‘Ninth child Emile Ratelband (72): it gives me the shivers’ | Columns & Opinion

Planned differently

“Of course you can also question my own age; 44 and just gave birth. Yes, I know: I’ll be 60 when our little Frenkie is 16. We had it all planned differently (read earlier). Life is really something that mainly happens to you, I conclude more and more often. You never have guarantees. I plan to live to be at least 90, but the first episode of Over my dead body painfully confronts us all with the facts: you really have nothing to say about it.”

Chills

“No, then Emile Ratelband. The Very Hungry Caterpillar. His ninth child is on the way, at an age when it is no longer possible for a woman to reproduce. As far as I’m concerned, Mother Nature hasn’t quite sorted things out for a while. Why doesn’t a man’s fertility end about the same as a woman’s? Why should a man with whom everything hangs and wrinkles still procreate? And with whom? Yes, with a considerably younger person. It gives me the shivers.”

child gift

“For Emile it is all about one thing and that is Emile herself. He has vowed to live to be 95 and he is working on a documentary about his life. The crazier the better, all for attention. At 71, the positivity guru gifted himself his eighth child. His eldest children are kept away from him by his three exes or they hardly look after him anymore. It doesn’t matter to Emile, she just makes some new ones. I think that’s insane.”

crossing borders

”I wrote before that such breeding should be banned. The average Dutch man is 80.5 years old; Baby Willibrord (because that’s what the ninth scion will be called) then, with a bit of bad luck (or can we call that luck?) no longer has a single memory of his father. Once again; life gives you no guarantees. I can also walk under the proverbial tram tomorrow. But come on: this is very much pushing the boundaries and crossing over. And that over the back of a child.”

In tears

“I was talking to my friend yesterday about how overwhelmed we are with the love for our baby. How dependent she is on us and how we want to protect her from just about everything. Her innocence has made me burst into unstoppable tears countless times over the past week and a half; that must also be the hormones, but god, we are going to do our best to give this girl the most beautiful life imaginable.”

Boring but stable

“She doesn’t have to learn Chinese in Thailand or watch her elderly father set up a cricket flour factory. She doesn’t get swept up in an attention-hungry documentary. She grew up with her brother and sisters and with both her parents. Maybe a little boring. But stable. And safe. I hope for all his children that there is a backup where they can find their peace. And that more innocent lives are not sacrificed in favor of the supreme egoist Ratelband.”

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