People who are no longer young should simply ignore this sort of advice. Unless you're in (seriously) poor health, just go for it.
When you're 83 and your kid is my age, he'll probably wish there was anything he could do to make you 20 years younger.
I'm not saying you shouldn't have had a kid, or anything like that, but I don't know how you can suggest that it will never be a problem that you are a relatively old father (versus if you had kids in your 30s, other things being equal, which obviously they aren't).
The average life expectancy for a male in the USA is 76. All other things being equal, a 51 year old father will die when their offspring is 25 years old. This is too early to lose a parent. Think about how this would have effected you, reader of this post. This is also assuming that the father does not experience any debilitating illnesses prior to dying, such as dementia, which would place an inordinate burden on a young person, who would have far fewer resources and life experience to draw on during such an ordeal.
These are not small potatoes. Think before you act, be responsible. You’re gambling with someone else’s life and wellbeing.
And maybe taking care of a parent with dementia is actually more of a problem when you're older and have kids of your own?
At my advanced age, I have the advantage of remembering things like the arguments you would hear back in the 1960's about why interracial marriage was a bad idea. Not because we're racist of course! But think of the practical difficulties. Like, the kids won't fit into either community! I'm sure you can think of more reasons too.
The later the better.
> And maybe taking care of a parent with dementia is actually more of a problem when you're older and have kids of your own?
It would certainly be easier to deal with when you have more stability in your life and are more emotionally mature.
> At my advanced age, I have the advantage of remembering things like the arguments you would hear back in the 1960's about why interracial marriage was a bad idea. Not because we're racist of course! But think of the practical difficulties. Like, the kids won't fit into either community! I'm sure you can think of more reasons too.
Do you really think this is a reasonable comparison? Of course you’ll say that you do. It’s not.
The fact is that every kid comes into the world with some advantages and some disadvantages. Any disadvantages from having an older parent are at most on a par with the disadvantages from not having particularly wealthy parents, or not having parents with perfect genes, or having parents who were abused by their own parents, or having parents who aren't citizens of a first-world country, and so on and so on.
In reality, you may be 51, and may be in a good position otherwise to have a kid, and the question is whether being 51 is a reason not to. And the answer is "no", it is not. Not unless you also think that other people with non-major reasons not to have a kid shouldn't. In other words, not unless you think nobody should have kids.
I meant that women who don't become interested in having a long-term committed relationship until later in life have the option of dating men who followed the same path as them, as well as the option of dating divorced men.
No they don’t. A 35 year old man can date a 25 year old woman whereas the reverse is a lot less common.
As such the 35 year old man has a lot more options than a 35 year old woman.
> as well as the option of dating divorced men.
Divorced men tend to have very different life goals and expectations than early 30s women.
Perhaps a lot of 35 year old women have realized that the value of a young attractive partner isn't very high and have realized that a committed relationship can bring happiness?
Imagine how a man might pick a woman if attractiness was completely off the table - an older woman is generally more mature, more sure of herself, simply had more life experiences and knows how to handle more situations. A 21 year old has barely spent any time supporting herself; a 35 year old has moore than a decade of life.
Perhaps women value men this way; with physical attractiveness less important than emotional maturity? Which tends to increase with age?
Loyalty, playfulness, flexibility, kindness, intelligence, high energy levels, ability to have kids, doesn’t already have kids, etc.
None of which are positively correlated with a woman’s age.
I feel like this list is really answering the question "what do I find attractive, besides her face/body?", and not "what kind of traits in a partner actually bring me happiness?" - with the exception of kindness and loyalty.
Even as someone who used to identify as a man and thus was in the dating market as such, I can't understand how emotional maturity is of no value; it's one of the most important traits to me in a partner and essentially the reason I picked my last partner for a long term relationship.
For everything else, we have friendship. (Setting aside the evolutionary advantages of e.g. male coalition-building, which we really can't, but whatever!)
I am someone who exists outside of evolution's traditional goals. I'm a transwoman, and predominantly lesbian at that. In all honesty, I'm so far outside the norm (even for a transwoman) that it causes most people I date not to have a script for it; the usual reaction is for them to become "starry eyed" and metaphorically eat out of my hand.
This is extra bizarre to me, as someone who used to be read as a relatively uninteresting, effeminate male; being passably female in pretty much every sense (including hormonally) should not increase my attractiveness to other women, yet it does. Not a single woman I've dated has expressed any particular interest in me as a fertile partner, and in what biological sense am I, really? While I have banked sperm, my testosterone levels are lower than most cisgender women's - in all likelihood, I am not fertile. There's very little way for a casual observer - even one who has access to my blood to run non-genetic tests on - to recognize that I am transgender.
I'm not just bragging; I straight up don't understand it. It was one of the things that kept me from transitioning for so long - being afraid women would have no interest in me if I did. I have postulated that the unique mix of hormones that I currently have, somehow, smells like perpetual ovulation; and yet if so why am I apparently far more attractive to women than men? Most girls I date seem particularly attached to my smell in a way they weren't before, but the interest I get from men is somehow less than before I transitioned.
