Unless your partner has spent their reproductive years firing blanks, overusing the rhythm method or assiduously guarding their sperm, chances are any new relationship post-divorce/40 is going to include children. Sometimes you’ll both have one, or two, or more than a few, like The Brady Bunch, and they seemed to make it work.
The younger man has a two-year-old. At the other end of the spectrum, my own daughter is 25 and pretends to be allergic to toddlers, in case she should accidentally want one. “What does the Child eat?” she asked in frosty tones as we went out for dinner. “Souls?”
“Pizza.”
“Oh, yay, I love pizza.”
Other people’s children are generally lovely, especially if they’re really wee: a baby is much less likely to declare, “Mummy says you’re…
