May 17, 2023 • 16 mins
It's This Week in Parenting, where Justin and Kylie look at parenting stories that are making the news.
Topics discussed:
- Why you need a does-band, not a husband, and what trend a US divorce lawyer is seeing
- Robert De Niro is a dad again at 79, but is that too old?
Find us on Facebook at Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families
Email us your questions and comments at podcasts@happyfamilies.com.au
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just wants answers.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Now, I'm actually going to take a position on this
that I didn't take on a current effect because I
wanted to be gentle. But I think seventy nine is
too old have become a.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Dad And now here's the stars of our show, my
mum and dad.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hello, this is doctor Justin Coulson, the founder of Happy
Families dot com dot au. I'm here with my very sore,
achy wife.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I can't believe you're telling everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
That Kylie has just started trying out a new form
of exercise and has muscles in places she didn't know
that she has muscles.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I might be literally the youngest person in the room
by about twenty years, but these Polarti classes are using
every single muscle in my body.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
How's the conversation with the way are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Now?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Well? This is the great Why are you doing plarties
with seven year olds?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
That's who goes?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Really, I'm sure there has to.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I feel like I'm seventy some days my body really aches.
But what I love about it is I'm a bit
unco I don't have good coordination and you get to no. No.
Whenever I go to exercise classes, by every single time,
the instructor will pull me out or you know, point
out where I'm going wrong and try to get me
to do it while I'm in front of you know,
(01:19):
twenty five other people, and it just makes me more
unco by the minute. Whereas when you're on the Reformer,
I don't see anyone. I can't I can't see what
anyone else is doing. They can't see what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
It's great, it's the Reformer. It sounds like a really
punishing exercise class. We're here to reform you.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Have you not ever seen the Reformer tables that what.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
You're talking about. I'm just happy to ride my bike
and go surfing. Hey, today's conversation were the parents of
six daughters, by the way, and today's conversation is this
week in parenting. Every so often on the podcast we.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
You didn't do it right?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
How am I supposed to do it?
Speaker 3 (01:58):
This week?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
In parent of the facial expressions, guys, I wish we
were videoing this so that you could see Kylie's face
when she does this. I'm sure that Jr. Has done
on the fancy sound effects to make you sound incredible
as you did that. Whenever there's parenting news, we kind
of like to play with it. We like to keep
our finger on the pulse. We like to let you
(02:19):
know that we know what's happening in the world of parenting.
And today, two stories that I think are really fascinating
about family life. One, there's a divorce lawyer on TikTok
who is saying that he is seeing more and more
women leaving their husbands for one core reason. We're going
to discuss that in a sec And Robert De Niro
seventy nine years old, he's a dad again seventh time around.
We're going to talk about that as well. Which one
(02:40):
should we start with, Kylie?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
They're both as bad as each other. Whichever one you.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Want, Okay, let's start with our divorce lawyer. The name
of the gentleman is Dennis R. Vitrano Junior. He is
a US divorce lawyer and this is what he had
to say on TikTok. It's gone viral.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
You want to know the major theme that I'm seeing
in the divorce industry as a divorce lawyer, as I
do consolets these days, I am seeing working moms doing
it all, and I'm seeing the husbands step back and say, Hanna,
I'm got to do a thing. She's got the kids,
she's got the grocery, she's got the laundry, she has
got the meals, she's got the work. And by the way,
she's making all the money and she's paying for the
house and doing everything else. I'm gonna go to the firehouse,
(03:17):
I'm gonna go play this. I'm gonna go hang out
with my friends. That's the thing. And women are tired.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Boom and it's blown up on TikTok. What's your initial response.
You haven't heard that before. This is brand new fe
you to hear and you didn't know what was coming.
What do you think of Dennis R. Vitrano.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Well, look, I don't want this to be a gang
up on dads because I think that when you look
at history, dads are doing more and are more hands
on than they've ever been before.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Well, many of them are. But what he's saying is
there's a bunch of dads who are out there that
aren't doing a thing. They're gaming, they're staying up late,
they're having drinks with the boys, they're cycling too much.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
My suggestion is going to be that it's not that
they've stopped doing stuff. They never did it. They never
did it from the very beginning, and it wasn't a
problem because it was just you and him. But as
the children have come along, and as circumstances have changed,
and maybe you weren't working and now you are, I
think there's a lot more going on than just dads
(04:19):
aren't being involved.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I remember a little while ago I was doing a
Happy Family's Premium member Q and A. So, for those
of you who are not familiar with what this is,
our Happy Family's website has a premium membership group. You
pay eighteen bucks a month t one hundred and eighty
dollars a year, So we'll give you two three months
if you sign up for the year, and we do
a monthly Q and A. And I remember a mum
saying I don't know what to do about my husband.
