Reply to Would like to hear from late 50, 60-somethings with teens

Forum Index » Eldercare

Reply to "Would like to hear from late 50, 60-somethings with teens"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Interesting thread.

My partner and I met around 40 and married and had two kids in relatively short order.  So now we’re in our early fifties with two older grade school kids.

On the one hand, energy is a bit of an issue.  We have to work a bit to keep up, my son will outski me in a couple of years, and I’m not quite as active with either kid as I would have been were I 30.  And we’re definitely the older parents at our school functions, though most don’t believe it because I’m blessed with a wife who looks ten years younger than she is.

On the other hand...

I work out quite a bit to keep up and keep healthy. So having kids as an older definitely motivates me to take care of my own health.

I am mentally and emotionally a *much* better parent than I would have been when I was 30.  I let a lot of little things roll off my back, and respond intellectually and with compassion when there are kid problems, as opposed to emotionally and with reaction.  I’m a lot calmer parent, and looking at our peer parents who are younger, our parenting is a lot more consistent and values-driven.  That’s not a knock on them, it’s just a benefit of maturity and stability that comes with being older.

I also get to learn from my friends.  Most of them had kids around 30, so they are sending them off to college now.  One, I get to see their parenting styles and learn from them.  Two, I see how their approaches worked out, and I get to see which ones produced needy, clueless kids and which produced Ivy League kids who have good heads on their shoulders and are compassionate, balanced citizens.  And three, they’re mostly looking around and saying “what now?” (and in some cases “who with?”)  Later parents don’t have that yawning chasm of four decades in front of them with nothing to do.

And financially it is worlds easier to be a later parent.  My wife and I busted our tails (and lived it up) before marrying.  We know what single life is like, and it was fun, and we’re done with it.  We had a much easier time agreeing on joint priorities and financial plans.  And we are in peak earning years well before college expenses arrive, and so are well prepared.  We don’t sweat the costs of travel league or enrichment courses.  Some of that is hard work and good fortune on our part, but some of that is simply where we are at in life.  The first few years were a lot of scrimping and saving, but hey, we had three year olds, we were too damn tired to go to Capital Grille anyway. Chinese on the couch was just fine.

Travel is actually a heck of a lot of fun now.  We have kids who will engage in life, right at the time when we have money and experience to pick great destinations and travel in style.  We can plan for Europe and Asia for lengthy trips that our kids want to join us in and will remember for the rest of their lives.  And in our 50’s, despite the view of some of the younger parents here, we’re nowhere near old enough where physical limitations are an issue.  I don’t think we’ll be tottering around Burning Man in our walkers just yet.

And when the kids launch and we’re in our early sixties, sure, we’ll miss them.  But we’ll miss them from some great two martini dinner restaurants.  We’ll bear up somehow.

We are not that concerned with being a health burden to our kids.  That’s on us to manage as parents, not them, and we have planned appropriately for care and insurance and coverage to not be a burden.  (We have those issues to an extent with our parents, and damned if we’re going to pass that on).  Again, older parents can have the experience and the planning to solve the problems that come up.

The biggest downside is grandkids.  We recognize that if our kids do as we did, we’ll be 80 when the grandkids are born.  That’s not a gimme obviously. and we’d be sad if we missed that.  But we hope to live well and healthily and make it to that time.  The health outcome correlation with wealth and with social connection is quite strong.  We hope that the advantage that late parenting provides will help manage that risk.

Sure, if you had asked us at the time we had the kids, we’d rather have started at 32 or 35 instead of 40.  But there”s a lot of pros to doing it on the timing we were given.  “Always look at the bright side of life, dah-dah, dah-dah#dah-dah-dah-dah”[/quote]

I get what you're saying but I don't think your life experience is limited to those who have kids after 40.  We had kids at 32.  They're now in late elementary and we're also in our peak earning years, we will have saved a ton by the time our kids get to college.  We're able to travel internationally every year and our kids can do every travel sport and extracurricular they want.  You don't have to be 55 to achieve this, most of us (in NW DC) get there by 45.    You may have an extra million+ in the bank than we do (as you're 10 years older) but I think the financial benefits of "waiting until you're older to have kids" kicks in for anyone who has kids in their early 30's or older. 
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics