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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here is what a typical 30-something will expect of her husband:
- Time: especially when she has her first baby. She’ll expect you to be there for everything and love it as much as a first-time parent. Take your turns with late nights. Take paternity leave to take care of her and the baby. Keep a quiet house - under no circumstances should your teenagers invite other noisy teens over with a new baby.
- 50/50 parenting and housework: nothing and no one else will absolve you of your responsibility to do half. If you have something with older kids one night or weekend, be prepared to give her a night or weekend off, too. 
- hanging out with other families with babies.  Your wife will need to build a social network of friends in your new life stage. You need to be a part of it. 
- Don’t shortchange your wife and new kids financially, physically, or emotionally.

If you're rational and love or care about the woman you're dating, you realize you can't meet her expectations and should get out of the way so she can find someone who doesn't already have kids and an ex-wife. [/quote]

No wonder so many women in their 30s are still childless. And now I understand why more and more of them are going into their 40s still childless and single. And I agree with them by the way they should not compromise. I just hope they are not delusional by the few success stories they hear and think that the pool of potential men is big enough. At that age it's tough.[/quote]

I agree with all the above. I know two families where dads had a second family with 1 (!!!) child only in their 50s with younger women. In both cases the men were millionaires paid for private schools and colleges of older kids etc. Even in these cases 1) one man only speaks to older kids via Zoom and they visit once a year max staying closer to mom and not wanting anywhere near his new wife and baby. The much younger wife screams at husband in public and scolds him for bad breath  2) in case 2 as soon as older kids went for college, the younger wife refused to  host them at the newly purchased family house on college breaks

Not worth it in my humble opinion [/quote]

Thanks for sharing this. It's so true. Very often people blame the men for abandoning their kids and so forth. But I'm reality in some cases the new wife is not innocent. Women can be very selfish as well. Some of these wives will promote an environment where the husband completely abandon his first family. [/quote]

I have some sympathy for the second wife because she just wants what everyone else her age has, which is a household focused on the children they have together. But that's not what she's signing up for. She's signing up for a household where the older kids are going to have activities and expenses, will bring home illnesses, and will have lifestyles that are not amenable to naps, feeding schedules, and other baby focused pieces of the life she thinks she's getting.

So she starts to push for the baby to come first, which by default means the older kids will be pushed to the side.[/quote]

All of this. Look, Wife #2 (or however many) is likely to feel like she's compromising quite a bit just by entering this situation, and she might not want to compromise any more. She's accepting an older guy, which means skipping her thirties in a weird way, a higher chance of prolonged widowhood, going straight from parenting to eldercare, etc. And it's a little embarrassing if she feels like she failed to attract a same-age partner and her kids don't have the kind of energetic dad that other kids do. She's accepting stepkids-- their presence, but also planning stepkids into EVERY decision she and her husband make-- and an ex and all the logistical and financial complexity that comes with. And she might be accepting having less kids of her own than she wanted to-- and the risk of having no kids at all or having to use donor sperm. It's really a rare woman in her 30s who sees this situation as her first choice, because it's disadvantageous to her and her bio children, and there's a lot of tension and resource competition built in. This is likely to feel overwhelming and difficult to OP, and to his wife once she starts parenting, and they'll give the older kids less and less until the older kids disengage. This is how this goes-- it's not because the dad intends it to be this way, but this is how the cookie crumbles.

OP, you are not a young man. By the time this baby is actually born you could be 50 or 51, and you'll feel a lot more tired than you currently do. And you are not a wealthy man. You already haven't saved that much for your kids' college. If you have another baby that will very seriously impact your ability to save any more. You say you "nor will I neglect" your children-- well is that really where you're setting the bar? Non-neglect? I just don't think you have your head around how expensive all of this is going to be. What would your budget look like after you pay for a wedding, baby, and baby's college fund?[/quote]

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