Do-over Dads

THE YOUNGER "TROPHY WIFE," MARRIED TO A MAN SOMETIMES decades her senior, has long been the subject of speculation and gossip, satire and study. But husbands in these marriages haven't spent as much time on the cultural radar - though the famous ones certainly make the tabloids when, like Robin Williams or Joe Piscopo, they trade in an older wife to marry the nanny, or, like Saul Bellow and Tony Randall, they die and leave small children for their younger wives to raise alone.

In the last couple of decades, outside the world of the famous, there has been an increase in sightings of these "do-over dads." Men in their 50s, 60s, even 70s - many of whom already have grown kids - are discovering a new kind of fatherhood. They're pushing strollers, changing diapers, and helping with homework at a time in their lives when, only a generation ago, men their age were thinking about saving for retirement rather than college and checking out five-star restaurants instead of Chuck E. Cheese's. But it's not just age that makes these fathers notable. It's that they say they're much better at parenting this time around. And many say they like fatherhood better, too.

"The image of the urban dad with the nice stroller and graying temples is now an identifiable social type," says Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of The National Marriage Project at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Several factors at play in society have created this new demographic cohort. In addition to the oft-quoted fact that half of all marriages end in divorce, it's also true, says Whitehead, "that men remarry faster than women do, and they remarry more frequently."

The US Census Bureau does not keep track of people's ages when they remarry, but to a man age 50 and older, a younger woman can mean someone in her 30s or 40s. And the women in those age groups are bearing more children than ever before. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2003, the birth rate for women age 30 30 to 34 was 95.1 births per 1,000 women - the highest rate since 1964 and a 20 percent increase since 1991. The rate for women age 35 to 39 was 43.8, the highest level since 1965 and a 38 percent increase since 1990. From 1990 to 2003, the population of that age group increased by 7 percent, while the number of births to women of that age rose by 47 percent. During the same period, the birth rate for women in their early 40s increased 58 percent, from 5.5 to 8.7 births per 1,000 women.

Given that men can continue to father children late in life, more divorced men than women end up in a position to start new families. "The remarriage phenomenon for men is the norm," says Marilyn Yalom, a senior scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University in California and author of A History of the Wife. "Men can reproduce after 40 and 50 and 60," she says. "In a social sense, [it's] an advantage to be able to start again. And that's what these men are doing."

More important, this second chance at fatherhood, says Yalom, is changing these men. "It gives them the idea that they will do a better job the second time around," she says. This is because, for the most part, just like his mid-section, the second-timer's temper has softened as he's gotten older. His drive to build a successful career is no longer obsessively frantic; he may even be contemplating retirement. This dad is everything that kids love - devoted, patient, giving - and he isn't as focused on the issues that many younger parents face, such as the balancing act between career and family. He's not only old enough to be his kids' grandfather, he practically acts like one.

J. ALLAN HOBSON'S STATELY BROOKLINE Village house has seen a lot of 8-year-olds over the years but is home to just two right now. Hobson, an author and a retired Harvard University Medical School professor of psychiatry, at 72 is father to five children, ages 41, 40, 31, and twin 8-year-old boys. His wife, Rosalia Silvestri-Hobson, 47, has six other children from two previous relationships. The Hobsons have been married since 1996.

Though he is no longer practicing, Hobson keeps his dining room table piled with papers and the latest journals. When his first wife wanted a divorce in 1992, he says, he was reluctant to split. "I didn't want my marriage to end. It wasn't that bad for me," he says. "My wife wanted it to end. I had always wanted four children."

And after he fell in love with his second wife, a professor at the University of Messina, Italy, and a lecturer in the neurology department at Harvard University Medical School, he knew he would be starting another family.

"[Rosalia] wanted to do this," he says. "I mean, I told her, `I might die. I'm old, 'all these things. And then I was saying to myself, `I've done everything by plan all my life. Maybe I shouldn't worry about this.' I had no idea how much fun it would be. No idea. It's really wonderful. It's just absolutely magnificent."

Absolutely different, too. Though he still writes books, Hobson doesn't put in the hours he did as a young doctor working his way up in the world, and he doesn't travel nearly as much as he used to. As a young father, he had limited finances; today, funds are not an issue. He is at home in the evenings when his kids need to hear a story - something he rarely had time for with his older children. Today, he is far less inclined to erupt in anger, he says, a trait that made his older children fear him when they were young, he now knows.

On the other hand, there are different worries this time around, not the least of which include infirmity and death. Hobson had a stroke in 2001. He is still vibrant but often exhausted, and he fears that he doesn't have many years left. This, in particular, irks his children from his first marriage. "I look at these kids, who are destined to not have a father fairly soon," says one of them, son Christopher Hobson, 40, who lives in Connecticut with his wife and 6-year-old son. "There's a certain degree of selfishness and narcissism in that."

"In certain ways, he's more present, that's for sure. He's not as engrossed in his career," the younger Hobson says of his father. "On the other hand, he's not as physically capable of doing stuff with them. There's a time limit on his fatherhood. He's not going to be there forever."

He has a point: Is it really fair to have a baby when you're already pushing the average life expectancy? What happens as the children get older - when she wants to play soccer with her dad out back, or he needs to be picked up from a friend's house in the middle of the night? What happens when they go to college or marry and simply want a father to witness these milestones?

All older fathers have to deal with these uncertainties, says Dr. Mark O'Connell, an instructor in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of The Good Father: On Men, Masculinity, and Life in the Family. What's important, he adds, is that they face reality, especially the fact of their own mortality. After all, it won't take their kids long to recognize that their fathers are decades older than everyone else's. "It's complicated for kids in terms of having to confront, in ways other kids don't, the realities of time and aging and having to worry about parents' health," he says. "There's no way around this."

