Graying Parents Are Trendy, but Their Children Have Varying Reactions

Neal Duncan’s first clear memory that his mother was different was when his junior high friends told him that she looked more like a grandmother. He was 13, and she was the 54-year-old secretary of his school.

“She was the same age as a lot of their grandmothers,” said Duncan, 30, who grew up in a coal mining town in West Virginia. “My mother had gray hair my whole life; she had gray hair when I was born.”

Unlike some children of older parents who feel isolation and anger about coping with aging mothers and fathers when they themselves are still young, Duncan “enjoyed the freedom” the two-generation gap created.

His three much older brothers--the nearest is 13 years his senior--bore the brunt instead.

“My brothers told me what a difficult man dad was when they were growing up, he was very strict. And I never experienced that. By the time I came along, he had mellowed out a lot. They had already been through the traumas three times, so with me they were really relaxed as parents.”

Washington artist Duncan calls himself “an accident,” the fourth child born to a 42-year-old mother (who died four years ago) and a 45-year-old father whose other three sons were in high school. Both parents worked, and he was cared for by a baby-sitter.

Common Themes

Thirty years later, belated pregnancy is no accident and dealing with day care is no rarity. These are common themes for increasing numbers of couples who put domesticity on hold while careers soar ahead. Older parenthood is now glamorized in films such as “A New Life,” in which Alan Alda becomes a papa after 50. Pick up People and see Sally Field and Farrah Fawcett with their 40th birthdays behind them and cooing at pudgy babies.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Census, 9.25% of births in 1975 to women ages 35 to 39 was to first-time mothers. The latest statistic available is for 1985 when first-time mothers represented 18.4% of total births to women in that age bracket.

“Based on the trends we’ve been seeing for the last five years, I would say that the figure has gone up one or two points since 1985,” said Martin O’Connell, chief of fertility statistics for the U.S. Bureau of Census.

Whereas first-time mothers accounted for 6.3% of total births to women 40 and over in 1975, by 1985 that figure held at 13.2%. A statistical average on fathers’ ages at the time of their first born is difficult to determine because about 14% of birth certificates do not list paternity information.

“Everyone I know has had children in their 30s or early 40s, and they are all career types who just didn’t have time before,” said poet Susan Polis Schultz, who lives in the mountains outside Boulder, Colo. Schultz, 44, and her artist husband had their third child four years ago.

“When we had our children, we were well into our careers, and most of the hectic pace climbing up the ladder was behind us. We are now able to spend enormous amounts of time with our kids,” she added.

Schultz and her husband are in professions that can be carried on from home, but most people operate out of offices and can’t give children “enormous amounts of time,” unless one working parent eases up. While a hard-fought for, fast-paced job is difficult to slow down, mid-career parents are realizing that along with having children must come sacrifice in the work place.

‘A Good Choice’

“You only get that time with the kids once, and as trying as it is sometimes, it’s a good choice,” said Tom Weinberg, 44, an independent television producer in Chicago. Weinberg’s second child, Anna, was born when he was 40 and his wife was 42.

“I will say that it requires a certain tightness of the tether. You can’t stray very far for very long if you want to have the kind of close relationship we’ve got at home,” said Weinberg. “You can’t go and make a television show for six weeks in Europe. I can’t even think about doing certain kinds of work anymore. Does that mean I’m giving something up? Well, maybe. But I wouldn’t trade it.”

Added 45-year-old architect David Jones, co-partner in a Washington firm: “I never realized there was going to be so much time involved with having children.” His two boys are 8 and 2.

It may pinch freedom and professional ascent, but time is the most essential gift you can give to a child who comes late in life, says Monica Morris, author of “Last Chance Children” (Columbia University Press). She’s not talking about quality time; she means “quantities of time.”

When sociologist Morris wrote an article on the subject for the Los Angeles Times, she received a barrage of letters from children of older parents that ultimately led to extensive interviews and the compiling of her book.

“I was overwhelmed by the passion of the people who wrote to me, and it fell fairly evenly,” said Morris, who married early and is the mother of three grown children. “Half of them were very strongly opposed to having older parents. The other half didn’t feel particularly negatively at all.”

A key question Morris sought to answer was what distinguished between the environments of those who were happy with their growing up years, and those who were dissatisfied.

