Is Gary being selfish, or just a good father?
WHEN asked if he had any plans to have children, Leonardo DiCaprio responded with a nonchalant shrug and said: ‘If it happens it happens.’ Aged 41, if Leo was a woman he might not be able to afford such a fatalistic attitude. Most probably he would have one anxious eye on his biological clock, the other on his local fertility clinic and on having his eggs frozen or some other artificial method of prolonging his fading fertility.
But he’s a man and he knows there’s no urgency about the matter. All Leo has to do is look at the gallery of senior citizens who became dads very late in life to reassure himself that time is definitely on his side.
Ronnie Wood is expecting twins well into his seventies, Rupert Murdoch had two daughters in his eighth decade, Rod Stewart and Paul McCartney both became dads when they were OAPs. Even Donald Trump had his youngest child with his third wife, aged 60.
It’s almost a sign of male success in life – having a baby in old age.
Indeed, when Leo reads the enthusiastic accounts of these late dads about the sublime joy of second-chance fatherhood, he might be convinced that the longer he waits, the better.
FOR it’s almost an article of faith that even a father who is so decrepit that he needs help to stay on his feet will wax delightedly about his little offspring and the infinite patience he has now, compared to his youth when he was so consumed by his career that his first family was just an afterthought.
How these stories of gratitude at finally ‘getting it right’ domestically go down in the First Wives Club, whose long suffering members kept the home fires burning and sacrificed so much for the sake of their husbands’ careers, we may never know.
We may however take a guess that not a few members got a sneaking satisfaction from Gary Lineker’s fear about being too old to start a family. At 55 there is no biological impediment to Lineker’s producing a second brood with his wife Danielle who is almost 20 years his junior.
Nor is there any financial obstacle to such an undertaking, for with a £20m fortune he has more than enough to start buying buggies and car seats all over again.
But after raising four sons to adulthood, Lineker feels that that part of his life is over.
‘Some weeks it seems like a good idea, other weeks it doesn’t. When we are on a plane and we hear screaming babies it definitely doesn’t,’ he said recently, echoing the relief of many parents at having survived the early years and indeed the anxiety associated with keeping children in check in confined public places.
Lineker’s decision might seem heartless, given his wife’s yearning for children.
Aged 36, Danielle may be in the last chance saloon, fertility wise. But she has a 14-year-old daughter so it’s not as if she is being deprived of motherhood.
Possibly she always knew of his reluctance but thought she could get her way eventually, either through manipulation, persuasion or deceit, or a combination of all three.
That she didn’t trick her husband into paternity speaks well of her character, her honesty and scruples. That he didn’t bend to her wishes suggests that, unlike most older dads, he was a dedicated hands-on father first time round, despite the demands of his football career.
He became a father at the age nature dictates women become mothers. At a time when the risk was lowest of him having ill health, dying and being taken from his children as has now tragically happened to the late PJ Mara who had a daughter aged 71. Gary feels he did his best and, like most women his age, he has no wish to do it again.