So Robert De Niro is a dad again at 79. The news came casually during an interview to promote his latest movie, About My Father, with the actor correcting the host as if she’d said he’d won one Oscar and not two.
“Seven, actually... I just had a baby.”
He didn’t confirm it, but the mother is believed to be Tai Chi instructor Tiffany Chen.
Obviously, the world has something to say about it. A temperature check on Twitter reveals memes of skeletons changing nappies, a raft of crude suppositions about how the baby was conceived and a few frat boy-level gags about De Niro’s virility. A debate on Good Morning Britain took place discussing whether he was too old — and in it someone called him “selfish” — the perceived worst insult a parent can get.
I personally find other people’s reproductive choices dull: even if asking if people “want another one” was acceptable which it is not – I wouldn’t ask because I simply do not care.
What I do care about, however, is how fathers are treated in comparison to mothers all the way through the parenting process. Dads described as ‘babysitting’ or being called ‘hands on’ for changing a nappy are my two ultimate bete noirs.
While De Niro’s latest foray into fatherhood has faced some criticism it is a drop in the ocean compared to what his female counterparts experience. He has, as far as I can see, been largely treated with a sort of awe, a ‘how does he do it?’ wonder.
This gawping admiration and ‘wink wink’ ribbing is alien to all women for whom pregnancy is traditionally riddled with solemn judgement which deepens with age. For example, an expectant mother in the UK over 35 is having a ‘geriatric’ pregnancy.
But mothers are getting older: the number of women in the UK giving birth over 45 is on the rise — it was more than 2,000 in 2022, the highest level since records began 80 years ago. Plus, more than five women aged 50 plus gave birth every week between 2018 and 2021, according to the Office for National Statistics.
This is echoed by the number of famous women becoming mothers in their late 40s, something which always gives rise to full flavour opinions.
Hilary Swank gave birth to twins last month aged 48 and was accused of giving other women “false hope”. Good Morning Britain dedicated an entire segment pegged to Swank which asked ‘It is time for women to consider having kids younger?’
And you just thought: is this actually happening?
The difference between this and today’s De Niro debate was that De Niro was treated as an individual — his story does not give rise to discussion about what men as a gender should be expected to do.
When Dame Julia Peyton-Jones, who was the director of the Serpentine Galleries for 25 years, became a mother for the first time in 2017 at the age of 64 the unsolicited ‘feedback’ was vicious.
“It’s very hard to get your head around someone becoming a mother at an age which is not only well past the menopause but is just a grey hair short of a pension,” fumed Ulrika Jonsson in The Sun. “It reeks of selfishness — an utter disregard for the fact that the child brought into the world (whether by IVF or surrogate) may not have a mother around for many years due to her old age.”
Jonsson did claim that she felt the same about older fathers but stated that the input and physical responsibility of someone like Ronnie Wood (who had twins at 68) was considerably less than the women who carry the babies. But this reasoning collapses somewhat when you consider surrogacy – where the mother is not going to be pregnant or breast feeding.
There are health considerations and medical complications to take into account for all parents and especially older mothers and fathers — but why does everyone assume that older parents don’t know what these are? As if they haven’t seen numerous doctors on numerous occasions. Why is the default always a bad faith take that older parents- especially mothers — just want a baby at any cost and enter into it blindly?
What De Niro’s announcement has mainly highlighted is that as a society we are still bound by a sense of convention around parenthood and a father’s role.
It has also reminded us that Twitter and talking heads can be cruel — yet, multiply the negative feedback De Niro has received by 1,000 and you’re not even close to what ‘geriatric’ mothers in the public eye experience every day.
