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Honey Love

I have to say, I find it pretty enviable that De Niro has lived a life blissfully free of having to field questions about his biological clock, and him having a newborn he planned at 79 certainly throws into stark relief all the gendered double standards surrounding parenting, pregnancy, and timing. As a woman, my pregnancy would literally be medically labeled “geriatric” after the age of 35. Women start getting told to freeze our eggs in our 20s if we want to have any kind of career, and we suffer through unsubtle shaming about having children later than we’re expected to. I can hardly conceive of anything more “geriatric” than having a child at 79, yet I doubt De Niro’s doctors said a damn word to him about that.

They’re not gendered standards. They’re facts about gender.

8 thoughts on “Honey Love”

  1. I catch a paper boy
    But things don’t really change
    I’m standing in the wind
    But I never wave bye-bye
    But I try, I try.

  2. Women like the blokes to have lots and lots of dosh when they’re fathering their kids. This is more likely if the bloke is older.

    Yeah, I know this is simpler than one and one is two. But the bird sounds simpler as well.

  3. Never mind that the child will be missing out on a normal childhood by having a father that old. I had a school friend who was a very late child,his mother was in her late 40s and father in his mid 50s when my friend was born.When I met them I thought his parents were his grandparents, as dad was by now retired and shuffling round in slippers.His older brothers and sisters were grown and had children of their own so my friend was uncle to nieces and nephews older than him.
    People seem to forget that there is a third party (the child) in the decision to breed at a very advanced age.Material things do not make up for not having a dad to learn from.

  4. ‘Material things do not make up for not having a dad to learn from.’

    Well yes johnd2008. But if you don’t have enough material things, having your parents continually squabbling about how to make ends meet isn’t too good either.

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