Nowadays, in modern developed countries, the traditinal concept of family has undergone radical

changes. Large families are considered outdated. In addition, more and more potential parents
postpone the decision to set up their own homes, since they keep waiting for „better times”, until
they feel prepared and financially stable. The question of the best age to have children is a subject
of heated discussions and raise many objections. However, the best time to have a family is hard to
establish. Young couples or marrages are often under the influence of their relatives who constantly
advice, warn and even extort the indecisive ones, which does not help with the actual problem.
Nonethless, this aspect of human life is highly individual and dep ends on various factors, such as
proffesion, support, willingness and readiness. Some believe that the sooner the better, whereas
other prefer having children in their middle age. Despite the fact that the latter option has become
widely popularised, young fathers are better than the old ones due to better health of their potential
children, lack of unneccessary generetion gap and more time the young fathers might have.

The opponents of young fathering claim that even though young parents are in better physical and
mental condition, they are unable to juggle between their jobs and everyday duties. They suggest
that young men are too immature to take care of their families. Instead, their overnthusiastic
approach makes them start dozens of activities, believing that they will manage to complete all the
tasks in time, because they are young. As a result, a child observes a father in rush and feels like
being put aside. This might be true, if assumed that all young men are careless, overenthusiastic and
ignorant. However, this is not the case with mature fathers. Young healthy men are full of energy
and ideas which are useful in the process of taking care of the baby. Better health conditions enable
the father to have fun with their offsprings without duty pressure. Older parents would not have
such willingness to play with their children due to less energy. Instead, they would easily become
irritated, as it was once a while since they were so enthusiastic.

Those who prefer older parents believe that young fathers are not serious enough and cannot set
examples of proper conduct to their little ones, because they are babies themselves. Thus, a child is
unable to raise kids due to lack of competence and seriousness in taking care. Instead of a
successful parent, the child deals with his playmate, which is unacceptable in a healthy family. Of
course, there are numbers of immature fathers who treat their kids as just little friends, but most
often this is highly unlikely to happen. What the advocates of old parents fail to notice, there is no
generation gap between kids and young fathers. This factor makes fathering more effective as
young men are capable of better understanding of everyday aches and pains of their little ones. The
older father would presumably have forgotten what it was like to be in a child’s shoes. A young man
is more likely to enjoy spending his time with children. The older father would not have neither
willingness nor energy to play with his kids, which is essential for a child’s proper development.

Finally, the opponents of young fathers claim that more time spent with children, which stems from
the young age of a parent is not significant, since the most important aspect of parenthood is
experience. They assume that there is no point in spending time with a child when a father has no
idea how to break the ice and become friendly with a baby. A child should not be raised through
trial and error, since the father should learn, then be ready for parenthood before a baby appears.
The more errors the father make, the worse is the final result when a childs finally grows up. This
would be true if the father was extremely irresponsible and selfish.