Ep. 4: Jens Martin Skibsted

James Clasper: Hello, and welcome to Dad Mode Activated, the podcast celebrating fatherhood after 40. I'm your host, James Clasper, and here I talk to fellow late bloomers about the unique joys and challenges of becoming a dad later in life. My guest today is Jens Martin Skibsted, a Danish designer, entrepreneur, and author. The founder of the high-end bicycle design company Biomega, as well as the interdisciplinary design firm Kibisi, together with his friend, architect Bjarke Ingels, Jens Martin is currently a partner at the strategic design consultancy Manyone. But what we're going to talk about today, of course, is his take on dad mode. Now in his early fifties, Jens Martin is a father of four — two from his twenties; two from his forties. Jens Martin, welcome to Dad Mode Activated.

Jens Martin Skibsted: Thank you. Thanks for having me, James.

James Clasper: Okay, I want to start by hearing a bit more about you. Who is Jens Martin? How do you introduce yourself at cocktail parties?

Jens Martin Skibsted: I say, “Jeg er rejsende i design”, which means I'm traveling with design. So people that normally say that traveling with something in Danish means, you know, that they would, for instance, be traveling around with a toothbrush and trying to sell it door to door. And that's a little bit what I feel that I've been doing with design because I've been doing it so broadly, both the theoretical part via my books, also in terms of design products as such, you know, to end consumers via the, Biomega bikes, but also as a design, you know, consultant for clients that then would sell the design. So basically anything design I'll do. 

James Clasper: Well, as I said, we are here to talk about your experience of being a dad. And it's safe to say that your story is perhaps more unusual than most and that's because you had children at two very different points in your life. Tell me that story. 

Jens Martin Skibsted: Well, I will actually normally introduce myself first as a dad, but I thought since the program is about being a dad, I thought that kind of went by itself. So it's been a huge part of my life, both in terms of anticipating becoming a dad, it was actually my biggest wish, as a kid, and sometimes I would be a little bit nervous, what if it didn't happen? And I always knew that I would have many kids, I thought between four and five, I ended up only with four, and I can say ended up, because I certainly do not intend on having a fifth. The children I got in my twenties were not planned. Well, actually, only one of my four was planned. They were with the same woman, though. The first one, she was conceived when I was 24, after knowing her mother for two weeks. We did try, and, you know, I was raised to not just up and leave, and I thought just getting an abortion, which she was open for, if I had insisted, would not be the good thing to do. not that I'm a pro-lifer as such, but I think you need to treat this with a lot of respect and a lot of care. And then we decided to try it out. We obviously realized that you don't get to know each other well enough to know if you're going to stick together for life after two weeks. And we did eventually part. Of course, we kept seeing each other because we had a kid together, but like, we were no longer a couple after my daughter was roughly nine months old. One year later, one and a half years later, we got a son together, which also was not planned. It was a wild period of my life.  We had been to a party together where we thought everybody else was pretty boring and we ended up having fun and then he was conceived, you know, and we were like a little bit naive. We thought, okay, we've got the logistics covered. We've got everything up and running. We've agreed on how we split the kids, what we do. So we thought, ah, we'll just, you know, funnel into the pipeline another one, you know, which I'm very happy about us making that decision. But of course it was, again, not a super-mature decision and, you know, having two kids, many people will tell you, which is true, it's not twice as hard as having one kid. It's like, I don't know, 10 times as hard because, you just cannot share the burden because there are as many kids as there are parents.

James Clasper: We'll get to the second round of parenting, as it were, in a second. But tell me first, what was it like becoming a dad in your twenties   

Jens Martin Skibsted: When there were babies, it was much more kind of an ad hoc day-to-day thing you needed to look at because of, you know, when the kid is still breastfeeding, you can't just say, Okay, now I have the kid for five days in a row, you know, that's not going to work. So it was much more fluid when they were small or real babies. But then we agreed on something that in Denmark they call five, nine, which is, you know, out of 14 days, five of the days were mine and nine of the days they were with their mother. So there was every Wednesday they were at my place and every other Wednesday they would stay until Monday. So that was the way we split it. You know, I was probably, like most parents, super, super nervous somehow with the first one that the one would die in the cradle. So you'd sometimes just sit at night surveying that the kid would still breathe. You know, that my daughter would breathe. So you tend to be very, very preoccupied and hope that everything will go well. And you don't assume that, you know, they actually can breathe on their own, almost. But when I was in my mid-twenties, I was still partying hard and having a lot of fun and weekends. And we often ended up at parties with our kids, you know, sleeping in a corner or things. I mean, corner might exaggerated, but you know, on a couch or somewhere they would, they would just come along and kids are super adaptive and they will do what the parents do as long as you, you know, treat them with love and caring.