O'Connell and other experts are also quick to mention the jealousies that can emerge when the first set of children realize their father's resources - especially the financial ones - are now dedicated to the new brood. "If you are a child, college-aged, and just starting in your career and were hoping Mom and Dad would pitch in for your college or your first house, the parent is now consumed with the need of the younger children, and there's just not as many resources available," says Pamela Paul, author of The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony. "It will get particularly nasty way down the line," she adds, "when you get to the stage of wills."

Hobson knows his older children resent some of the choices he's made. He says he feels the gulf between him and them widening. That's typical, since in these scenarios, one family had to fail for another to succeed. Julia Haggerty, Hobson's 31-year-old daughter who lives in Montana, is touched to know he even acknowledges this. "I thought there was a lot of work to be done within our own father-child relationship," she says. "Investing time into having new children was definitely hurtful."

Her father thinks he knows how she feels, though he isn't quite sure. "I don't want to be surprised to read in the paper that my kids hate me. It's OK with me if they hate me, and if you find that out, you tell me," he says sternly. "It's a psychologically delicate matter. Right now, there seems to be equilibrium."

IT'S HARD TO DISCUSS THE "DO-OVER DAD" phenomenon without also considering the role of the new wife. She is most likely in her 30s or early 40s. She is probably well educated and has a well-established career. And she's realized that she wants a baby before it's too late. "That short period between 35 and 42 is a bit of a crunch time," says Yalom. "I think some of these women, who might not have settled for a 50- or 60-year-old man initially, are thrilled to be able to marry and procreate very quickly."

Eugene Fuchs knows all about this subject, even if it's from an unlikely vantage point. A urologist in Portland, Oregon, he's also a renowned vasectomy doctor who has tracked data about his patients for a quarter century. Recently, though, he's earned a reputation as a crack vasectomy reversal doctor - making him popular with all those wives and second-time husbands who hope to expand the family tree. A snapshot: Fifteen years ago, Fuchs performed, on average, 60 reversals a year. (Most are successful; it's a simple procedure.) In 2004, that number jumped to 150 - mostly men at least 44 years old with new wives at least eight years younger. He says his colleagues all over the country report a similar trend.

"It's the women" who are pushing this shift, he says. "No doubt about that. I sort of have an observation over many years of doing this: If a couple comes in together, it's the woman who's the driving force."

Which makes sense. These guys once thought they were all done with diapers. Most probably never would have agreed to have another child with their first wives. So, a lot of them didn't just need an operation, they needed to be reeducated about what would happen to their futures.

Pam Shorr, 48, had a few lessons of this sort to impart to husband Frank Shorr, 56, a former executive sports producer for WHDH-TV in Boston and now a journalism professor at Boston University. Even before the couple married 13 years ago, they broke up for a year because Frank, who already had a child with wife number one, didn't think that he wanted to start over.

He changed his mind, they went to the altar, and, 18 months later, David, now 12, was born. Then Pam started talking about child number two, and Frank resisted again. "This, by the way, is one of the biggest issues in second marriages," says Pam, who is a freelance writer. "This is my first marriage," she says. "This is my first go-around."

Frank needed to work through when he would retire if, in his 70s, his children were still in school. He had to make peace with the fact that he probably wouldn't know his grandchildren from this second family. He relented, and the Swampscott couple had a daughter, Bailey, now 7. His older daughter, Lindsay, is 26 and works as a lawyer in New York.

One of his early worries - that he would get sick someday and become a burden for his wife and family - came true. In 2001, Frank suffered a herniated disk in his back. For many months, he had to lie all day on the floor because of the pain. The pair had to buy a special van so he could rest in the back, supine, whenever the family went out together. Pam had to take care of the children and the house largely on her own.

"We went through almost two years with him really almost literally lying on the floor," says Pam. Today, Frank has recovered, but he can't do many of the things he used to love, such as running on a treadmill or playing basketball. And Pam continues to worry about his health. "I think more in terms of not death but illness," says Pam. "What happens if he has a stroke when he's 65? There are some serious issues that go on when we're still all trying to figure out how to pay for college. All of that is a reality, and it's a big issue."

It is the kind of situation many younger wives will face as their older husbands age. Jeannette Lofas, founder and president of the Stepfamily Foundation in New York City and a psychologist specializing in divorce and remarriage, has found the topic coming up more often in family-counseling sessions. She is particularly struck, she says, by how many of the wives don't think ahead 20 or 30 years, when they'll be in their 50s or 60s, healthy, still sexually vibrant, and - in their best-case scenario, if the worst is widowhood - taking care of an aged husband.

When the women get married, "they're thinking about this attractive 50-year-old guy," says Lofas. "Fifty can be quite attractive. Sixty can be quite attractive. But when you get to 80, it's a different story." Men live longer now, but most of these women are going to be widowed while they're still relatively young. Will they be playing the field again, maybe looking to marry a younger man the next time? Will the wives whose older husbands are still around put them away in care facilities? Or will they spend their days bedside, Lofas wonders, taking care of not only infirm parents, perhaps, but their husband, too?

"The [age] difference will catch up with the wife," says Yalom. "I have seen this over and over. The woman who marries, even at 30, a man of 50, that 20-year gap doesn't show itself at that period, and very often they have a good 20 years together. But it does catch up with the women. They end up nursing the older men, and they pay for it. They pay for that marriage."

Pam Shorr, for one, isn't worried. "Who the heck knows what's going to happen? I do think about it, and it is a reality," she says. A pause, and then: "To live life as if somehow you are in control of it is cutting out a whole hell of a lot of really interesting possibilities."

Carlene Hempel is a freelance writer in Arlington and a lecturer at Northeastern University's School of Journalism. E-mail comments to magazine@globe.com.