Ah, here comes Father’s Day again with its traditional half-arsed gifts — these days it’s all cans of gag-inducing BrewDog and sugar coma-inducing Lola’s cupcakes — and half-arsed ‘thanks’ to dads. It’s interesting to note how mums have become more popularly regarded as the gritty heroes they are, while dads are still mostly painted as either lobotomised drones who’ll only do childcare for pizza, or malicious grifters with one eye on the kids’ money boxes. Katherine Ryan said on her podcast recently that some women had been accusing her handsome, muscular husband of taking advantage of her, since he’s seemingly loving being the primary carer to their children while she goes off to work. ‘How anti-feminist can you get?’ she asked.
The big dad talking point recently has been about old dads. Given we’re in an era of extremes, the ‘talking’ has gone straight to ‘yelling’ with regards to the new dad status of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, which has been held up as the most nauseatingly immoral behaviour outside of the ITV green room. The oddity of these two screen Mafia legends, who have been dubbed ‘The Dodfathers’ (well, by us), timing their successful tommy-gun ejaculations as if locked in a Little Italy turf war, is uncanny. But their ages are the main issue of course: 79 and 83 respectively. Pacino’s girlfriend, Noor Alfallah, is 29, which is a punchy age gap, while De Niro’s girlfriend, Tiffany Chen, is 45, which is somewhat better optics — but both are fully grown women who can make their own decisions. Yet the ‘age appropriate’ chat has been less prevalent than the alarm over them being elderly dads. ‘It’s irresponsible because they’re about to die,’ has been the tenor of it, along with: ‘Imagine having those creepy old men dribbling on the side of your football game.’
The oddity of these two Dodfathers timing their successful tommy-gun ejaculations as if locked in a Little Italy turf war is uncanny
Well, if I may defend them: first, both are filthy rich, so it’s not terribly irresponsible when they’ll have teams of nannies to bring the child up in the lap of luxury and will also likely live to 100 themselves thanks to other teams of nutritionists and alchemists. Second, their example may act as a valuable reminder that contraception is required at all ages for men (and we men might want to, y’know, take responsibility for that). Third, when it comes to the visual aspect, well that’s just plain ageism. Even though Pacino and De Niro are at the extreme end, the fact is everyone is having babies at a later age. The average age of mothers is now 30.9 years, compared with 26.4 in 1973, and the average age of fathers is 33.7, four years older than it was in 1974. Last year, for the first time there were more new mothers over 40 than under 20.
This isn’t the Victorian era, of course you can have kids later, once you have your partying done and career somewhat established (obviously dads are not punished career-wise like mums in this respect). And, a bit of a generation gap when it comes to dads is not necessarily a bad thing. There are way too many dads trying to stay young and cool by skateboarding and listening to Kendrick Lamar. Kids need room to grow and something to bounce against, and a more experienced authority figure is preferable to kidults. The appeal of misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate to 15-year-old boys is that he has the personality of a 15-year-old boy. We don’t need more immature gym bunnies having kids who will inevitably grow up to be evil incarnate. Preferable by far, is to have older dads on the scene who have a more mature perspective. So long as they’re good, nice people, who cares if they’re on oxygen at the school nativity? Also: safer not to sneer, you might get whacked…
