Boris offers more proof biology favours fathers
IN PERHAPS a sign of the spiritsapping monotony of lockdown, the news from across the Irish Sea of the safe arrival of Boris Johnson’s new son made me smile. Normally my goodwill for the British leader is strictly limited but I laid down my weapons, so to speak, to contemplate how the miracle of new life can engender such vast wells of hope in the stoniest of hearts and in the bleakest of times.
Well, I didn’t get that carried away, although it did occur to me that while Boris is no stranger to fatherhood – no one seems sure exactly how many children he has – the arrival of this little sprog must be extra special, coming so soon after his grave illness and his first terrifying brush with mortality.
Boris is 55 and still looks quite frail from his illness. But even when he returns to good health, he’s still a bit long in the tooth for changing nappies and dancing attendance on a newborn, even with an army of nannies and a younger wife. But change nappies his advisers vow he will.
Indeed with his predilection for spin, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Boris toting his newborn in a baby carrier, warming the hearts of his constituents while neatly switching the focus from his handling of the health crisis.
Babies have their uses, particularly for image-conscious politicians, even if their care is all-consuming and extends, if you’re lucky, until they’re 18. I should also not be surprised if like with many an older father, Boris gives way to the temptation to bray about how much he’s enjoying fatherhood, the nth time round.
Professor John Crown has spoken publicly about his joy in nappy-changing duties. By his admission, Rod Stewart was not the best dad in the world in his Lothario early days, but he has come up trumps for the younger of his eight children.
THE line from older dads about having been too busy careerbuilding to be around when their older kids were young is a bit hackneyed. It’s intended as lifeaffirming but their obliviousness about how that sounds to their older children, and especially to their ex-wives, is astounding.
Mick Jagger’s older offspring probably value the lifestyle his workaholism bought them enough to forgive his absences. But are ordinary kids really ever compensated for their fathers’ inattention?
And what of the First Wives Club? They may in the words of Ivana Trump ‘get everything’ materially, but they get nothing in other respects. Women have one stab at motherhood, so they throw themselves heart and soul into it, whereas men, if they desire, can just passively go along with it, safe in the knowledge that they can procreate again and again, even, God help us, from their wheelchairs.
After four children, Boris’s second wife Marina Wheeler has probably had enough of raising children, but even if she was broody, she can never have another child .
Her faithless husband who fathered a love child and had affairs during their marriage can have as many as he likes.
No one would blame her if she bitterly wondered whether Boris would be quite so enthusiastic about late fatherhood had he single-handedly raised their children.
No one would blame Ivana Trump, mistress of solo parenting if ever there was one, for feeling similar when Tiffany and Barron Trump were born.
OUR biological destinies seem unfair when men make a virtue of theirs and pretend nothing can eclipse their power, energy or whatever else makes them eligible to have children with women half their age. Carrie Symonds, Boris’s besotted partner, may believe that it’s her beloved’s charisma, influence and confidence that convinced her to seal their romance with a baby.
Doubtless these are present in their elixir of love but so is the biological imperative of her, at 32, being in her prime, fertility wise, and him, at 55, being in his.