Reaching the Age of Enlightenment in Parenthood

After watching “men freak out at the thought of having a child any longer than for a day at Disneyland,” Hal Yoergler became Red Cross-certified as a parenting instructor and now conducts “For Daddies Only” seminars, sort of “de-machoizing” sessions for those with the desire, but not the confidence, to be fully participating parents.

Yoergler, who heads Mediation Consultants in Beverly Hills, a firm that mediates everything from neighborhood disputes to union grievances, says he figures that he’s fully qualified to teach parenting: “Fortunately, I’ve made more mistakes than most men.”

“Creeping up on 49,” he has been through two divorces and is the father of four, the eldest a 28-year-old son, the youngest a 19-month-old son born to him and his wife of four years, Geri Duryea, 39, a vice president of Artists’ Career Management Agency.

Patrick Yoergler, 28, is a student and writer. His sister Dominique (known professionally as Niki Wilde), 25, is a disc jockey; neither has married. “I decided,” Yoergler quipped, “that I had to make my own grandchildren.”

Yoergler, a former ABC vice president, and Duryea were introduced by a mutual friend when she moved here from New York, looking for a job in the music business. They had lunch but, she said, “I didn’t get the job at ABC. I went to CBS. We became friendly competitors.”

“Very friendly competitors,” Yoergler interjected. When they married, “We weren’t thinking babies,” he said. They were thinking adventure. “We packed it all in,” he said, “and went to Palau in Micronesia and started a crocodile farm.”

“Tarzan and Jane,” said Duryea.

She escorted tourists around the crocodile farm; he joined expeditions that captured specimens from the “the biggest and most beautiful” natural population of crocodiles in the world for breeding to supply skins and meat to a worldwide market.

“I presold 15 years’ production,” he said, but “we were just starting into the breeding process when we got struck by revolution, an anti-American feeling that got very, very scary. They shut us down. Our workers wouldn’t show up. Our boat was sunk. It all fell apart. We took our losses, which were into six figures, and came home.”

Their son Christopher was, says his mother, “a surprise. The biological clock was ticking. We talked it over. It was a go.”

Yoergler said, “My first reaction was no, let’s do something about it.” He felt he’d done enough parenting. “When I was 14,” he said, “my mother had identical twins. Her husband was never there. They were preemies and it was Mom and I who raised those two. I’m talking about Iowa in the ‘50s. I’d go to school half-asleep because I’d been up all night walking the babies. I taught my first wife how to take care of babies.”

His wife’s pregnancy, he acknowledged, “did cause a certain amount of problems in our life. I was approaching 50. I’d lost a fortune in Micronesia. I was trying to gather my life back together.”

But when they decided to go through with it, they did it together, LaMaze classes and all. “He was with me all the way,” she said. “I got great support, and it’s continuing.”

One of the words he uses often in talking about 19-month-old Christopher is “joy.” What he has learned, he said, is that “each and every child is a whole new creation. I began to appreciate as an older father the meaning of it all. Christopher to me has been a hell of a lot more fun.

“Psychologists tell you about the feminine side of the personality that doesn’t come out until you’re older. I’ve really experienced that firsthand.”

He added, “I made a lot of mistakes with my older kids. I had preconceptions of what I wanted my continuing image to be. Anything he shows interest in, I’m going to encourage.”

Yoergler has found that “everything is different” when it comes to older men and babies, for the most part better. “It would be fine with me if somebody passed a law that you couldn’t have a baby until you were 30.”

For him, he said, the most important phase of his “enlightenment” was his recognition that “discipline is not punishment. Discipline is teaching a line of reasoning that will survive your absence.”

Another, Yoergler said, is the importance of total involvement with the child, as opposed to the “Here, you take him now, he needs diapering” involvement once traditional with fathers. When they say that, he suggested, “They’re saying, ‘I am your friend, with limits,’ and that does not build trust.”

One of his hesitations about having Christopher, he said, was that he knew his commitment would be total, “a drain on me. It was almost the fear of loving. You’re afraid for someone to give you a new Rolls-Royce because you’re afraid you’re going to scratch it.”

At first, he said, his older children were less than thrilled at the prospect of a baby sibling, but now “it’s all pretty much ironed out.”

“Because he’s irresistible,” Duryea suggested.

Gwyn, Yoergler’s 11-year-old daughter from his second marriage, who lives with her mother in New York, is, he said, “Completely enthralled with her baby brother.” But, Duryea added, “Gwyn is Daddy’s little girl. She did make it very clear she was glad it was a boy.”

Sharing Their Duties

Yoergler and Duryea, as a two-career couple, share the child-rearing duties 50-50. And they make certain that they alternate dropping him off and picking him up at his home child care situation so that he does not perceive one as the good guy, one as the bad guy.

Because Yoergler does not think that father-child relationships have to be nurtured on the field of athletic competition, he feels “very comfortable about what I have to offer him” as an older parent. “I can still give my son what I feel I should be giving him. I have no desire to be my son’s buddy. I want to be his father. I don’t think age is a valid concern.”

With his older children, he said, “I was emotionally involved in the heart, but didn’t have the time. My preoccupation was how I was going to provide because that was the role society placed on me. When it was playtime I’d be thinking about what I was going to say to the boss in the morning.

“I love all my kids equally. But I would much rather be Christopher. Daddies are 50% of parenthood.”

At 48, Yoergler said, “I’ve finally come to the realization I’m not going to live forever” and someday his older children will take a part in Christopher’s upbringing. “I fear leaving early,” he said, “but I don’t dwell on it.”

“Years ago,” Duryea said, “perhaps having older parents was a stigma for the child. I don’t know how easy it’s going to be for him.

“But, as older parents, we won’t be out there alone.”