The news about Al Pacino and Robert De Niro becoming dads in their 70s and 80s has people questioning the ethics of older parenting.
After it was recently announced that Al Pacino, at the ripe old age of 82 is expecting his fourth child with his 29-year-old girlfriend Noor Alfallah, and fellow actor, Robert De Niro, also recently fathering a child at age 79, Twitter has been sent into a storm of opinions on whether it’s morally okay to have children so late into life.
One journalist took to the Daily Mail to say that “the hard reality for geriatric dads like De Niro, and now Pacino, is that they’ll barely live long enough to be remembered by their new babies.”
They’re not the first older men to have babies in old age. Former Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestonen fathered his fourth child at 89, and the Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger had his eighth child at 73.
Speaking to The Independent, child and behavioural expert Amanda Jenner, says that children growing up with an old dad can be damaging: “The child is never going to hit special milestones they can share with their father, and this can carry a weight on the child for all their lives.”
Here’s what Twitter thought of the news…