“Mainly the children who felt their parents had spent a great deal of time with them were the ones who felt the happiest,” Morris said. “It was the parents who made an effort to go to sporting events, to play board games, even though they worked. When I raise this issue with people contemplating late parenting they get very defensive.

“There is a tendency to say, ‘We will make wonderful parents. We’re settled, We have money.’ No one can deny that materially these children are very well off. But unless you are prepared to give a child something of yourself then it does seem rather indulgent to have a baby.”

Rewards and Adjustments

There are clearly great rewards for giving up other parts of your life to rear a child, but there also comes a dramatic adjustment period. In one year, Patricia Jacobs, 38, of Oak Park, Ill., got married, had a baby and relinquished her fast-track position as vice president of sales and marketing for Ken Blanchard, the “One Minute Manager.”

As she put it, “It felt like somebody put me in a Cuisinart, shook it up, and threw all the pieces on the ground.” The pieces are beginning to come together for Jacobs, who has taken on part-time consulting work and whose daughter, Emily, is now 11 months old.

“The last 11 months have been wonderful and they have been awful. I love the baby and I love being her mother--the challenge has been integrating everything,” said Jacobs, who is married to a doctor.

“The rewards are great but there is a price to pay. I’ve had to adjust to not having a place to go everyday and accomplishing and achieving. And it’s been hard to find a support group. Most of my friends are getting their children ready for bar mitzvahs (which comes at age 13.).

“Although I am someone who has kept myself in good physical shape, I’m 38, not 28, and I am tired a lot. I haven’t slept through the night for months. A child needs constant surveillance and involvement and care. If the fabric of our love as a couple hadn’t been genuine there would have been no way we could have gotten through this.”

Yet, Jacobs thinks about having another child so that Emily will have family members near her age. “My concern is down the road when Emily has to write down next of kin, she literally won’t have anyone.”

Washington architect David Jones echoed Neal Duncan’s observation that older parents tend to be “more relaxed” with their children. Yet Jones also has concerns about life down the road for his two sons.

“I’m 45 now, and I have an 8-year-old who I play ball with and a 2-year-old,” Jones said. “They keep me in good shape. But I’m a different man at 45 than I was at 35. I think about the financial commitment. When my second child is in college, I’ll be 65, a time when I might want to be slowing down at work.”

Another disadvantage, as Jones sees it: “We will die earlier in our children’s lives.” But when the inevitable occurs someday, his boys will have each other for support.

Comments From Children

During sociologist Morris’ research for “Last Chance Children,” only children expressed the most unhappiness.

“They are not likely to have grandparents for very long, and with no siblings to turn to, they must alone face aging, possibly ailing parents, at a time when they themselves are still young,” said Morris.

Carol Wolkow, 31, is confronting some of these issues alone today. Her father had a stroke, from which he has recovered, and her mother is starting to have memory lapses.

Wolkow grew up in Garland, Tex., went to college at nearby Southern Methodist University, and always lived near home so she could be near her parents. Seven months ago Wolkow, a successful real estate appraiser, made the “traumatic” decision to accept an appealing job offer and move to Los Angeles.

“Here I was 30 and single. I have been near Garland all my life. I had older parents who might live another year or another 20 years, and what was I doing with my life?” said Wolkow, her voice catching. “Was I going to revolve it around them or revolve it around me? I just didn’t feel that I was emotionally equipped to become a caretaker.

“They are my parents, but at the same time they are adults who are toward the end of their lives and I’m an adult who is at the beginning of hers. And I couldn’t stay there just because I’m the only one. That’s the pressure of being an only child.”

She gets back to Garland about once a month and telephones home once a week. Wolkow has no regrets about separating from her parents--it’s an emancipation she relishes.

“I was too close to them. In my own mind, there was an emotional chokehold there, an expectation I couldn’t fulfill.”

In lieu of brothers and sisters, Wolkow draws on her cousins for kinship. Given how her life has unfolded she still would consider having a child if she marries late in life.

“There is no reason why you shouldn’t have children up until the time you can’t as far as I’m concerned,” Wolkow said. “I did not feel cheated in any way while I was growing up. I mean, parents in their 40s and 50s are not old. We went on picnics. We went on vacations. And now I say to them, ‘I love you, love me and let me live the way I want to live.’ ”