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Careers that must keep on giving

One more time

October 27, 2000
Web posted at: 6:14 p.m. EDT (2214 GMT)

In this story: New lease or leash on life? If at first you don't succeed RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Larry Keller
CNN.com/career Senior Writer

(CNN) -- "I sometimes ask myself if my life isn't more restricted than I wanted at this time."

This isn't how Alan Cox envisioned his 40s. A neighborhood development specialist with the city of Toledo, Ohio, Cox, 47, figured that after so many years in the work force, his bills now would be shrinking, his savings growing.

But he remarried six years ago. And started a new family. Son Morgan turned 4 in July. From another marriage, Cox has a 19-year-old daughter. He's been helping her financially too.

After his daughter graduated from high school, Cox offered to pay the first two years of her college tuition. "I just finished making the final payment," he says. "I had to liquidate some of my IRAs to do that."

Cox had envisioned doing a lot of traveling at this point in life, especially on cruises. Instead, family vacations now consist of visiting his parents or those of his wife. One of the benefits: No hotel expenses.

It's been worth it, Cox says, proud of Morgan. "He's a great kid."

But second-time fatherhood isn't something Cox built into his career expectations originally.

It's hard to gauge how many men have begun second families in middle age. In their 1995 book -- "Fathers of a Certain Age: The Joys and Problems of Middle-aged Fatherhood" (Fairview Press, 1995) -- father and son Martin and David Carnoy estimate that in 1990 more than 400,000 men ages 45 and up were fathers of younger children in the United States.

Financial planner William Connors says he sees plenty of them in his business in Waltham, Massachusetts.

A middle-age man with a young family often finds he has some hard financial choices to make, Connors says. By the time he's in his 50s, a man typically wants to be conservative with money he has set aside for retirement. But now he may need to invest aggressively, and at greater risk, in order to generate more money for his new family.

"Couples can end up yelling and screaming about it," Connors says. "It opens up a can of worms."

The alternative to investing in high-yield, high-risk stocks: Retiring later than planned, Connors says. "That's one of the other options. If you don't want to take financial risks, you work longer. And your company may have something to say about that."

These delayed-daddy dilemmas aren't faced only by men who are becoming biological fathers again. Some are marrying women with youngsters from earlier marriages.

But for most men, specialists say it's not as grim as it sounds.

They say many women now earn good incomes of their own. So a second-time dad's first wife probably is working, even if he's paying child support. And chances are his new wife is, too, says Barbara Risman, professor of sociology at North Carolina State University and co-editor of the journal, Contemporary Sociology.

"It's more possible to do this economically now than in the past generation," Risman says.

And finances aside, a lot of second-time dads say they're thoroughly enjoying the experience of raising a child again.

A second crack at fatherhood gives many men a chance for a kind of daddy redemption, says Bruce Linton, a Berkeley, California, marriage and family therapist. Linton is the founder of Fathers' Forum, which counsels men on parenting issues.

Linton says some of these men were so busy with their careers initially that their kids were grown up before they knew it.

"Some of these dads missed out the first time around," Linton says. "Now they're less driven. They're more secure in their careers. I don't see them having a passion for materialism, but a passion for family."

PERTINENT QUESTIONS
	If you became a second-time dad, would you have these bases covered?

Author Martin Carnoy, a Stanford University professor, says he found this to be true for most of the older fathers he interviewed. And true for himself. In his early 50s Carnoy and his second wife adopted a girl. Carnoy's sons by his first wife were 25 and 26 at the time.

Now he's more patient, says Carnoy, whose daughter is 9. "I'm even coaching little girls' soccer."

In his book, Carnoy adds, " We older dads ... know our possibilities and limitations, so we're not trying so much to prove to the world who we are."

Cox, the second-time dad in Toledo, ended his marriage with his first wife before their daughter's first birthday. "Now I have a new opportunity to raise a child and be a part of his life throughout the whole thing," he says.

Men married to younger women may also find their spouses demand that husbands share more equally in parenting, says Margorie Engel, president of the nonprofit Stepfamily Association of America.

"The second wives aren't being as docile in their demands," she says. She calls the offspring of these couples "concrete babies" -- children born to cement a relationship.

Still, child rearing in the United States is more expensive than ever and not to be taken lightly by a second-time dad. It's one thing if you're as wealthy as, presumably, are Michael Douglas and Anthony Quinn, actors playing the role of Daddy Redux late in life.

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Quinn, 85, has fathered 13 children. The last two were born in 1994 and 1996 to his secretary, Kathy Benvin, whom he married. Douglas, 55, and actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, 30, are expecting a baby later this year. He has a son, 20, from an earlier marriage.

But for men of more modest means, starting fatherhood a second time can be financially daunting. "It's tough," says Linton, the Berkeley marriage and family therapist. "If you're not a Hollywood dad, you have to re-examine how you see work. You have to see how it fits your lifestyle."

Clothing, health care, transportation -- all the costs associated with child rearing -- increase as kids get older. And second-time dads often are floored to learn what clothing and shoes cost for a child now. The contemporary lust for designer names was largely absent when now mature children were growing up, says Engel of the stepfamily association.

So if you become a new father at 50, your child may put a bigger dent in your finances when you're 64 than when you're 54. At the very age when many men are contemplating afternoons napping in a hammock or noodling around in the basement, the financial demands of fatherhood are greater than ever.

And that's before factoring in college costs. The average tuition charged by public four-year colleges and universities for the 1999-00 academic year is $3,356, according to the College Board, a national membership association of schools and colleges. Private four-year college tuition averages $15,380.

These and other kid-raising costs have driven some men to tap their retirement funds to make payments, says Connors, the financial planner.

No wonder then that many of the second-time dads that Linton says he counsels are self-employed or simply don't think about retiring by a certain age.

"They just see themselves as continuing to work."

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Fathers' Forum Online
Stepfamily Association of America

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