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When people mistake 75-year-old Peter Bromhead for 3-year-old Oscar's grandfather, he's quick to correct them.
"It's great-grandfather, if you don't mind," he says. But he's just having a laugh. He's actually Oscar's dad.
It's a sign of the times. Those craggy older guys pushing prams and
strolling around with a small child in tow are, these days, very likely to be Dad rather than Granddad.
These creaky specimens all fit a similar description: for obvious reasons, they're generally older than their partners. They're also more likely to be affluent professionals who can afford children in their later years and obliging a woman who wants to have her first children. They're also often on a second or third marriage - in the United States these guys are called start-over dads, or SODs. In some cases though, they're just late starters, like US talk show host David Letterman, who had his first baby, with girlfriend Regina Lasko, aged 56.
The celebrity SOD list includes Paul McCartney, who was 61 when then-wife Heather Mills gave birth to the couple's first child Beatrice (his fourth), and the late opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, who was 67 when wife Nicolette Mantovani gave birth to daughter Alice. Actor James Doohan (Scotty in the original Star Trek) was 80 when he and wife Wende, then 48, had their third child. Singer Rod Stewart was 60, artist Pablo Picasso was 68, media mogul Rupert Murdoch was 72. Our own Don McKinnon, former deputy-prime minister and Commonwealth Secretary-General, was 59.
The world's oldest recorded father is purported to be Australian mine worker Les Colley, who was 92 years and 10 months old when his son, Oswald, was born in 1992. Colley died of pneumonia just four months short of his 100th birthday.
Greying dads are nothing new. The average age of dads in Western countries has been creeping up over several decades (see next page). However, white-haired dads are a relatively recent phenomenon. Their presence is marginal: according to the Centre for Health Statistics, among registered births in 1994 in the US, 2534 babies had fathers aged 60 or over, in 2004 that figure was 2127, so in each year dads over 50 accounted for barely 0.1 per cent of the total. However, high divorces rates, men meeting younger women and a longer life expectancy for the average male means an increasing number of men are embracing SOD-hood.
As a septuagenarian, Bromhead is near the edge of the older dad age spectrum but, now on his third marriage, the successful businessman is definitely a SOD. He had his first child at 21. The marriage ended and his ex-wife moved back to her native Germany with their daughter. He had three children in his second marriage, during which time he was building up a successful interior design business in Auckland and cartooning, which he took up at 38. He worked hard, "hell-bent" on being a successful designer, at one point commuting from the family's small farm in Tamahere, near Hamilton, to work in Auckland. The three children were sometimes lucky to see him, he says.
"I'm deeply aware how little time I gave my kids."
Bromhead still works hard, but, when third wife Carolyn, 42 years his junior, said she wanted to have children, time was no longer an issue for him.
"I'm no longer busting my boiler to prove myself and make money. I [live to] Oscar Wilde's quote that 'life's too important to be taken seriously'."
Auckland photographer Harvey Benge, 64, couldn't imagine life without his two later-life daughters, Lucy and Zoe, but says at the time he could have gone either way. His now ex-partner, 18 years younger than him, had no children and wanted them.
"Far be it from me to say 'sorry, I've had mine and I'm not having any more'. When the decision arose, if she'd said no, I would probably, with some relief, have gone along with that. [However] as we decided to have children, I wouldn't have it any other way."
Benge (the "ge" is pronounced as in "orange") was 48 when he had Lucy, now 16 and 53 when Zoe, now 11, came along. A stressful job in advertising, coupled with building an extension on the family house, meant time with his first three children "had to be squeezed in".
Benge now works from home and, while Lucy and Zoe live with their mother, he says he has more time for them. Photography takes him overseas a lot, he admits but they're in constant contact and the girls split their time between their parents' houses.
He doesn't see himself as an older dad anyway, and reckons the girls don't either.
"I'm not an old person. I have friends in their 20s and in their 70s," he says. All the same, he's willing to joke about his approaching decline.
"Mercy Hospice is at the end of the street and I joke to the kids that they can put me in a wheelchair and point me down the hill and let go, just phone them to say I'm on my way."
And he recalls another old-geezer moment when, after buying new running shoes and taking Lucy to the beach for what he hoped would be the first of their jogs, she quickly left him for dust. The shoes haven't been used since.