James Clasper: You said you'd always wanted to have kids, so how did the experience of becoming a parent meet your expectations?

Jens Martin Skibsted: The love did live up to those expectations, right? To get unconditional love is not a thing that many people experience many times, right? So that of course is super-unique and I think that that's probably universal. But then I was shell-shocked, to be honest, because my life was chaotic. You know, we're still at university and we got an au pair girl and my brother ran away with her to Paris and so we were stuck alone just before going to the exams and we just had to scramble to find a daycare where she could stay, which in Copenhagen is not very easy to get. So it, it was pretty chaotic and, you know, I was certainly not prepared. But you know, as with tasks you just end up, you know, achieving somehow.

James Clasper: Okay, so you had your third and fourth children in your forties. Tell me about that.

Jens Martin Skibsted: So I hoped that I would meet a life partner like I think also many aspire to do. I was a hundred percent sure that that life partner, for me to be for life, would also want to have kids at least, right? You don't know if you can, but, well, I felt fairly certain I could, but at least you don't know as a couple. But that certainly was my ambition, and I was looking for that, and you know, but finding the right person is not easy, at least for most, and so eventually I met her, and we were actually engaged and she was on contraception, like, actually the mother of the first also had been, and still we, we, yeah, she got pregnant, which for her actually was very embarrassing because, in her culture, it's frowned upon to have intercourse before you're married. So we kept it secret, and she had to hide her pregnancy during our wedding, which had been arranged prior. So it was not, we didn't get married because of that. It just happened not to have the exact right chronology. But you know, it all went well and so on. Unfortunately, with our second child, which then was planned, and the only one who born at the main hospital in Copenhagen. We gave birth at, well she gave birth, but I was present, at home, and to a girl that then was 20 years younger than my first girl. So she was planned and that went well. But unfortunately, when her mother got a postpartum, you know, and went through a very rough patch because of that, I didn't really understand that that was what was happening, and neither did she, but it meant that she left us at some point, when my girl was still very, or our girl, was still very little. So I became like a lone, I don't know if you call it that, single dad, lone dad, I don't know. I was alone. She eventually came back, but, you know, we didn't get back together, and at that point, the kids were with me, so it's not like they don't see her, but they're still with me, yeah. 

James Clasper: Tell me how all that influences or informs how you think about parenting.

Jens Martin Skibsted: When I compare parenting, I would normally compare, you know, the first two kids with the second two kids, I mean, in terms of my experiences with them, and not so much my experiences versus others’ experiences. And for sure, it's very, very, very different. I was very afraid that I would become … this is another Danish expression, a satellite parent, so the secondary one, you could say. I really didn’t want to do that again, and therefore I really fought for our relationship. And I was also concerned that if such a thing should happen with, you know, when she got a postpartum, things started getting a little bit weird, so to say, so I was very concerned what would happen if she would take the kids. And this is, at least in Danish culture, as a father, you are not very well placed vis a vis the law. The authorities will immediately assume that it's best for the kids to be with the mom. So that's obviously scary. And I actually asked for advice, what happens if, you know, and then a very wise lawyer said to me that judges don't really care about all the stuff that you'll promise to do in the future, what they care about is what you're doing. So I really made sure that, you know, even in the worst case, nobody would be able to tell that I wasn't there as a dad. So I really went all in from the beginning, yeah. 

James Clasper: Were you able to look back at all and go, okay, I did things like that back then in my twenties and I want to parent very differently this time? And if so, how?