(04:42):
I'm absolutely drowning. I've got the three kids, and I'm
the one that looks after them. Not all of them
are at school yet, so I'm with them all day.
I'm constantly tied in the house, constantly looking after the kids,
doing all the school stuff. Doing the library, the sports
day of the canteen, all that sort of thing. And
then on the days that the younger kids do go
into daycare, I'm going to work to win the supplementary income.
(05:04):
And what he does is he goes to work and
then he comes home and he games. She said, He's
actually in the room next to me right now while
I'm asking this question, and he's playing shoot him up games.
The kids are running around the house, and I just
need help. And so when I hear a story like that,
that really gels to me with what Dennis Vitrano, the
(05:26):
Di Force law in the US, is saying.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
But my suggestion goes back to the fact that he
hasn't just picked up a gaming console.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Now this is live, long thing.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And so the writing is mostly on.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
The wall potentially, but now the wall needs some writing
described offer. I remember when you and I were early
in our marriage and I had this line that I
would share with you all the time. This is before
I had a PhD in psychology. This is back in
the pretty early days, probably the first half a dozen
years of our marriage, and you used to get kind
of cranky at me for reasonable reasons, I guess, But
(05:59):
I didn't know what those reasons were. And I would say,
if you just tell me what's wrong, I'll help. Like
it's not in my interest or your interest for our
relationship to be ugly and messy. Just tell me what
the matter is and I'll help. And you never wanted
to tell me. You just figured that I should know well.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
And I think that with a lack of maturity. I
guess what I thought was, you can see that I'm
running one hundred miles an hour. Why can't you just
pick up the pieces? Why can't you just fill in
the gaps? Why can't you see things and use your
initiative and recognize that if I do this, it is
actually going to lighten her load.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
And my response was always I'm a husband, not a
mind reader. And there's some really cool research that's out
of it shows that if you ask a couple who's
doing what percentage of all the different jobs that need
to be done, when they write down the percentages that
they're doing, and you add the two percentages together mine
and yours, it usually adds up to more than one
hundred percent. I usually think that I'm doing a little
(06:55):
bit more than you think I'm doing, and you usually
think that you're doing a little bit more than I
think you're doing, or vice versa. Anyway, it always goes
to more than one hundred percent. There's plenty of studies
on this, but the communications so important, like you've got
to let one another know because we're husbands not minder is.
But I had a thought, Kylie, what was your thought?
(07:16):
I thought, we don't need more husbands, we need more dusbands.
A husband who does really a doesband. I didn't actually
make that up. It comes from the Times of London article.
Here's what it says, the partner every woman should have
a duzband.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Well it used to be a snag.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, now's a duzband. The secret to a happier marriage,
more laughter, longer life and less anxious children. You won't
find it in a self help book or motivational Instagram post.
The answer is sitting next to you on the sofa,
or snoring gently as your scroll on your phone. The
answer might be out with his pals tonight, but he
put the kids down before he went so you could
finish up at work. You've heard of the new man
(07:54):
who cooks and the hands on dad who changes nappies.
But what you really need is a dusband. That's what
the times of London is so like a dustpan.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
So I know it sounds like I'm being a bit
hard on the women, because I am one, and I've
learned a lot of lessons over the years. I think
that as women, we actually are often our own worst enemy,
and we don't advocate for ourselves enough. And in plenty
of cases, I'm sure that the women are doing that
and it's still not being heard and acted upon. But
(08:28):
sometimes I know that over the years, I kind of
saw being busy as a bit of a badge of honor.
The more I could achieve in a day, the more
worth I was as a mother and wife. But it's
so it's so toxic, and it's so disempowering for women.
