a sort of market research into being a dad. As a single, older father, this appraisal is my way of finding out if I’m getting it right. Feedback, to fine-tune how to do it.

When I became a father, I was 39 and a half, and the oldest first-time dad I knew.Credit: Stocksy

As one who assumed many of the early parenting roles, I understand what it is to be a hands-on dad. Sitting cross-legged on a library floor at story time singing Five Little Ducks and Incy Wincy Spider was time well invested, nurturing a strong bond with my boys, but it’s never quite enough.

And now the youngest is halfway through primary school, there’s another hang-up, albeit niggling. When he finishes high school, I’ll be eligible for a Seniors Card.

It’s a tale of the ages, the knock-on effect of deferred fertility, and in this I’m not alone. But it hardly makes the numbers any easier.

Australian dads are among the oldest in the world, and we’re not getting any younger. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ data on registered births in 2020, the median age of fathers is 33.6 years, rising from 28.5 years in 1975, when data was first collated. This trend is mirrored among mothers, though they’re consistently a couple of years younger.

This trend of delaying parenthood is replicated in most developed nations. In the US, for example, first-time fathers are on average 3.5 years older than they were in 1972, though the delaying tactics aren’t spread evenly among men. Race and ethnicity prove reliable markers (white males dawdle longest), and those with tertiary degrees put off fatherhood until significantly later.

It’s a societal shift with all sorts of untested ramifications (if my boys become fathers, what will “grandparents’ day” at school be like for their children?) and leading the way are men like me, procreational laggards.

When I became a father, I was 39 and a half, and the oldest first-time dad I knew. It was a moment of reappraisal, of changing nappies, of endless hours pushing a stroller around the streets at odd times. Then, one by one, others in my friendship peer group – men I went to school with, grew up with – followed suit.

My boys have watched me furnish our homes, move from one small rental to another, make our household furniture, scrabble for work, make mistakes, take wrong turns.

Bobby, a jack-of-all-trades, was 40-and-a-bit years old when he first became a dad. Miles, a physician, was 43 years and 10 months. Adam, a tiler, was 44 and eight months.

Dave, a carpenter (he calls himself a “wood butcher”) was 46 and a half. Kieran, a chef, had turned 50 when he welcomed sweet Alice into the world. All of us Generation Xers, we’ve upped the averages, testing the limits of when we might become dads.

I can’t speak for their experiences, nor the myriad reasons fatherhood has been delayed. Social demographers might work backwards from peak fertility in Australia (1961), and motherhood at its youngest (1971) – each occurring five years either side of peak home ownership in 1966.

But from first-hand knowledge, middle-aged fatherhood comes with deep intimacy and great inquiry. Or maybe that’s just me.

Since separation, my boys have seen their father in difficult times. They’ve been with me every other week, all the way, watched me furnish our homes, move from one small rental to another, make our household furniture, scrabble for work, make mistakes, take wrong turns.

But I am older, wiser, and being without only brings us closer together. They share a bedroom at my place, and at night we pile on one of the beds for a three-way wrestle (we call it “manhandling”) and make a human sandwich (I’m always the bread on the bottom), and they ask me to tell stories of my childhood, and only after giving them each a “pummel” (a crude back massage) will they let me leave. My love for them is hands-on. It’s tactile. And I’m never afraid to show it.

Around the kitchen table, we talk – about the affairs of the day, what’s on our minds, about stuff – and I tell them I’m writing a story about fatherhood and ask them to rate me as a dad.

Mr 12yo is emphatic: 10.

Mr 9yo: 9.999999.

I ask him why I was docked. “Because of all the excursions you make us do,” he says. “You’re always wanting to take us places.”

With age comes experience. In choices I’ve made, I cannot provide for my boys many of the things my father gave me. But I can give them my time, and my availability, and a willingness to show them other things, take them elsewhere. It is what a father does, how a childhood can be.

Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.