Jens Martin Skibsted:: I wanted to be 100 percent involved. I wanted to be a 100 percent parent. I certainly did not expect to be 100 percent as in the sole parent, but you know, really, really fulfill everything I could get out of it, I wanted to get out of it, in that sense, yes. I know from my big kids that I got milder, and I think that's a thing you get with age, and of course you have more confidence in what you do. I listened to this psychologist, and she was like, the kind of authority is the same as if you have to imagine you sit in a, an airplane and if the airplane, you know, has some trouble, you should not ask the passengers, hey guys, what is it that you think I should do? That would scare everybody. So you need to be able to act with confidence. You should not panic yourself and so on. So there are certain things that I think were better for the kids because I just knew what to do.

James Clasper: And what was it like for your older kids when you became a dad again years later?

Jens Martin Skibsted: I think they were very happy that I got a partner, mainly because they thought I was not, you know, it took quite a few years, so they were nervous if I could get a partner. Of course I had had a few partners, but I've just kept it secret because, you know, I wanted to be a hundred percent that it was serious before introduced. My son, one day in the elevator, he started asking me about her and then, you know, he just looked at me afterwards and pointed to me and he said, Don't mess it up.  And so think he was relieved. My daughter had already tried to get me into couples and once we were in a kiosk and there was this very traditionally dressed Pakistani lady where he asked her if she was married and she said no. And then, oh, my dad isn't married either. Shouldn't you guys? Of course, I laugh quite a bit. And so she realized this was not going to work. So the next time we went somewhere, there was this young Turkish lady that would serve me the pizza. And then she asked her, how's your boyfriend to this Turkish lady. And she just looked at her surprise and said, I don't have a boyfriend. And then my daughter looked up at me and she winked. So she had like actively tried to get me into a relationship. So she was really happy about that.  

James Clasper: So when you became a parent again in your forties, was there anything you found especially enjoyable about it because you were an older parent?

Jens Martin Skibsted: There was this Danish woman, she's from a family that makes newspapers and she was interviewed in TV, and she said, there's no such thing as quality time. There's only quantity time. And I really like that remark because I think that's really what it is. about spending time together. Whether it's happy days or like a rougher patch, it's just life, you know, we all know it goes up and down. And when you hear about parents who have, well, at least when I have heard about parents losing their children, which is, you know, probably the worst thing you can imagine, what they will say is stuff like, I really miss just having one other fight with my daughter or something. They don't necessarily think of all, you know, the hunky dory things, but just, you know, the being together thing. So I think that's really what I enjoyed was just the quantity, you know, all the different aspects, just like laughter. 

James Clasper: That's a lovely answer and I think one that will resonate with a lot of people. You mentioned being a milder parent and having more confidence, but are there other benefits that you found to being an older parent?

Jens Martin Skibsted: I think maybe it goes back to just having the experience, having had the experience, so knowing, you know, when you get kids, to start with, you think that you're going to mold them. Of course, it's not that you can't mold your kids to some degree, I mean, you can teach them some values and, you know, behavior and so on. It's not like that, but I think later on you really realize that kids are themselves, right? You meet a new person each time, and they're each their own person. So enjoying the kids not for what they should be or could be, but for who they are, I think I was better able to do that. Of course, I've been able to transpose that now on my older kids as well. And I've been very lucky in that my that I, you know, got when I just turned 25, she, which by Danish standards is fairly young for a man and she got kids even earlier, she got kids when she was 22. sS I got to be grandfather as a 48 year old, and I have now three grandkids. Actually, the age difference between my latest child is smaller between her and my first grandchild than between my two youngest kids age, you know, the age difference. So now I'm also a co-parent with my daughter, my oldest daughter, which is really like a nice experience. and we take care of each other's children. And that's been very special.   

James Clasper: What did you find to be the hardest aspects of becoming a parent the second time around when you were in your forties? 