And if we can we can actually look into our
(08:50):
own lives and recognize the areas where we are actually
compounding the impact of what's happening, and then being able
to actually have a voice and articulate what it is
that we need. I wonder, if you know, as He's
seeing all of these these different couples and the challenges
they're having, I wonder how many of them are actually
sitting down once a week and planning the week and
(09:11):
going this is where I actually need your help.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Oh that's what we do.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
This is where you know, can you step in here
because I can't actually I can't actually do all of it.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Yeah, and just those three questions, what's gone well this week,
what hasn't and what do we need to work on
this week? Like just getting on the same page. The
quality of the interaction makes all the difference. So it
really just comes down to communication more dusbands. But every
now and again we need to remember that there are
some guys that aren't having a go and they do
need to kick in the backside and hopefully they will
do better. And I'm not going to blame the victim
(09:41):
on those ones, because there are some guys who really
do just need to lift their game.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Well, now that you've said that, I don't want anybody
to think that I'm blaming the victim here. That's not
what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
No, I know, I know, but I want to It's
being accountable.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yes, each each one of us plays a part in
a relationship, and it's about being accountable for what part
I play in it. And sometimes it actually stepping up
and going do you know what. I've expected that you're
going to do this, but I haven't actually articulated it.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Next, is seventy nine too old to become a dad?
What do you think? Seventy nine? Robert de Niro has
just become a dad. It's been all over the news.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
I know you have six kids, Shavan, Actually I just
had a baby. Yeah, congratulations.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
Actor Robert de Niro has welcomed his seventh child at
the age of seventy nine, but did not divulge the
gender or name of the child or who the mother is.
There is quite an age gap between his children, with
his eldest child recently turning fifty one.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
You know what, tell me, I actually don't care about
this stuff like this. Whatever he wants to do with
his life is totally up to him.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So can we just talk about the biology of this
for a sec Women have a and I'm going to this.
This is a terrible phrase to use. I actually feel
like I've stopped myself because I don't want to use it,
but I'm going to anyway. There's a timestamp, there's a
used by date on women's fertility. Right, the men don't
have We know that sperm degrades over time. The older
man gets the lower quality and the lower amount of sperm.
(11:08):
But guys can keep on having children as long as
they can find a willing, young enough partner to have
those children with. Men can keep on having children into
their sixties and seventies and eighties. Doesn't happen very much.
But Robert de Nira, I mean, holy smokes. I was
talking to the team about this the other day in
one of our meetings. I said, I'm going to talk
about this in the podcast. What do you think? And
everyone went really quiet, and a team member who will
(11:30):
remain nameless, I won't say who it was, but she said,
it's kind of gross, like seventy nine years old. And
she said, I'm in my I'm in my early forties.
That's kind of giving their way a little bit, but
not too much. She said, I'm in my early forties.
I can't imagine getting into bed with a guy who's
in his mid to late seventies. And then she paused
(11:52):
for a second. She goes, actually he is kind of handsome. No, no,
just look, just stop.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Well, clearly scenario has no issues. We're finding a healthy counterpart.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Really not.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
But for me, literally the only thing if I had
an opinion and I had to have, I had to
say something about it.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Oh, here we go. I just here comes to scoop.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
At seventy nine. How many more years does he have?
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Well? And then you have to have more children.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
You may know, I've got this child who becomes fatherless
because his dad's his dad's he's gone or not, maybe
not because of poor choices, because biologically it's his time.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So you're saying that a seventy nine year old father
is being selfish.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
No, I'm not saying that. I just you've got I mean, obviously,
Robert Denaro, he will be able to provide for this
child financially in every single way possible. This child will
not have a single want, but the intrinsic need that
we all have to have loving parents there to guide
and direct and.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Just to love us. Well. I was on a current affair.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
It's taken from him.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
To talk about this. It was a big enough story
that I was in a current affair just the other
day talking about it, and I dived into the research
and I found that they are both negative and positives
to being an older parent. It's mostly going to be
an older dad because Like I said, there's that expiry
date I guess on ovulation and the capacity to carry
a child as a woman negatives sperm degradation. It's associated
(13:26):
with some pretty challenging health and psychological issues, neurological issues, autism,
spectrum disorders go up. Also, a study from Stanford looking
at forty million births found that there was a higher
risk of birth defects fourteen percent, increase in premature birth,
fourteen percent, more likely to be low weight, eighteen percent
(13:49):
more likely to have seizures. That's comparing dads who are
over forty five with dads who are under thirty.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Five, where you'd have a similar list though for a mother.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Over forty Yeah, that's right. Well you considered what's the
technical term that they use at like a high risk
birth if you're over thirty five is what they call it. Yeah,
but the pluses and the pluses are actually pretty substantial.
