Dad power: having four children keeps me fit

Toby Young
17.06.09

On the face of it, becoming a father is not a recipe for improving your physical and mental health — particularly if you have four children under six.

Not only am I sleep-deprived but three of them are boys and their idea of fun is to pin me to the ground and jump up and down on my testicles.

In my experience, being a father of four young children is like being an inmate of Guantanamo Bay.

In spite of this, my health has improved dramatically since becoming a father.

It is no exaggeration to say I haven't been ill since my eldest was born in 2003.

I've had colds, obviously — come to think of it, I've always got a cold — but I haven't had anything more serious.

As the man of the house, I'm simply not allowed to get ill, something my wife Caroline has made very clear.

If I ever complain of feeling a bit under the weather, she immediately diagnoses a case of “man flu” and tells me to pull myself together.

Refusal to get out of bed results in assault with a deadly weapon — or, rather, my four-year-old son, who is placed under the duvet and told to seek and destroy.

I'm not suggesting that all diseases are psychosomatic — I don't suppose children are much of a buttress against cancer — but it's remarkable how infrequently you succumb to illness if you've got four children to look after.

No doubt part of it is that I've become a lot tougher.

Ailments that would have laid me low in my bachelor days, such as a chest infection, are now regarded as minor irritants.

If “pulling a sickie” isn't an option, you have to soldier on, no matter how wretched you feel.

The fact that Caroline never takes any time off also ratchets up the psychological pressure.

Last Saturday, for instance, she had a temperature of 103 but that didn't stop her getting up with our one-year-old at 5.45am.

If she can soldier on regardless, I can't wimp out of parental duties just because I've got a cough or sore throat.

But, in addition to increased mental toughness, I think I actually have got healthier since becoming a father.

It's a medical fact that getting married and having a family is good for you.

In a book called The Case for Marriage, Linda Waite, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago, points out that 90 per cent of married men alive at 48 will still be alive at 65, whereas only 60 per cent of single men alive at 48 will make it to retirement age.

Perhaps most reassuringly, a married man with heart disease can expect to live an average of 1,400 days longer than a single man with a healthy heart.

These statistics aren't as mysterious as they appear.

One of the reasons married men are so much healthier is because they drink less.

Research shows single men drink twice as much as married men of the same age — and that's not surprising if they've got young children to look after.

Being woken at 5.45am by a screaming baby is unpleasant enough without throwing a hangover into the equation.

I used to get drunk practically every night and now I'm virtually teetotal.

When it comes to giving up bad habits, having kids is more effective than a 12-step programme.

I am also a lot fitter than I was as a single man.

Many of my male friends complain about not being able to go to the gym now that they've got kids, but that doesn't apply to me.

My idea of a gruelling workout used to be walking to the off-licence to pick up a six-pack of Fosters.

These days, I can't leave the house to go shopping without several children offering to “assist”.

Saturday mornings are spent traipsing round Sainsbury's with two children in the trolley and another demanding to be carried.

What with lifting them in and out of the car seats and wrestling them to the ground so I can change their nappies, I now have forearms like Arnold Schwarzenegger's.

Training for a marathon is nothing compared to looking after four young kids.

Perhaps most importantly, men's stress levels fall when they become fathers.

A 2003 study of 700,000 Swedish men discovered that parenthood and contact with children have a positive effect on men's health, largely because it helps them to relax.

This may seem counter-intuitive, particularly to fathers of young children, but study after study has corroborated these findings.

Becoming a father and the responsibilities it entails create a natural structure in men's lives and helps to give them a clear role. I've experienced this myself.

When I return home after a stressful day at work I can feel myself unwind — even though I know I've got supper, bath and bed ahead of me.

Being with my children seems to have the same effect as taking an antidepressant, no matter how demanding they are.

The corollary of this is that becoming separated from your children has the opposite effect.

Another series of studies has established that divorced and non-custodial fathers generally have poorer health than any other group of men, particularly when it comes to mental distress and depression.

The moral of the story couldn't be clearer: fatherhood is good for you, provided you continue to be a father to your children.

The moment you become a deadbeat dad — or lose custody of your kids through no fault of your own —your physical and mental wellbeing will start to suffer.

No doubt my health will deteriorate as I get older — and that's another reason to have children.

As a dissolute freelance journalist I don't have a pension plan.

Indeed, I've made no provision for my twilight years whatsoever.

Instead, I'm hoping that at least one of my kids will strike it rich. That's the reason I've had so many.

Having kids is like playing the lottery: the more tickets you buy, the more likely you are to hit the jackpot.

So while I might be up to my neck in ferocious little gremlins, all doing their best to make my life a misery, there are compensations.

Not only do they help me to relax, but with a bit of luck I'll live until a ripe old age and spend my dotage sailing round the world in a yacht bought for me by my billionaire son or daughter.

Happy Father's Day.