Janet Street-Porter: Middle-aged dads and double standards

What all these old dads have in common is younger wives, wealth and no time

What kind of message does the news that Gordon Brown is to be a father at the age of 54 send to women? Am I alone in thinking that the sight of a wrinkly, grey, washed-out, middle-aged man holding a tiny little pink thing in a nappy is faintly disgusting? For you can rest assured that, for every elderly father-to-be, in the background there will be a woman with bags under her eyes, inches on her hips and a fixed grin on her face doing all the work the new arrival will entail.

Let's remember that Mr Brown is a politician in crisis. He is seeking to reassure us he's the right person to be our next political leader. Leave aside for one moment the faintly repellent situation in which,although we live in a democracy, the current Prime Minister has already decided to tell us who should succeed him. Gordon's problem is electoral politics, which already dominate his time in waiting. With another dad-to-be, David Cameron, making all the headlines with his new, groovy green Tory party, he had to reinvent himself.

Even I am not as cynical as to think the Browns' pregnancy could not have come at a more opportune time. But it has. Who can blame Mr Brown and his wife, Sarah, who were understandably devastated when their first child, Jennifer Jane, died,for wanting another baby, a companion to their two- year-old son, John? And Mr Brown is only following a trend established by Tony Blair with Leo, the first child conceived by a prime minister in office for 150 years. Leo added a new dimension to Tony's image - sexy and fertile.

A decade ago, few men in their fifties would have contemplated having a child, at least not a planned baby within marriage. Now everyone from Rod Stewart to David Jason to John Simpson is doing it - in fact, Mr Simpson announced this week that, at the age of 61, he has just become a dad for the second time .

What do all these old dads have in common? Well, younger wives, for a start. You aren't going to get many women of my age (59) having babies, unless they can afford the services of a fertility expert in a country where this would not be frowned upon, probably Italy. Another important factor is wealth. Grey dads tend to be well-heeled professionals. I can't recall many working-class men who would choose to enlarge their families at this age, when many parents are still paying for their younger children's education and upkeep.

Rod Stewart has had seven children by a whole harem of different women, and his current partner is younger than some of the children he fathered earlier in life. John Simpson's wife is 19 years younger than him, and their baby is a year younger than Mr Simpson's youngest grandchild.

Men are very good at pretending they can take over what has hitherto been considered women's territory, and being broody is now a male prerogative. Being a dad in middle age has become another status symbol that reinforces just how macho and desirable you are. It says, I don't have any problems with my equipment, no prostate problems for me, no need for Viagra in our house!

Hence the 39-year-old Mr Cameron's widely-reported stints caring for his disabled young son, and fully-documented regular baby-sitting duties. His wife expects their third child next month, and you can't tell me that lurking in the background in the two-income upper middle-class Cameron household there won't be a nanny in residence.

But a third factor these middle-aged dads bring to parenthood is a lack of time. Charles Kennedy may have used the birth of his son during the election campaign last year as an excuse for his poor performance when the occasion demanded. But he was soon back to work full-time, leaving his wife to deal with the baby.

Mr Brown and Mr Blair don't exactly work in part-time employment unlike many mothers forced to do so for financial reasons. They are highly paid careerists who put in maximum hours on the job. They live, breathe, eat and sleep politics. Has Rod Stewart stopped touring or making records? I think not. Old dads just carry on exactly as before, they are too old to change, too set in their ways, and too successful.

Now we are being fed a carefully constructed portrait of Gordon Brown the modern dad, just as cynically as Trendy Tory Dave's publicity machine has been spinning this dross in his favour. I read that "Treasury sources" claim Mr Brown is very much a "modern father" - whatever that may mean - who is only too happy to change nappies and take care of his son and to bring him to the office whenever Sarah is off doing her charity work. We are told there is a large train set on the floor of his office, and John is frequently seen playing in the building.

I cannot think of one female in power who has resorted to such pathetic piffle to convince voters that she is a fully rounded person. Indeed, the much-maligned Secretary of State for Education, Ruth Kelly, was back in the Commons just 11 days after having her first baby, and then went on to have three more. She has not found the need to have Department for Education "sources" telling us that she has a giant Lego set in her office, covered with happy toddlers. Ms Kelly is doing what all working women have to do, and that is juggle the demands of a stressful job with those of a young family. And yet she is seen as unremarkable.

Harriet Harman, Tessa Jowell and Margaret Beckett have never felt the need to refer to their status as parents because they, quite correctly, deduce that, in politics, being seen as a breeder can only help men and do nothing for women.

Let's consider some other recent news about families. Since Mr Blair became the Prime Minister in 1997, the number of single- parent families has increased by 238,000 to 1.88 million, reversing a trend established under John Major's tenure in the job, when the number peaked at 1.68 million.

Although Labour cut benefits to single parents, and emphasised their commitment to "strengthen family life", their policies have made absolutely no difference to social trends. Meanwhile, four out of five absent fathers, 1.1 million men, haven't paid a penny towards their offspring, proving categorically that the Child Support Agency is a conspicuous failure.

All this demonstrates is that for every wrinkly dad, there is a young, single mum trying and failing to make ends meet, demonised by the press, politicians and the benefits system. If male politicians really cared about the family, they would stop trumpeting their own as any kind of role model and start considering those for whom debt, poor diet and lousy housing constitute the environment in which their babies are being reared.