So We've got a friend who is sixty years old
and he's got a four year old, and I just
love watching him with his son because he's so in
(14:19):
love with being a dad as an older guy.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Well, in some ways, the child gets the benefits of
having an experienced dad who's been through a number of
times a lon't all of his lessons, but also kind
of a grandparent.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, that's kind of how he is and so laid back.
He's so much fun. He has that time. And the
research shows that older dads tend to be more financially
better off, and so do their kids. They also, interestingly,
on average, have slightly higher IQs. Don't know why. A
British medical journal from twenty twelve showed that kids that
are born to older parents are more likely to have
(14:56):
higher levels of emotional health. I'm pretty sure that's because
of the quality of the emotional investment in children that
comes from those.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Older people say it can be their twenty four.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
To seven and a twenty sixteen Danish study with more
than thirty thousand people, and it found that older parents
do tend to be better parents. They're also better educated,
they've got more life experience. So I'm still going to
go with I'm actually going to take a position on
this that I didn't take on a current affair because
I wanted to be gentle. But I think seventy nine
is too old to become a dad. I just I
agree with you. I'm not into that, but for older
(15:27):
parents generally, that is, parents who are able to be
rearing their children up to their fifties and even their sixties,
it seems like there's a whole lot of evidence that
supports it. And other than the fact that your biological
prime is in your twenties, that's the best time to
be having physiologically having babies. There's plenty of advantages to
waiting a while. And given that the average age of
(15:49):
paternity now first time paternity is about thirty one in
Australia and the average mum is about twenty nine and
a half to thirty for the first time first time mothering,
I think that it's probably not a bad thing that
that's happening, and it seems to be working out reasonably
well according to the research.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
If I had a choice between greater IQ or having
my dad, I'd pick my dad every time.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Oh jem, I'm talking to you about this stuff. The
Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media.
Craig Bruce is our executive producer. Thanks so much for
listening to this Week in Parenting. We'll be back tomorrow
with I'll Do Better Tomorrow. On The Happy Families podcast
It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
time poor parent who just wants answers.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Now, I'm actually going to take a position on this
that I didn't take on a current effect because I
wanted to be gentle. But I think seventy nine is
too old have become a.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Dad And now here's the stars of our show, my
mum and dad.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hello, this is doctor Justin Coulson, the founder of Happy
Families dot com dot au. I'm here with my very sore,
achy wife.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
I can't believe you're telling everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
That Kylie has just started trying out a new form
of exercise and has muscles in places she didn't know
that she has muscles.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I might be literally the youngest person in the room
by about twenty years, but these Polarti classes are using
every single muscle in my body.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
How's the conversation with the way are you doing?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Now?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Well? This is the great Why are you doing plarties
with seven year olds?
Speaker 3 (00:55):
That's who goes?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Really, I'm sure there has to.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I feel like I'm seventy some days my body really aches.
But what I love about it is I'm a bit
unco I don't have good coordination and you get to no. No.
Whenever I go to exercise classes, by every single time,
the instructor will pull me out or you know, point
out where I'm going wrong and try to get me
to do it while I'm in front of you know,
(01:19):
twenty five other people, and it just makes me more
unco by the minute. Whereas when you're on the Reformer,
I don't see anyone. I can't I can't see what
anyone else is doing. They can't see what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
It's great, it's the Reformer. It sounds like a really
punishing exercise class. We're here to reform you.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Have you not ever seen the Reformer tables that what.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
You're talking about. I'm just happy to ride my bike
and go surfing. Hey, today's conversation were the parents of
six daughters, by the way, and today's conversation is this
week in parenting. Every so often on the podcast we.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
You didn't do it right?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
How am I supposed to do it?
Speaker 3 (01:58):
This week?
Speaker 2 (01:59):
In parent of the facial expressions, guys, I wish we
were videoing this so that you could see Kylie's face
when she does this. I'm sure that Jr. Has done
on the fancy sound effects to make you sound incredible
as you did that. Whenever there's parenting news, we kind
of like to play with it. We like to keep
our finger on the pulse. We like to let you
(02:19):
know that we know what's happening in the world of parenting.
