There’s a thread in IMHO about upbringings. This tread reminded me of something I was trying to forget.
My father and his third wife are expecting their 3rd child together.
My sisters and I are 27, 25 and 24 (me). I have a 2 year old brother, a 1 year old sister and one on the way plus a 6 year old step brother. Not to mention the step sister and brother from my mom’s second marriage.
I remember wanting a little sister when I was 4 but that feeling has since passed. I want my own kids now.
It just strikes me that there’s something wrong with this scenario. My nephew is older than my brother and sister (he’s almost 6).
Now, I don’t have a problem with people having kids later in life but in this case, I don’t think it’s wise. My father didn’t care about us when we were growing up but now that he’s 48, he suddenly wants to be a father? Even worse is the fact that he told me my stepmother had a really hard time when she was pregnant with my sister. Why would you want to risk problems again when you have a total of 6 children already between you?
Anyway, maybe my father has matured. It’s possible that he’s actually a really good father now. I wouldn’t know because I don’t talk to him. I wish them the best but I still think it’s strange.
So, now you’re thinking about having your own kids. Will there be input from others regarding your very personal decision between you and your wife? Will you be allowing people that haven’t spoken to you in years to make these decisions for you, based on what they want and what they think is best for you? Based on what you’ve done in your past?
Seems to me the issue here is you dealing with your childhood, not what your father is doing with his wife. I say, since you asked, deal with your own issues and mind your own business. Sorry if it’s not what you wanted to hear, but it really burns my ass to hear people “decide” when other people should have kids and with whom.
A friend of mine’s dad divorced mom and married mom’s best friend when this friend was about 7. Dad had no contact with the family of 3 kids he created. Mom struggled to support them all.
Years later, Dad and the woman he married, decide to have kids and eventually adopt from another country.
Dad is also a multi millionaire.
He starts realizing was a shit for nothing he was and decides to makes amends. It doesn’t go well at first.
But my friend listen to my cousel. AS my dad had died when I was a kid, I would give anything for a conversation with him. She has this chance to talk to hers and find out the real deal and if he is a better person or a dick head. Worse case scenario is he is the latter and you continue your life on knowing that at least you tried. Best case scenario, you become friends and because he is loaded, you can get some massive back due debt owed to you via guilt money. Couldn’t hurt to stay on the sweet side of a wealthy guy who is your dad.
They now have a very good relationship , he has changed considerably over the years, and the 20+ years of back guilt-debt have worked nicely in her favor. Very nicely, I might add.
Your dad quite possibly has grown enough to realize he blew it the first time around. Life is about do-overs. Personally, I think it would be way cool to have step/half siblings , somethign to liven up the dysfunction a little more.
trublmakr, I realize that I probably sounded like I was trying to dictate my father’s life. That’s actually not the case. My biggest point I was trying to make is I think it’s strange to be 24 and to have siblings so much younger. My issue is more with my being weirded out by the age difference than on whether or not I’m “allowing” him to have more kids. As you pointed out, it’s none of my business. He can have kids as much as he wants. It just surprises me that they’re taking chances again. She had a REALLY hard time. I’m also a bit surprised that he even still wants kids. And, it’s only been 11 months since I stopped talking to him.
Shirley, I did try to mend things with him. I’m old enough and mature enough now to understand the kind of person my father is. Thanks to our brief reunion, I also now understand that we will never be friends, let alone father and daughter. I don’t hold it against him anymore. It’s no one’s fault. We just aren’t the kind of people who belong together.
I think he and his wife have a much better chance for success than he did with my mother and I’m happy for them. They have the same religious beliefs and that’s the most important thing for him, and always has been. I sincerely hope that my stepmother has an easier time with this pregnancy and with any that come along.
I will however, continue to be wierded out by the age differences.
I’m already living your ‘age-difference’ dilemma.
My mother was married three times; three children in the first marriage, four in the second, and me alone in the third.
My siblings are as few as 12 years to as mush as 28 years older than me.
I have nephews and nieces older than me.
One of my sisters just became a GREAT grandmother; making my mom a GREAT-GREAT Grandmother. Meanwhile, I have a son only three years old.
On the family tree, I (a father) am on the same level as my sister (a great grandmother).
I could go on, but I see that your eyes are starting to cross already.
See, Grizz, that’s what I’m talking about. I don’t care what other people do with their lives (especially when it involves my father and his bedroom). I’m just having a hard time keeping track of my own family.
If it makes you feel any better, my sister divorced a husband about 15-16 years ago after lots of compatibility problems (he wanted to play suburban wife-swapping, she didn’t) led to her getting involved with someone else; and the someone else was also married. During the rancorous arguments that followed, the husband made common cause, and then romance, with the new man’s (about to be ex-)wife, with the result that my sister’s ex married her new husband’s ex. My niece’s half-sisters’s stepfather is my niece’s mom’s ex. Oh, and my sister has subsequently divorced again and her ex (the most recent ex, that is) remarried yet again, so both my niece and her half-sisters now have new half-siblings. My Dad, a socially conservative traditional kind of guy, does family history. Can’t you just imagine him trying to chart this?
Of course, there is a bit of precedent. Back up the line a ways, three sisters of widely divergent ages married a man, his son, and his son. The latter fellow was therefore married to his own great-aunt. Bet that plays holy hell with family history software formulas too…
Then, although I can’t beat the tale of GrizzRich, there was the sister of one of my granddads, she who had so many children that somewhere around the 19th or 20th or thereabouts (who was something akin to 37 years younger than the firstborn), he wondered aloud rather loudly at a family gathering if she and his bro-in-law were fully aware of exactly what process was causing them to come into existence.
Just think, when I started this thread, I thought my family was unusual. I’m starting to not think that way anymore.
AHunter3, your story made my head spin more than GrizzRich’s did. How do you keep all that straight??
I’m having trouble doing the math here. Do you have more details on this remarkable woman?
If we assume that she started having babies at the unusual (but not unprecidented) age of 13, she would have given birth to her last kid at age 50. Or, if you want to bump her first kid to age 12, age 49 would be her last kid. Pretty mind-blowing.
And I admit, my head started to spin with your tale. I stopped trying to keep track!
Yeah, something’s obviously wrong with the numbers there. They couldn’t have been 37 years apart unless she were Guinness-eligible. In more than one sense (I’d quaff a few if I had to parent that many kidlings), I reckon.
Well, I think we ought to start a group for those of us who have much younger/older siblings. 
Anyway, 11 half-siblings here, ranging from 10 to 38 years older than myself. I’m sure the older families think of me as the weird one out, and in a way, it is difficult adapting to a family where they exist, but I don’t know them much more than the average person on the street. Like GrizzRich, I have nieces and nephews older than myself (I played with some of the younger ones in my childhood), and were it not for my oldest siblings having children later in life, the few oldest of them could have grandchildren nearly my age.
The one thing I do is try not to think of it as weird, but rather, unique (unless the mood strikes me to say that I’m an only child).