When she hit a milestone birthday 13 years ago, Evelyn McHugh had double reason to celebrate.
"I had a combination 40th Over-The-Hill party and baby shower," says McHugh, who unexpectedly found herself expecting her first child as she began her fifth decade.
The Fair Lawn, N.J., mom met her husband, online, when she was 38, after an 18-year relationship ended with no pregnancy. But, lo and behold, daughter Jennie, now 13, was born when McHugh hit 40, and Katie, 12, followed when she was 41.
"The serendipity of not expecting that, and then suddenly finding it, has been wonderful," McHugh says of midlife motherhood.
"On the other hand, it's tough when you take your kids to school and you're old enough to be the grandmother of all their classmates."
McHugh is nonetheless happy to be among the estimated 27.8 million baby boomers in America who have young children. That figure comes from Focalyst, a research firm, supported by AARP Services Inc., whose recent comprehensive survey of more than 17,000 baby boomers found that 37.2 percent of boomers have children younger than 18 at home.
As the child of older parents, I'm especially interested in this subject. My parents tied the knot (for the first time) when Dad was 44 and Mom 36. They had me, the last of three, shortly before they turned 50 and 42.
No two parents could have been more treasured. Yes, there were disadvantages -- they could be over-protective and my dad was sometimes mistaken for a grandfather -- but the joys outweighed the challenges. My (stay-at-home) mom always said that having kids late kept her young. And my dad, despite a demanding job as a New York City judge, gave us his undivided attention at home. A Sense of Wisdom "In terms of what we know about people developmentally, there actually would be a big argument for having children later rather that earlier," says psychologist Pamela Rutledge, director of The Media Psychology Research Center in Boston and a baby boomer who often writes about boomer issues. The few drawbacks of older parenthood she cited include the likelihood of a wider than usual technological divide between parent and child. "It could take extra effort to emotionally adjust to technological changes, 'cause they're going faster than our brain cells can adapt," she says. But an older parent is more likely to be secure financially, more settled in career and sense of self, and "settling into a period of generativity," Rutledge says, using a term psychoanalyst Erik Erikson coined in 1950 to denote a concern for guiding the next generation.
"And I do think that you have a sense of wisdom and an ability to establish very clear priorities about what battles to fight and what not to fight." Frank Giammanco, 54, who has two daughters, 8 and 6, agrees. "You approach [parenthood] with a certain level of calm that maybe you didn't have when you were younger and self-conscious about so many other things. Where am I going in my career? Where am I going in my life?" says Giammanco, whose Maywood publishing company, First Vision Media Group Inc., was well-established by the time his children were born. He married for the first time at 29, and, after divorcing at 34, sold his suburban house and moved to New York City. "I was a bachelor. I had a nice career. ... It was a fun time in life, probably equal to the way another generation would have lived when they were in their 20s," he says."And then, around the time I turned 40, I thought to myself, I never thought that I would wind up being childless. ... So, it was very fortuitous that it just sort of came to me, and I also met a woman who was very dedicated to having a family and wanted that to be a part of her life." Open to New Things The best thing about midlife fatherhood? "As every parent experiences, their fascination with discovering new things becomes yours again. It awakens you," says Giammanco, who lives in Bergen County, N.J.
And the most challenging thing? "It's mostly just having the energy to deal with the kids and give the kids what they need and to participate in their lives." The same goes for Sonia B. White of Englewood, N.J., a 59-year-old teacher and mom of two teens. "You can't really run and hop and skip with them when you're getting older," White says. "Your body's saying, 'Slow down.' And their little body's saying, 'Come on.' " White married at 40, and a year later, she and her husband, James, had a son, James (now 18 and in college). They then had daughter, Jamila, now 15. "One of the pros is that you're more settled. You've grown up, and you've left the partying behind. ... I took my children everywhere with me. I enjoyed them," she says. She recalls how her son once asked her why the kids at school would say, "Here comes your grandmother," when she visited, but that wasn't a big deal for her kids, who keep her up on things, she says. "I think if I didn't have them, I probably wouldn't even have gotten a computer." While McHugh, the Fair Lawn, N.J., mom, has "always been a very high- energy person," she sometimes frets about her kids being in their 20s when she's in her 60s. She's also keenly aware of "generational" differences between herself and her daughters' friends' moms. "I remember when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, and it was their parents who saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan," she says. But McHugh recognizes that boomers are different from their parents' generation. "We tend to be a lot more open to new things, so I'm hoping I don't get set in my ways," she says, adding that her kids "definitely keep me young. I don't get to sit around and count my gray hairs."