And today, two stories that I think are really fascinating
about family life. One, there's a divorce lawyer on TikTok
who is saying that he is seeing more and more
women leaving their husbands for one core reason. We're going
to discuss that in a sec And Robert De Niro
seventy nine years old, he's a dad again seventh time around.
We're going to talk about that as well. Which one
(02:40):
should we start with, Kylie?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
They're both as bad as each other. Whichever one you.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Want, Okay, let's start with our divorce lawyer. The name
of the gentleman is Dennis R. Vitrano Junior. He is
a US divorce lawyer and this is what he had
to say on TikTok. It's gone viral.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
You want to know the major theme that I'm seeing
in the divorce industry as a divorce lawyer, as I
do consolets these days, I am seeing working moms doing
it all, and I'm seeing the husbands step back and say, Hanna,
I'm got to do a thing. She's got the kids,
she's got the grocery, she's got the laundry, she has
got the meals, she's got the work. And by the way,
she's making all the money and she's paying for the
house and doing everything else. I'm gonna go to the firehouse,
(03:17):
I'm gonna go play this. I'm gonna go hang out
with my friends. That's the thing. And women are tired.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Boom and it's blown up on TikTok. What's your initial response.
You haven't heard that before. This is brand new fe
you to hear and you didn't know what was coming.
What do you think of Dennis R. Vitrano.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Well, look, I don't want this to be a gang
up on dads because I think that when you look
at history, dads are doing more and are more hands
on than they've ever been before.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Well, many of them are. But what he's saying is
there's a bunch of dads who are out there that
aren't doing a thing. They're gaming, they're staying up late,
they're having drinks with the boys, they're cycling too much.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
My suggestion is going to be that it's not that
they've stopped doing stuff. They never did it. They never
did it from the very beginning, and it wasn't a
problem because it was just you and him. But as
the children have come along, and as circumstances have changed,
and maybe you weren't working and now you are, I
think there's a lot more going on than just dads
(04:19):
aren't being involved.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I remember a little while ago I was doing a
Happy Family's Premium member Q and A. So, for those
of you who are not familiar with what this is,
our Happy Family's website has a premium membership group. You
pay eighteen bucks a month t one hundred and eighty
dollars a year, So we'll give you two three months
if you sign up for the year, and we do
a monthly Q and A. And I remember a mum
saying I don't know what to do about my husband.
(04:42):
I'm absolutely drowning. I've got the three kids, and I'm
the one that looks after them. Not all of them
are at school yet, so I'm with them all day.
I'm constantly tied in the house, constantly looking after the kids,
doing all the school stuff. Doing the library, the sports
day of the canteen, all that sort of thing. And
then on the days that the younger kids do go
into daycare, I'm going to work to win the supplementary income.
(05:04):
And what he does is he goes to work and
then he comes home and he games. She said, He's
actually in the room next to me right now while
I'm asking this question, and he's playing shoot him up games.
The kids are running around the house, and I just
need help. And so when I hear a story like that,
that really gels to me with what Dennis Vitrano, the
(05:26):
Di Force law in the US, is saying.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
But my suggestion goes back to the fact that he
hasn't just picked up a gaming console.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Now this is live, long thing.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And so the writing is mostly on.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
The wall potentially, but now the wall needs some writing
described offer. I remember when you and I were early
in our marriage and I had this line that I
would share with you all the time. This is before
I had a PhD in psychology. This is back in
the pretty early days, probably the first half a dozen
years of our marriage, and you used to get kind
of cranky at me for reasonable reasons, I guess, But
(05:59):
I didn't know what those reasons were. And I would say,
if you just tell me what's wrong, I'll help. Like
it's not in my interest or your interest for our
relationship to be ugly and messy. Just tell me what
the matter is and I'll help. And you never wanted
to tell me. You just figured that I should know well.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
And I think that with a lack of maturity. I
guess what I thought was, you can see that I'm
running one hundred miles an hour. Why can't you just
pick up the pieces? Why can't you just fill in
the gaps? Why can't you see things and use your
initiative and recognize that if I do this, it is
actually going to lighten her load.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
And my response was always I'm a husband, not a
mind reader. And there's some really cool research that's out
of it shows that if you ask a couple who's
doing what percentage of all the different jobs that need
to be done, when they write down the percentages that
they're doing, and you add the two percentages together mine
and yours, it usually adds up to more than one
hundred percent. I usually think that I'm doing a little
(06:55):
bit more than you think I'm doing, and you usually
think that you're doing a little bit more than I
think you're doing, or vice versa. Anyway, it always goes
to more than one hundred percent. There's plenty of studies
on this, but the communications so important, like you've got
to let one another know because we're husbands not minder is.
