WhenWoman’s Dayfirst met James, he’d fallen in love online with a single mother 14 years his senior. Three years on, we revisit the pair and find James being ‘mum’ to his daughters.
Barely out of his teens, James Piggott exhibits the weariness of a far older man. At just 20 years of age, he is caring for three little girls full time – and has already decided he doesn’t want any more children. Ever.
Since meeting his wife, Karen Anderson, who is 14 years his senior, online three years ago, the Perth lad has given up his studies to move to the US and raise her six-year-old daughter, Amanda, along with their two daughters, Kira, 2, and Liliana, nine months.
Exhausted by the demands of looking after them, James explains to Woman’s Day his dramatic decision to undergo a life-changing operation for his next birthday.
“The baby is testing me at the moment,” he admits, while flitting between washing the dishes and attending to his brood. “I’m getting up to her between two and eight times each night. I love my girls but I want a vasectomy next year when I turn 21.”
It is a startling aspiration for someone so young – particularly when his former school mates are far from contemplating marriage, let alone drastic family planning measures. It is a freedom James admits he often finds himself envying. “I sometimes want what they’ve got, but it wasn’t a very constructive lifestyle, mixing drugs with alcohol and wagging school,” he says.
James met Karen, from California, in early 2006 on an internet gaming website called Wordscape, and before long they were talking for nine hours a day and falling asleep with each other in front of their web cameras. After their controversial six-month courtship online, Karen, then 31, flew to Australia to be with her 16-year-old toy boy in Perth – much to the scorn of James’s mother and the nation at large, which condemned the “internet couple”.
But an even greater shock was to come. Seven months after James lost his virginity to Karen, she announced she was pregnant with his baby and the two decided to move to the US to marry and raise a family.
And while he admits to being jealous of the carefree lifestyle of so many of his young peers, James insists that for the most part he is happy.
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