I am promiscuous and unwilling to commit; I neither seek nor am particularly attractive to women seeking someone to support them and potentially their children. I regularly date women who have or have previously had male partners (in an ethical way).
Unless my humanity itself, the fact that I am living authentically and being who I truly am is more attractive, more valuable to the women I date, I simply have no explanation for the reactions I get now.
As a result - my own lived experience tells me that humans, and our relationships, are so much more than evolutionary motivations - at least as we understand them.
The testosterone running through my veins was just as real as the estradiol running through them now; the queerness of my life does not in any way diminish my humanity nor that of those who have interacted with me.
If you come at it from a queer perspective, you plainly see that your argument falls apart. Us queers are very sexual people, but by nature of being queer, don't feel compelled to follow any particular script; as a result our interests are very diverse. Some lesbians might prefer childbearing hips; the ones that date me definitely don't! And yet my femininity is nonetheless compelling; I've had girls tell me how nice it was to date someone so feminine (and how hard that was to find).
The women I find the most attractive tend to be KPop stars; east Asian (usually Korean) women in their early 20s (if that), often who are borderline underweight. The woman who I bonded with like nobody else in my life, the one I loved, the one I always thought was beautiful even when she couldn't see it, the one who gave my life meaning, the one who I still sometimes weep about even months after I last saw her was an obese scots woman in her early 30s with a serious disability.
And she was beautiful to me. Even before I transitioned.
Humans are wonderfully, fabulously, beautifully complex creatures. Our culture and social complexity has run far ahead of our genetics in so many ways. If we accept we have gone past our genetically programmed ways to figure out what to eat, consuming endless salt and sugar, causing us cavities and diabetes and unhappiness, why can't we accept that, too, our genetics were never meant for a world with Tinder and plastic surgery or even fast fashion? That our basest instincts do not bring us happiness - unless we examine them from a perspective that we are something greater, that we can be better than that?
The truth is, we can. The truth is, happiness - mediated by oxytocin and dopamine and all of that evolutionary history - DOES exist beyond merely eating and sex. We are programmed for empathy, for cooperation, for belonging. For love. We may desire things that will make us unhappy but we can make a choice.
If you ignore that, whether you are male or female- if you insist that, no, your life is just about having sex with the most attractive partner because evolution demands it - you will wind up like the parent of this entire conversation. You will be sad. Whether you are a 60 year old man or a 35 year old woman, you will realize at some point what you have been doing is refusing to be human, to have real relationships; you have been using sexuality to protect your feelings, and suddenly, it doesn't work any more.
Choose to be human; choose to be more than your selfish genes.
The argument I am encountering, the one I disagree with, is that attractiveness is a linear function and substantially the only thing that matters when dating. By virtue of being in her mid 30s, the letter writer is right to realize her value is low and declining. She will only find low value partners and even those doors are closing as she creeps closer to menopause.
I'm trying to argue that no, her value as a person AND as a romantic partner is much more than that.
I'm even going one step farther than that to say that picking a mate based on attractiveness as correlated with age is a strategy that will not bring you happiness whether you are a man, woman, or a queer degenerate like myself.
A lot of people follow other strategies, even if they are in the minority, and while it might take some time, she should seek out those who do, who value the things she has done in her life, the perspectives she's gained, all of that, and not just her youthful good looks.
tl;dr - Girl needs to chill. Her life (even romantic life!) isn't over because she's single and 35. She needs to stop evaluating herself that way.
How does a string of short term relationships show loyalty?
> flexibility means (ability to adapt to change?
Yes and the willingness.
I’ve known plenty of early 20s women who will drop their careers to follow their boyfriend overseas and very few in their 30s who will.
> I can't understand how emotional maturity is of no value
Why should a man find it valuable in a partner?
Age says nothing about what prior relationships someone has had, other than that they've had more time to have them.
It translates to loyalty (albeit weakly) in that a woman who is older has better self awareness and knows what she wants in a relationship, where a younger woman might still be figuring that out (and realize only later on that her relationship isn't what she wanted)
>I’ve known plenty of early 20s women who will drop their careers to follow their boyfriend overseas and very few in their 30s who will.
So it's more valuable to have a woman who isn't independent? Who doesn't have her own life or hobbies and gets fulfillment solely through her partner?
> Why should a man find it valuable in a partner?
Seriously? You don't know why emotional maturity is valuable in a partner?
Than why are there clear correlations (for women) between # of monogamous relationships and likelihood of divorce? As well as between # of sexual partners and likelihood of divorce?
> So it's more valuable to have a woman who isn't independent?
Of course! More flexibility and dependence up to a point is certainly better.
Of course the idea that this means a woman can’t have her own hobbies seems to be taking things to the extreme.
> Seriously?
Yes and honestly.
I married young and I think the troubles we went through together have deepened our relationship in a way that would never have been possible if we were both “emotionally mature”.
I’d also question whether people really do mature “globally” that much - vs maturing in specific contexts and relationships.
For example if women matured significantly in a “global” sense between mid-20s to mid-30s you would expect a big drop in obesity as women started taking better care of their health. But you don’t. Etc etc.