For Roger MacDonnell, things were different. The chairman and founder of ad agency Colenso, now Colenso BBDO, left his wife for the mother of his second family. Now 67, MacDonnell was 55 and 57 when daughters, Lilly, now 12, and Sophie, now 9, were born, and admits to "some initial embarrassment" about what his colleagues would think.
"I was at a stage when I was worried about what people would think. I'd just left a long marriage and things were sensitive. I did worry a bit about the ribbing I'd get from fellow directors about nappy changing and what have you. They all had grown-up families. It was a very transitory feeling."
MacDonnell had his first brood in his early 20s. Fatherhood coincided with his setting up Colenso in Wellington and the hours were long.
"It's fair to say I didn't spend as much time as I might have with my first family. It's just a different time of your life. The work pressure is just a consequence of your life."
Time is less of an issue now. As chairman of Colenso BBDO, his role is now more "godfather" than hands-on manager.
His first children all live in Auckland and all have their own offspring. They get on extremely well, he says, and hang out together. He notes with a laugh that some of his grandchildren are the same age or older than their aunts. To avoid confusion, they're all just "cousins" for now.
Benge and Bromhead both have a first child living in Australia and two in Auckland. Both say intersibling relations are good. Bromhead says his are "philosophical" about their dad's late burst, happy that he's still healthy enough to be a dad.
When it comes to older-age procreation, the age of the mother is still the biggest factor in the health of a child. However, lately, men have been in the firing line too. Medical studies have been doling out the bad news on a regular basis, over recent years showing that the declining quality of sperm is believed to be a factor in autism, schizophrenia and a swag of other serious health issues.
In June, a Danish study came to the conclusion that children are almost twice as likely to die before reaching adulthood if their fathers are aged over 45. Another Danish study showed that older dads have "less bouncy" babies; the babies of fathers in their 40s and 50s tend to be less robust immediately after birth than infants fathered by younger men, the 2006 study said.
Still, they're lucky if they can even get started. It's no secret that the largest number of Viagra users are aged over 50. Also, in 2003, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that sperm motility - its ability to swim in a straight line - declined with age, making pregnancy harder to achieve.
There is another issue too. By having kids when they know they may not be around to see them grow up, are older dads being selfish? A 1996 New York Times article on older dads stirred up spirited debate. One reader wrote, "To intentionally deprive a child of a father is an awful sin".
Age and health wasn't an issue for Benge and MacDonnell. Bromhead, however, was 72 when Oscar was conceived (without, he points out, any help from Viagra) and as a reasonably fit man was more concerned about how long he'd be around than his ability to bend over the cot.
"I had apprehensions, I knew I had a limited time run on this and I can only hope for the best. It's a painful thought that I might not see him to maturity or I might lose my marbles [before then]."
He plays tennis regularly (that's how he met Carolyn), noting that he beat a bunch of much younger tennis buddies at a tournament held for his birthday last year. Cartooning six nights a week keeps his mind going and, while he makes time for Oscar, he's no slouch when it comes to work.
At 72 he entered the Toronto Film Festival, where four of his Doodlebug animated cartoons were finalists. He's starting a new design-related business venture and writes and cartoons for local and offshore publications. His grandmother lived until she was 102, he says, so maybe genetics will be on his side.
One can't help wondering, too, whether having a baby, a toddler or a teenager around the house has changed these men in any way.
MacDonnell changed nappies, something he didn't do with his first children. He also reckons he's much less strict and "less of a wanker", but those attitudes simply come with old age.
He's more the "grandfatherly" type of father anyway, the "patriarch". A telling moment during early parenthood was when his first daughter wrote him a card saying "I love you Dad but you're very bosy [bossy]".
"I got accused of being a bit of an autocrat, but that's a consequence I suppose of running a company since I was quite young. You develop the boss syndrome."
Comparing himself to his sons, he doesn't get down and play with the girls as much.
"But I'm there for them, I take them everywhere, we talk a lot, that sort of thing. I think we're pretty close."
He also helps out a bit with their education. The girls are home-schooled by their mother, a former school teacher, and MacDonnell, who was once in a band, is "in charge" of music and PE.