But I had a thought, Kylie, what was your thought?
(07:16):
I thought, we don't need more husbands, we need more dusbands.
A husband who does really a doesband. I didn't actually
make that up. It comes from the Times of London article.
Here's what it says, the partner every woman should have
a duzband.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Well it used to be a snag.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, now's a duzband. The secret to a happier marriage,
more laughter, longer life and less anxious children. You won't
find it in a self help book or motivational Instagram post.
The answer is sitting next to you on the sofa,
or snoring gently as your scroll on your phone. The
answer might be out with his pals tonight, but he
put the kids down before he went so you could
finish up at work. You've heard of the new man
(07:54):
who cooks and the hands on dad who changes nappies.
But what you really need is a dusband. That's what
the times of London is so like a dustpan.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
So I know it sounds like I'm being a bit
hard on the women, because I am one, and I've
learned a lot of lessons over the years. I think
that as women, we actually are often our own worst enemy,
and we don't advocate for ourselves enough. And in plenty
of cases, I'm sure that the women are doing that
and it's still not being heard and acted upon. But
(08:28):
sometimes I know that over the years, I kind of
saw being busy as a bit of a badge of honor.
The more I could achieve in a day, the more
worth I was as a mother and wife. But it's
so it's so toxic, and it's so disempowering for women.
And if we can we can actually look into our
(08:50):
own lives and recognize the areas where we are actually
compounding the impact of what's happening, and then being able
to actually have a voice and articulate what it is
that we need. I wonder, if you know, as He's
seeing all of these these different couples and the challenges
they're having, I wonder how many of them are actually
sitting down once a week and planning the week and
(09:11):
going this is where I actually need your help.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Oh that's what we do.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
This is where you know, can you step in here
because I can't actually I can't actually do all of it.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Yeah, and just those three questions, what's gone well this week,
what hasn't and what do we need to work on
this week? Like just getting on the same page. The
quality of the interaction makes all the difference. So it
really just comes down to communication more dusbands. But every
now and again we need to remember that there are
some guys that aren't having a go and they do
need to kick in the backside and hopefully they will
do better. And I'm not going to blame the victim
(09:41):
on those ones, because there are some guys who really
do just need to lift their game.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Well, now that you've said that, I don't want anybody
to think that I'm blaming the victim here. That's not
what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
No, I know, I know, but I want to It's
being accountable.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yes, each each one of us plays a part in
a relationship, and it's about being accountable for what part
I play in it. And sometimes it actually stepping up
and going do you know what. I've expected that you're
going to do this, but I haven't actually articulated it.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Next, is seventy nine too old to become a dad?
What do you think? Seventy nine? Robert de Niro has
just become a dad. It's been all over the news.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
I know you have six kids, Shavan, Actually I just
had a baby. Yeah, congratulations.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
Actor Robert de Niro has welcomed his seventh child at
the age of seventy nine, but did not divulge the
gender or name of the child or who the mother is.
There is quite an age gap between his children, with
his eldest child recently turning fifty one.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
You know what, tell me, I actually don't care about
this stuff like this. Whatever he wants to do with
his life is totally up to him.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
So can we just talk about the biology of this
for a sec Women have a and I'm going to this.
This is a terrible phrase to use. I actually feel
like I've stopped myself because I don't want to use it,
but I'm going to anyway. There's a timestamp, there's a
used by date on women's fertility. Right, the men don't
have We know that sperm degrades over time. The older
man gets the lower quality and the lower amount of sperm.
(11:08):
But guys can keep on having children as long as
they can find a willing, young enough partner to have
those children with. Men can keep on having children into
their sixties and seventies and eighties. Doesn't happen very much.