Jens Martin Skibsted: I'm still a good friend with a guy who went through the same experience as I in terms of having two kids early and two kids late. And he got them just before me. Well, the first of the second batch came just before and we were jogging together regularly. And he was complaining about how tough it was because he didn't have the same energy level and so on. So I was actually really scared is maybe exaggerated but at least apprehensive, thinking that I would not have the same level of energy. But I actually did have that. I didn't have any sort of negative experiences. Of course you get taken aback about how little sleep you get and how, you know, it is crazy with a little baby that you tend to have to forget about to get another one. And I think parents are basically designed to forget all the hardship before they meet it again, otherwise we would, we might stop at one. You could say it was peculiar because I shouldn't have been surprised again, but, I did have to make some professional choices. Having an international career where I would, you know, be in multiple time zones and very far, it made it tough for me to travel. I couldn't stop at 100 percent, but I would, for instance, I had a company in South Africa, which is luckily the same time zone almost, from Denmark, but it is incredibly far, right? People don't necessarily realize how big a continent the African continent is. So once you think, wow, now I'm in Africa, then there's eight hours more of flight. So when I went there, I would land in the morning, work all day. Sometimes I actually go home right to the same day or sleep over and go home the next night. So I would travel very far for very short And of course, that's a little tough.   

James Clasper: Did you have to make any lifestyle changes? Did you start doing anything, stop doing anything?

Jens Martin Skibsted: Well, I think most people when they get a career, they simply have to stop partying hard because it's difficult to reconcile, let alone with mixing that up with being a parent. So that bit I had stopped long ago. So it didn't influence my social life in the same way. I didn't time the kids very well because all of my friends more or less have kids right in between me. I have younger kids than them and older kids than them. So, of course, socially that's been a little bit, yeah, that's been a little bit challenging. But I think the main seismic shift almost for me was when I was left alone with the kids. Then I really, really had to make some existential choices. And I chose to get help at home. That help I focused to only deal with things that were not related to the kids. So I think a lot of people would think, oh, then I need a nanny. I actually only got a babysitter, I think, two years ago, and now they're like nine and thirteen, just because I couldn't make myself leave them all alone with zero parents, so I just focused on doing that hundred percent, but it also meant that, you know, the traveling then stopped one hundred percent. If I had to travel, then I would actually bring along. So we'd be this little caravan when I traveled. Then all board, well, there were two board positions I couldn't leave, but otherwise all board positions, closed the company, sold another company. So, so it really like that, that really, like, entirely changed my life. And probably had I been younger, you know, if that had happened at the beginning of my career, it might have been a very, very, very difficult choice. Well, at least a much more difficult choice to make, because then I would de facto choose not to have a career at all, which I have had. 

James Clasper: You mentioned that a lot of your friends had kids right in the middle of the two periods in your life when you had kids. Did that make it harder for you when you were the sole caregiver, you know, to get emotional support, just to have conversations with fellow parents, with kids the same age, roughly the same age when you needed to?

Jens Martin Skibsted: I think of course that I could use the parents from the classes of my kids. So it wasn't that I was completely alone but for sure my friends I couldn't speak with kind of on a day-to-day about because they didn't have that parallel experience. I think actually the fact that I was a dad, you know, you think, Oh, wow. You know, I had this reaction, Wow, poor you, alone parent. But, you know, it's incredibly normal for people to be alone with kids. It's just normally women that end up in that situation. So I thought, you know, in a way I enjoyed the empathy, but at the same time, I was like, Hmm, is this slightly sexist, right? That it's sad for me, but not sad for moms. And I have to say, one of the challenges has actually been that in this culture that men are not normally lone caregivers, So there are a lot of things that are kind of automated in the system where, for instance, if stuff happened to my kids, I have sole custody and then the hospital, you know, if they had some tests or whatever, then they would send it to their mother, which, you know, would mean that it kind of just disappeared, that information. We never had a conflict of any importance, and she's always been a loving mother, at least a very well-intended person, so it wasn't a problem, but if f I had had sole custody because she was some kind of psycho, then this would have been like a horrible move, right? And there was no regret, or this is just how the system is, or she automatically got the child benefits and things like that. Like the whole system is built around the mother. So that was weird. And that also a little bit of spillover into what you asked about the social bit. So I actually ended up in a mother group, you know, which sounds completely odd. I would sit there, as a lone dad, with only mothers and so I think that bit was a little bit challenging and I've also had to be a mom in that way. So my experience is not, I think, I don't mean it in a provocative way, but I've also been a little bit of a mother, right?  

James Clasper: And what about your physicality? Do you do anything to stay strong and healthy as a parent to two kids in your fifties?

