Sir David Attenborough Has Two Children Who Followed In Their Dad's Footsteps

Nature documentaries would not be what they are without Sir David Attenborough's sonorous voice narrating the action, as he has countless times over the decades. Few narrators are more legendary, and have become more closely associated with the natural world.

David, who is now 98, has an immense public legacy that people will be reflecting on long after he's gone. At the same time, many wanted to learn more about David's children, who followed his career path, albeit with a little more privacy. Here's what we know about each of them.

David has two children, Robert and Susan, who he had with his late wife, Jane Ebsworth Oriel.

Richard is a bioanthropologist, which means that he's very much exploring similar terrain as his dad. He's currently in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. According to the university's website, Robert's research is in "Human population biology and health, especially in New Guinea and Evolutionary and behavioural anthropology."

In speaking with the Times, David said that he once gifted Robert a salamander when he was a boy.

"I said, 'Now there you are.' This thing just sat on his hand. I said, 'Put him in his new home.' He put him in his new home, and it very slowly walked down to the water, and there out from beneath its tail came a little one. My son looked at that with his eyes coming out of his head - as did I," he explained.

Susan, meanwhile, once worked at a primary school but now works directly with her father, filling a role that her mother filled before her. Apparently, she helps around the house, although David once told Stylist magazine that he has a great fear of becoming a burden to them.

"I'm scared of becoming an appalling encumbrance on my children," he said in 2017, per The Daily Mail.

Although it seems like both of David's children turned out just fine, he was honest about the way his career pulled him away from them when they were growing up. "If I do have regrets, it is that when my children were the same age as your children, I was away for three months at a time," he told Radio Times. "If you have a child of six or eight and you miss three months of his or her life, it's irreplaceable; you miss something."

At the age of 98, David has plenty to look back on and be proud of. He has genuinely transformed the way many people see the world around them, and hopefully that's also true of his own children.

Relationships between parents and children are always difficult, but hopefully David's children can appreciate all he's given them, flawed though he might be. All a parent can do is try, and it seems like David did that for his children, even as he helped to steer each of their careers.