But Robert de Nira, I mean, holy smokes. I was
talking to the team about this the other day in
one of our meetings. I said, I'm going to talk
about this in the podcast. What do you think? And
everyone went really quiet, and a team member who will
(11:30):
remain nameless, I won't say who it was, but she said,
it's kind of gross, like seventy nine years old. And
she said, I'm in my I'm in my early forties.
That's kind of giving their way a little bit, but
not too much. She said, I'm in my early forties.
I can't imagine getting into bed with a guy who's
in his mid to late seventies. And then she paused
(11:52):
for a second. She goes, actually he is kind of handsome. No, no,
just look, just stop.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Well, clearly scenario has no issues. We're finding a healthy counterpart.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Really not.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
But for me, literally the only thing if I had
an opinion and I had to have, I had to
say something about it.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Oh, here we go. I just here comes to scoop.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
At seventy nine. How many more years does he have?
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Well? And then you have to have more children.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
You may know, I've got this child who becomes fatherless
because his dad's his dad's he's gone or not, maybe
not because of poor choices, because biologically it's his time.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So you're saying that a seventy nine year old father
is being selfish.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
No, I'm not saying that. I just you've got I mean, obviously,
Robert Denaro, he will be able to provide for this
child financially in every single way possible. This child will
not have a single want, but the intrinsic need that
we all have to have loving parents there to guide
and direct and.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Just to love us. Well. I was on a current affair.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
It's taken from him.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
To talk about this. It was a big enough story
that I was in a current affair just the other
day talking about it, and I dived into the research
and I found that they are both negative and positives
to being an older parent. It's mostly going to be
an older dad because Like I said, there's that expiry
date I guess on ovulation and the capacity to carry
a child as a woman negatives sperm degradation. It's associated
(13:26):
with some pretty challenging health and psychological issues, neurological issues, autism,
spectrum disorders go up. Also, a study from Stanford looking
at forty million births found that there was a higher
risk of birth defects fourteen percent, increase in premature birth,
fourteen percent, more likely to be low weight, eighteen percent
(13:49):
more likely to have seizures. That's comparing dads who are
over forty five with dads who are under thirty.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Five, where you'd have a similar list though for a mother.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Over forty Yeah, that's right. Well you considered what's the
technical term that they use at like a high risk
birth if you're over thirty five is what they call it. Yeah,
but the pluses and the pluses are actually pretty substantial.
So We've got a friend who is sixty years old
and he's got a four year old, and I just
love watching him with his son because he's so in
(14:19):
love with being a dad as an older guy.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Well, in some ways, the child gets the benefits of
having an experienced dad who's been through a number of
times a lon't all of his lessons, but also kind
of a grandparent.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah, that's kind of how he is and so laid back.
He's so much fun. He has that time. And the
research shows that older dads tend to be more financially
better off, and so do their kids. They also, interestingly,
on average, have slightly higher IQs. Don't know why. A
British medical journal from twenty twelve showed that kids that
are born to older parents are more likely to have
(14:56):
higher levels of emotional health. I'm pretty sure that's because
of the quality of the emotional investment in children that
comes from those.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Older people say it can be their twenty four.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
To seven and a twenty sixteen Danish study with more
than thirty thousand people, and it found that older parents
do tend to be better parents. They're also better educated,
they've got more life experience. So I'm still going to
go with I'm actually going to take a position on
this that I didn't take on a current affair because
I wanted to be gentle. But I think seventy nine
is too old to become a dad. I just I
agree with you. I'm not into that, but for older
(15:27):
parents generally, that is, parents who are able to be
rearing their children up to their fifties and even their sixties,
it seems like there's a whole lot of evidence that
supports it. And other than the fact that your biological
prime is in your twenties, that's the best time to
be having physiologically having babies. There's plenty of advantages to
waiting a while. And given that the average age of
(15:49):
paternity now first time paternity is about thirty one in
Australia and the average mum is about twenty nine and
a half to thirty for the first time first time mothering,
I think that it's probably not a bad thing that
that's happening, and it seems to be working out reasonably
well according to the research.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
If I had a choice between greater IQ or having
my dad, I'd pick my dad every time.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Oh jem, I'm talking to you about this stuff. The
Happy Families podcast is produced by Justin Roland from Bridge Media.
Craig Bruce is our executive producer. Thanks so much for
listening to this Week in Parenting. We'll be back tomorrow
with I'll Do Better Tomorrow. On The Happy Families podcast
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