I was twenty-five when Ian was born. Fairly young, I suppose, but certainly not the youngest father ever, by any stretch of the imagination. The national average can’t be much higher.
I’m sure it’s safe to say that fathers like myself take youth for granted. Our bodies still do what we tell them, and do so rather quickly. I’m out of shape for a twenty-eight-year-old, but the fitness I do have is able to take up the slack in raising a three-year-old, with little apparent effort.
Though, the horsey does tend to canter with the three-year-old, where it used to gallop.
As potential parents wait longer and longer to have children, youth can no longer be taken for granted. Ian will be twenty-two when I’m the age Rand Cooper was when he and his wife had their first child:
Fatherhood, I Now Learn, Is a Young Man’s Game
By Rand Richards Cooper | The New York Times‘Lying there, I writhed in a misery that verged on despair. For 72 hours life had been serving up sweet joy and exaltation, but right now all I could think about was my failure as a father. I recalled years of boyhood sports fun with my own father—epic battles of one-on-one basketball, marathon tennis matches on hot summer days, followed by a race to the beach and a leap into the water.
My child, I was convinced, would never have that with me.’