Jens Martin Skibsted: Well, I get up very early every morning and make sure, well, either I go winter bathing or I go running. And then if it's the winter bathing, then I go I do it in the basement. And actually there's a trainer that comes and trains with me. So then it means when I'm finished with that, I can take them to school 

James Clasper: God, that sounds like a literally punishing regime. Winter bathing, followed by boxing. Tell me more though about the winter bathing. Very Scandinavian of course.

Jens Martin Skibsted: Yeah, they also call it Viking bathing, but it's actually super popular. We just jump in the cold water. I mean, we jump head first, which people say you're not supposed to, but we're a group of guys, so I guess there's a little bit of bravado. So we do that. And then we have a cup of tea and we actually speak about parenting.

James Clasper: Now, as I mentioned in my introduction, you're a designer, an author, an entrepreneur. How have you juggled being a parent to kids in your 40s and 50s with your creative side?

Jens Martin Skibsted: So actually that reminds me of my uncle who was, you know, way older than I am and still from the era where women's liberation was not necessarily understood by everybody, and he would say, well, if you talked about women in jobs, he would say, well, that is the big question, procreation versus creation. It always made me laugh because it was as if they were mutually exclusive. I certainly don't think they are. And it has not affected my creativity. The only thing is that sometimes you need a little bit of peace to get creative again.  

James Clasper: Has being a parent fueled your creativity in any way?  

Jens Martin Skibsted: I think the big realization as a parent is that you're not number one, that, you know, you're just part of something bigger. And often if you've got to pee and also your son or girl needs to pee. they will get in the bathroom before you, right? So that underprioritizing yourself is an important thing. And that makes you part of a bigger kind of social fabric. So I've been able to use that in my designs. Also, it's kind of a cliche, but it's often true that you design something that you would want, right? I design products. So you make something that you would want yourself. Of course, you should ideally be able to abstract from that, but somehow it sneaks in. And I think that when you become part of a larger fabric, us meaning, the kids and I, or us also broader socially, I think that's a thing you can start integrating in your design and in philosophy as well, as you become a parent and as you become older.

James Clasper: And what's a good example of that? 

Jens Martin Skibsted: I mean, it could just be in terms of designing a cargo bike, you know, thinking of what would be good for the kids. Or when you think of how cities function, a lot of urban design is now based around families because what used to happen was that when you had no money and were young, you were in the cities and then you got some money and had to, and you know, got kids and then you left the cities and went into the suburbs and the trick kind of to retain the money and the inhabitants and the taxes for the cities have been to make them family-friendly. So for urban mobility, which has been my main field, for which I've designed the most, I think it's been an integral part of thinking these objects.

James Clasper: Final question then, Jens Martin. How has becoming a father in your forties changed you?

Jens Martin Skibsted: It changed me in terms of prioritizing family more than career. I read once, probably before my 40s, actually, a small book then that some nurses in Denmark have written, that worked at a hospice. The type of nurses that basically spend their time with people about to die. And so they had asked them what were their regrets in life. And there was a bunch of regrets, none that related to career, right? People about to die just do not care about how much money they ended up making. At least most, maybe all, cared about was not spending enough with close ones, which, you know, I would argue the closest ones will always be your kids. So that marked me and it also marked me that the other thing was that people regretted, often regretted, not having seen certain things. You know, maybe they'd dreamt about seeing, let's say, Paris or something. There's something they wanted to see and they just never went there and saw it. So I think that's the thing that I've been doing. I've really been combining those two, making sure that I see things and that I see them with my kids. So that's my big hobby or passion rather and that's the thing that I also do with the big kids, the adult kids. So we actually all travel together and now, um, where so many together that, we always get picked up in a bus. So it is a little bit of a caravan, as I mentioned.

James Clasper: That's a lovely thought to end on Jens Martin, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much.

Jens Martin Skibsted: Thanks, James. Thanks for your interest.  

James Clasper: This episode was produced and hosted by me, James Clasper for Archipelago Audio. The music is by Pete Morrison.For more stories and inspiration, head to dadmodeactivated.co. That's dadmodeactivated.co. And if today's show resonated with you, please consider leaving a nice rating or review, Or better yet, share the episode with someone who might enjoy it. Until next time, keep your Dad Mode Activated.