It causes me pause when older celebrities adopt. It happens fairly often. Celebrities well into their 50s or 60s finally decide they want children and adopt.

One could say, Why not? Celebrities have resources with which to care for children and shouldn’t they have the right to the joys of parenting too?

On the other hand: recently, Elton John and his partner David Furnish adopted a baby boy. Aside from your views on same sex marriage or adoption, focus just on age. Elton John at 63 will be in his late 70s when his new son hits his teens. Why adopt now?

With John in particular it’s difficult not to wonder whether this is another planned PR move to break ground for same sex relationships. John and Furnish were married in England after same sex unions were legalized. Now they’re adopting. Pioneers or parents? I don’t know.

I do know that at some point Baby Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John will be a youth with an aged or elderly parent, if the parent survives into those years. Again, I know many kids have been born to their parents well into life. Many kids have been reared successfully by grandparents. But these instances generally occurred out of necessity. Celebrities delay having children in order to preserve their careers or physical appearances and finally get around to adopting late into life.

Without casting aspersions on older parents generally, I wonder what celebrity kids really experience.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011

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