Benge is more laid back too, and agrees it comes with getting older.
"I don't know if having kids has [made] me this way but I've become a more tolerant and patient person. I was more demanding [with the first family] because I was stressed."
He loves that they're able to do things he can't, proudly recalling how Zoe, who is learning the trumpet, wrote out the score to Happy Birthday and played it at her maternal grandmother's 70th.
"I can't get a note out of the trumpet. Just to see kids excel at what they do, in areas that are just completely foreign to me, is great."
Bromhead revels in the chance to live out a second childhood.
"When you get old like I am you sort of slip back to the creativity you had as a child. I'm finding going through their foibles quite gratifying. Basically he is a lot of fun. It's no trouble for me to walk up the road pulling a Thomas the Tank Engine and a row of trains. Once it would have been below my dignity. Now I don't mind sitting on the floor eating imaginary cake and opening imaginary doors."
No amount of prodding can dredge up any negative memories from Benge or MacDonnell. No moments of panic where they wondered what on earth they were doing changing a wet baby, soothing a tantrum-stricken toddler, or spending their weekends taxi-ing children from school to sport to social event.
Benge says his daughters have been "extremely easy and wonderful", to which he attributes "a good chunk" to their mother, who nevertheless asked that Lucy and Zoe not be photographed with Benge for this story.
Says MacDonnell, "they're both such a couple of special little people. Just knowing them, having them around is the most rewarding thing."
However the keen fisherman - he once represented New Zealand in big-game fishing - did have to give up his "obsession", a 12.8m launch, when the girls were little. He has no regrets, but it did take a while to let go.
"I gradually decided I'd sell it, not immediately because I thought that boat was so much part of my persona. But with two young kids you can't, it just didn't work, I just didn't have time and there was no anguish about selling it."
He now has a collection of guitars, a hobby "where there's somewhere to go in the house," he laughs.
Being the older dad among the kindy parents didn't bother him either.
"I very quickly became extremely comfortable with taking the kids to kindy, to primary school, chatting away to other parents who, even though they were somewhat younger than me, were probably not that much younger. It feels like the most natural thing in the world to me ... I don't go around feeling like I'm a bloody ageing, embarrassing old father."
After the initial euphoria of having Oscar, Bromhead says he was apprehensive about how he'd get on. And, as a dad still in the throes of nappies and projectile vomiting, Oscar's more negative moments are fresh in his mind. Like the time he covered a lamp with a sheet to play and could have set the house on fire had Carolyn not spotted it.
Life with a small child, he says, can be "like swimming in porridge". Everything slows down.
"Try doing up the seatbelt of a wriggling 3-year old when your eyesight isn't as good as it used to be," he complains.
Are they looking forward to the teenage years? Benge hasn't had trouble so far, MacDonnell maintains he's not intimidated at all.
"I feel I've been there and done that to a large extent. We're pretty close, and if they are [embarrassed] it'll be water off a duck's back."
Bromhead has a way to go yet, but hopes he'll stick around long enough to play tennis with Oscar. And hopefully long enough for his son to beat the old man.
The ticking clock
Dads are getting older. In England in 1971 the average age of a newborn's father was 27.2 years. Now it's 32. Latest figures show that each year more than 75,000 babies (one in 10) are born to fathers aged 40 and over. This includes more than 6000 born to fathers aged 50 or over. In Australia in 2004, the percentage of married men having children at 40 or older had almost tripled, from 5 per cent in to 14 per cent, since 1984. Meanwhile Statistics New Zealand's latest father figures show the average age of fathers of new babies is 33 years old, and one in 100 babies has a father aged 50 years or over.
While the numbers are there, there is a dearth of actual information about fathers in New Zealand, which makes it difficult to be sure the country has the right family policies, says Margaret McKenzie, University of Otago senior lecturer in family studies.
Family life is mostly tracked by finding out what mothers are doing, for example, their work and their age.
It's clear that gender roles in families are changing, yet statistics and census questions don't seek out what the elements of those changes are, she says.
"We know women are delaying their childbearing because they want to build up their career. Is that the same for men? What happens to men who are established in their careers and suddenly have demands on them to be a father? We know that it takes time and energy [so] how are they doing that if they're established in their careers?"
