Join the ranks of Keillor, Quaid, Jagger and -- Janszen?

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="This isn't Jeff, but he has actually done this job. Say "Thank you," America."][/caption]

My co-worker Jeff Janszen is literally the only other recycled dad I know personally, so naturally I asked him for his family stats so I could add him to the Recycled Dad Index. He agreed because he is a cool guy and not afraid of anything (see photo caption above).

Now the index has four celebrities and two regular guys. I'll be adding more famous people shortly. But you, too, ordinary dad, can get on the index. You just have to be a father of at least two children -- although getting a high score is another matter.

Your recycledness score represents the biggest age gap (in years) between two consecutive children in your family. If you are a typical recycled dad, this is the gap between the youngest child of your first marriage and the first child of your second marriage. In theory, the wider that gap, the more opportunity there has been for you to get 'rusty' on how to raise a child from the beginning. (I admit that 'recycledness' is not really the best term for this attribute. 'Rustiness' is actually closer to the mark. Any other ideas?)

Your virility score is simply the age you were when your youngest child was born (you stud!).

Jeff is at the bottom of this short list in terms of recycledness, with a 'generation gap' between kids of 12.86 years. But at least he outranks me for virility: He was a respectable 44.87 years old when his twin son and daughter were born.

Let's have some fun with this, dads! If you want to get on the index, just leave a comment or e-mail me.

Recycled Dad Index (Prototype)

UPDATE: Still can't put script in WordPress.com, but if you click here or click the chart, it will open the interactive version of the chart in Google Spreadsheets.

Still experimenting with different visualization tools, but here is a glimpse of what I'm trying to do:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Click the image to go to the interactive version of this chart"][/caption]

For each celebrity dad on the list (and me), I've plugged in the dad's date of birth and the date of birth of each of his children. I use the data to calculate and display each dad's recycledness score (the widest gap, in years, between two of his children) and, just for fun, his virility score (the gap, in years, between his age and his youngest child's age). The recycledness bar is green, of course; the virility bar is the color of a pharmaceutical that may have a connection to some of these statistics.

If I could use javascript here, you'd be able to fly over the bars to see the actual values. FYI, Keillor's recycledness score is 28.60, and Morrison's virility score is 64.37.

My vision is to enable regular guys to enter similar data on themselves into a calculator in order to  see how they would rank on this index. (For these two scores, most of us can do the math in our heads -- and probably have -- but eventually I'd like to introduce more data and other kinds of scores.)

This prototype is in Google Spreadsheets, but I'm also getting familiar with Zoho Creator. Somehow I need to enable new entries via a web form. Ideas welcome and appreciated.

"..."

I'm a lot less uptight about the words I use around Jacob than I was 'a generation ago' with Charlie and Thomas.

Today, as I was putting Jacob in his car seat:

Jacob: "Ow!"

Me: "I'm sorry. Did I crush your nuts?"

Jacob (laughing): "No, you didn't crush my nuts! How did you know I had nuts?"

Angela and me (laughing): "..."

Jacob: "How did you know I had nuts in my belly?"

Angela and me (laughing uncontrollably): "..."

"Trophy wife" intro aside, Globe article is a good read

Add this to the Recycled Dad canon: a 2005 Boston Globe article that doesn't just state the obvious about older guys who have kids with their second wives.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="262" caption="(Boston Globe Photo / Lisa Poole) "][/caption]

For starters, this piece has a pretty thorough setup that observes the following:

• The number of "do-over dads" seems to be increasing, though concrete statistics are hard to capture.


• Men remarry sooner after divorce than women do; for this and other reasons, more divorced men than divorced women are in a position to have children.


• Recycled dads tend to be more confident and enjoy the parenting experience more.

I enjoyed this passage that quotes Marilyn Yalom, an author and Stanford University researcher:

This second chance at fatherhood, says Yalom, is changing these men. "It gives them the idea that they will do a better job the second time around," she says. This is because, for the most part, just like his mid-section, the second-timer's temper has softened as he's gotten older. His drive to build a successful career is no longer obsessively frantic; he may even be contemplating retirement. This dad is everything that kids love - devoted, patient, giving - and he isn't as focused on the issues that many younger parents face, such as the balancing act between career and family. He's not only old enough to be his kids' grandfather, he practically acts like one.

Some of us might chuckle at the grandfather thing. Others of us might not.

The rest of the story:

• One profile of a recycled dad to illustrate the above points, plus some of the downsides of this situation, with quotes from his adult kids (one of whom criticizes Dad for shortchanging the new generation).


• The new wife's perspective.


• Vasectomy reversals. (I could -- and probably will -- do a post dedicated to that topic.)


• A profile of another recycled dad, which mainly illustrates the physical limitations that some older dads have to deal with.

Check it out and feel free to comment on anything that stands out -- good or bad.

(Statistically) Generation 1 resents us?

The best thing I read all day (Monday) was this think piece about recycled dads that first ran in American Demographics magazine way back in 1999. The article is long by Web standards, but it's a surprisingly good read, with mini profiles and quotes that showcase a variety of recycled dad experiences and issues.

Authors and scholars are quoted and some of their findings cited and summarized. One book that is mentioned, Fathers of a Certain Age: The Joys and Problems of Middle-Aged Fatherhood (Fairview Press, 1997) seemed promising, so I ordered it.



I'll post a review of this book soon, but if you're impatient, you can get a copy through Amazon, new for about $10 or used for about $2.

Generation 1 kids are also quoted in the article -- which makes sense because the main thrust of it is that our relationships with our original kids tend to be strained because our attention and wealth have to be split more ways than in a traditional family or even a simple stepfamily.

In other words, our Generation 1 kids have a reason to resent us, and in many cases they do.

Has this been your experience?

Celebrity recycled dads, courtesy of FameCrawler

I don't really follow celebrity news. Until tonight I had been only vaguely aware that some famous old guys have young wives and are therefore likely recycled dads.

Thanks to a blog called FameCrawler and its "Boys Still Swim" category (beware of the flyover -- you may see Rod Stewart in a Speedo), I now know of a few confirmed celebrity RD's, including:

• Tim Allen


• Donald Trump


• Peter Gabriel


• Kevin Costner


• Mick Jagger (more serial than recycled -- kids born '70, '71, '84, '85, '92, '97, '99)

A friend recently hit me to the fact that Dennis Quaid is one of us.

And the guy I have always pictured as the stereotypical RD -- long before I was one myself -- is Garrison Keillor. There's a nice NYT profile of him here.

If you know of another famous RD, please name names in the comments. But I'm still more interested in knowing about you!

Book preview has insights for older and divorced dads

Guys who are recycled dads invariably fit into other, broader categories as well -- for example, remarried dads or older dads. I'm not here to reinvent the wheel, so when I discover good sites or articles about those broader categories, I will link to them.

Here is one such plug:

Do a Web search on "older fathers"* and you will get thousands of results, most of them describing the horrible (physical and mental) health risks you subject your children to by becoming a dad 'late in life.'

Buried among those distressing results is a link to something a little more constructive: a Google Books preview of How Children Develop, a textbook by Robert S. Siegler, Judy S. DeLoache and Nancy Eisenberg (MacMillan, some edition prior to 2006). The link points to page 472, on which begins a short section on "Older Parents" that identifies some very general pros and cons.


That section is followed by a long sidebar about adolescent parents (this may or may not have bearing on your situation) and then a section on divorce (and its impact on children). The divorce part is not previewed in its entirety (page 479 is omitted from the free preview), but what's there is good high-level discussion.

Rational, substantive and free. Can't beat that.