Next White House resident may be an older dad

I noted back in May that when Tony Blair handed over the title of British Prime Minister to Gordon Brown, it was a changing of the guard from one older dad to another.

Turns out that the older-dad trend for the rich and powerful isn't just a Brit phenomenon. Look at some of the front-runners among the '08 race for the presidency:

On the Republican side, 65-year-old Fred Thompson has an infant son, Samuel. Joining him are fellow front-runners John McCain (has post-40 children both biologically and through adoption) and Rudy Giuliani. (Apparently Giuliani hasn't done as well balancing politics and parenthood - it's been widely reported that his children, now grown, do not support his bid for the presidency.)

Among the Democratic hopefuls, John Edwards, 54, had two children after he turned 40 - daughter Emma Claire, 9, and son Jack, 7. Barak Obama (b. 1961) had his second daughter, Sasha, in 2001. I'm not sure if he had hit 40 yet or not, but close enough in my book.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about watching older candidates schlep around their young children on the campaign trail. Here's a take from a recent column by NYT columnist Gail Collins, written shortly after Thompson entered the race:

It's not unusual for wealthy men to decide they can dive into fatherhood and Social Security at the same time. This presidential field is awash with candidates of late-middle-age whose kids can still qualify for Breakfast with Santa. But none are quite so old or have children quite so young as Thompson's. And these days it's hard for an overage dad to get away with absentee fatherhood, especially when mom is intimately involved in the management of his campaign, as Jeri Thompson, seems to be... Maybe the combination of kids and campaigning has left him too ground down to glad hand. Too pooped to pander.

Yeesh, not exactly "Father Knows Best," is it?

Photo: Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson, center, is joined on stage by family members as he campaigns in his hometown of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., Saturday, Sept. 15, 2007. At left, Thompson's wife Jeri holds their son Samuel, and daughter Hayden Victoria, 3, is 3rd from left. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, and screaming cartoons...

It's Constitution Week, and my son Sean, who just turned 7, is always proud to have been born during the week that we celebrate one of the greatest works ever printed.


As part of that celebration, check out his recent version of the Star-Spangled Banner. It's sung in a number of different keys, an apparent but unspoken reference perhaps to Francis Scott Key, who wrote our national anthem.

» WATCH THE VIDEO

We're still working with him on the actual lyrics. Near as I can tell, this is the way he interpreted it:

Oh say can you see
By the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed
By the twilight’s last gleaming

Whose stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
Those cartoons that we watched
Were so powerfully screaming
And the red rocket’s ??? glare
And our flag was still there

Oh say does that Star - Spangled Banner make sense
Of the land of the free
And the home of the braves?

Is there a parent out there who can't relate to the screaming cartoon reference?

And for a great resource on Constitution Day, visit the National Constitution Center, made possible through the Annenberg Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Are boomer parents living as recklessly as their teens?

Interesting op-ed piece in today's New York Times adds some perspective on the risky behaviors of teens. It was written in response to recent articles in the media about research showing adolescent brains to be "immature," which sometimes leads to their risky or obnoxious behavior.

In the piece, Mike Males, a researcher and founder of Youthfacts.org, throws it back to boomer parents and their own control problems. Males writes about Americans 35 to 54, noting that more than 18,000 died in 2004 from drug overdoses (an increase of 550 percent since 1975), they (we) have a higher risk for fatal accidents and suicides than people in the 15 to 19 age group, and adding a host of other statistics showing boomers are frequent guests of prisons and emergency rooms.

Males notes: "What experts label 'adolescent risk taking' is really baby boomer risk taking. It's true that 30 years ago, the riskiest age group for violent death was 15 to 24. But those same boomers continue to suffer high rates of addiction and other ills throughout middle age, while later generations of teenagers are better behaved."

Comes with a great headline, too: This is your (father's) brain on drugs

If you want to see a version of the story that created the original hubub, check out ScienCentral News.

Study: It's good for women to pick older dads, to a point

Interesting study from Vienna finds that women who choose men a few years older than they are likely to have more babies than those who choose partners of the same age, according to research published last month in the British online journal Biology Letters.

Researchers Martin Feider and Susanne Huber looked at a sample of about 10,000 births to Swedish parents. They found that most babies were born to women whose partners were about four years older than they were. For men, the most babies were born to dads whose partner was six years younger. The authors conclude that a man's preference for a younger mate and a woman's preference for an older one yields "fitness benefits for both men and women and thus may be an evolutionarily acquired trait." Golly, not the most romantic viewpoint, is it?

I have not read the full study ($30 to download? yeesh...) but in media interviews, the researchers opine that males may be attracted to younger females because they will have a longer time to be fertile, while women may be attracted to older men because they are more likely to have the resources to provide for their families.

The numbers don't hold up when one of the couple is significantly older than the other. At ten years difference, the number of children produced is the same as same-age couples.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm two years older than my wife, and we have two kids.