Perhaps I'm jaded but taking life advice from the WSJ seems a little odd.
First of all, most of this piece is self-acceptance repackaged as 'everything is alright' style thinking. Everything is not alright for many people. Things are objectively worse for a lot of folks and suggesting things are just meant to be is just lazy.
Self-acceptance though is totally good to practice. I would go back in time and do more work on myself so I could accept the good things in my life faster with more integrity. But I can't, so I have no choice to but to accept that maybe I'll be a slightly older father. I can't actually change that but I also am not under any illusions that being an older parent would be better, all else being equal. That's just absurd. All else isn't equal though. I personally think siring a child at ~50 is fine but only if you think you'd be a better parent.
> I personally think siring a child at ~50 is fine but only if you think you'd be a better parent.
I think most people would be far better parents if they waited until at least around 30. At 50, I think their only problems would be their health and lifespan, which is not as big of a deal in my opinion. If you know what you're doing as a parent and have your finances straight, your kids don't really need you after graduating from college anyway.
Some people (males) are better parents at 50, some are horrible at 20 and only slightly better at 25.
I became father at 38, second time at 40. I am much better father than I would be 10 years ago. I've done some cool shit before this happened, reinvented myself few times, tons of extreme/adrenaline sports, backpacking around the world, bought house for parents, and I have very little left to prove to myself and absolutely nothing to anybody else.
I understood exactly what makes me 'tick' and long term happy, understand myself and women much much better, so I could pick (hopefully) a lifetime partner and mother of our children more appropriately. All this takes time, for some like me a bit more to grok properly. Not even going into career and financial stability, those are obvious and not that important once you are above 'poor' threshold.
Its fine for a guy to be parent a bit later, just be sure to use that extra free time to make yourself the best version of yourself, and not waste it on shallow stuff like couch binge watching or parties, grow out of such things since there are much much better things to do in life, like rock climbing. And recognize toxic/broken relationships, take a (hard) lesson and move away from them, unfortunately you can't fix broken people.
Self-acceptance though is totally good to practice. I would go back in time and do more work on myself so I could accept the good things in my life faster with more integrity. But I can't, so I have no choice to but to accept that maybe I'll be a slightly older father. I can't actually change that but I also am not under any illusions that being an older parent would be better, all else being equal. That's just absurd. All else isn't equal though. I personally think siring a child at ~50 is fine but only if you think you'd be a better parent.