No Baby For Old Men?
If men's biological clocks tick just as loudly, does it mean we're closer to equality?
Dennis Quaid, an over-50 dad, with the fam.
I turned 35 a few months ago, and since then the floodgates have opened on one sunny piece of unsolicited advice: "If you're going to have kids, you'd better hurry up," as if I didn't realize I was nearing my best-by date for both motherhood and youth.
You'd have to be living in a cave not to have heard the many hazards of being a 35-plus woman, especially if you're breedingly inclined: starting with increased trouble conceiving, (and if I manage that) of having a baby with Down's, autism, low birth weight and a plethora of other ills. There's also now almost certainty that someone will write the words "elder prima" (elderly mother) on my chart before they put it and me on the shelf.
The common wisdom about the pitfalls of 35-plus motherhood goes against what's happening in the tabloids, of course, unattainability being their bread and butter. Every time you open their URL or pages, another 40-something celeb is pregnant (often with twins) or is adopting a baby. Being an "elder" mother can carry status: not only can it suggest you have money to throw at (expensive) fertility treatments or even surrogacy, but also that you're likely someone who has put career first, another source of kudos in North America (more than, say, being a teen parent).
Crux of a double standard
But it's different for those of us without personal baby entourages in the form of nurses and nannies. And until now, it's been different for men than women. In fact, it's at the crux of the double standard when it comes to sexiness, power and age. The few people who bother to ask how old my partner is (43) tend to wave their hands at the number. "That's young for a guy," most say. It means I'm eight years behind him in my career, if you want to look at it that way, but already older than him biologically. I'm an immature "elder" with more risks.
It's not just that he and his pals are viewed as capable of getting breeding and other jobs done, they're often viewed as downright desirable due to the increased wealth and social status they accumulate as they grey. There are many famous older dads who often get props for still being sexy: David Bowie (at 53), Mick Jagger (at 57), Michael Douglas (at 58), Rod Stewart (at 60), Paul McCartney (at 61), Eric Clapton (at 59), Pierre Trudeau (72), Charlie Chaplin (at 73), Saul Bellow (at 84), Pablo Picasso (at 68), David Letterman (at 56), Larry King (at 65 and 66), Woody Allen (at 51), Warren Beatty (at 62), Dennis Quaid (50) and Jack Nicholson (at 53), to name a mere sample.
There are also famous stories about men who have fathered children into their '80s and '90s, such as Australian mine worker Les Colley, who was 92 years, 10 months when he fathered a son, Oswald, in 1992. "I never thought [my new wife] would get pregnant so easy, but she bloody well did," he told newspapers at the time."
The number of older dads generally is growing: in the U.K., the average age of fathering a child is 32, but figures from the U.K.'s Office for National Statistics show that in 2004 more than 75,000 babies were born to fathers aged 40 and over -- more than one in 10 of all children born. And according to US-based National Center for Health Statistics, in 2004 about 24 in every 1000 men aged 40 to 44 fathered a child. This is up almost 18 per cent from a decade ago.
No 'get out of aging free' card
So I'm heartened that scientists are now terminating at least one unwanted piece of gender nonsense. Until now, there's been extensive research into and coverage of the health problems associated with older motherhood, but scant attention has been paid to any potential difficulties faced by the children of older men. But the increasing drips of research trickling in about the consequences of older sperm all collected in the New York Times mag this weekend. And it's pretty conclusive that aging sperm are no more agile or shiny than saggy eggs. Men and women have a pretty similar biological clock.
Researchers just analyzed tests done on 33,000 American children that showed that the older the man when a child is conceived, the lower a child's score is likely to be on tests of concentration, memory, reasoning and reading skills, at least through age seven. "It adds weight to a new consensus-in-the-making: there is no fountain of youth for sperm, no 'get out of aging free' card," as the NYT story said.
And men don't have to be all that old to be "too old." The article goes on to summarize several past studies. French researchers reported last year that the chance of a couple's conceiving begins to fall when the man is older than 35, and falls sharply if he is older than 40. British and Swedish researchers have calculated that the risk of schizophrenia begins to rise for those whose fathers were over 30 when their babies were born. And another Swedish study has found that the risk of bipolar disorder in children begins to increase when fathers are older than 29, and is highest if they are older than 55. British and American researchers found that babies born to men over the age of 40 have significantly greater risk of autism than do those born to men under 30. (The age of the mother, in most of these studies, showed little or no correlation.)
Social implications of 'washed up sperm'
And the interesting part isn't just what clearing up these misconceptions means scientifically, but what it might mean socially.
Firstly, it’s essentially “why we see women as 'old' and men as 'distinguished'... What if 30-year-old women started looking at 50-year-old men as damaged goods, what with their washed-up sperm, meaning those 50-year-olds might actually have to date (gasp!) women their own age?" writes Lisa Belkin in the NYT.
Secondly, my years as a teacher showed me that there's a well-established tendency to blame the mother for everything from birth defects to missing homework. The new info about dodgy sperm might mean people start to view dads as culpable genetically and therefore parentally.
Finally, women "are the ones who hold the time lines and calendars in our heads, who have to surrender space in our bodies and clear time in our lives," Belkin continues. "Too soon could derail a career. Too late could risk infertility. Becoming a mother means compromising with biology -- 'settling' for a mate or for single-parenthood or for an ill-timed career interruption -- in order to beat that clock."
Some daddy blogs have suggested we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater: that older dads have many advantages including being truly "ready," and also more patient. "Despite my advanced age, my kids are still among the smartest, most beautiful and well-behaved on the planet," blogs Great Dad.
I'm sure they are. The evidence doesn't suggest that every older dad (or mom) has wonky DNA. And sure, older men could still be considered as good mates due to their increased ability to provide for and therefore protect their children.
But the evidence suggests women might get some different consideration now, and actually be about to come a long way, baby.
Related Tyee stories:
- So You Want Me to Breed?
Fertility crisis fretting misses how lots of women really think. - Our Home and Infertile Land
Why other industrialized nations are having more babies. - Mother's Helpers
Nervously navigating today's patchwork of childcare.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
anniepema
07-04-2009
The Paternal Age Effect
Researchers have found the offspring of older fathers are subject to many, many diorders that increase in frequency with a fathers age, on a population level.
Some of these are in addtion to schizophrenia, autism, and bipolar disorder,are MS, type 1 diabetes, cerebral palsy, blindness, prostate cancer, breast cancer, early childhood cancers, dwarfism, progeria, de novo huntington's chorea and on and on. Sperm collect mutations as a man ages.
One key paper on this subject is: http://ageofthefatherandhealthoffuture.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html
Fii
07-04-2009
There is nothing more
There is nothing more annoying than people assuming every woman wants biological children. If I ever get that piece of unsolicited advice (but most people don't guess my age correctly because I don't quite look like an old spinster-hag yet; oh- are those terms not still widely used?), I plan to snap back with "Couldn't run out fast enough!!"
nightbloom
08-04-2009
The perverse reality of the
The perverse reality of the "30-something-women-desperate-to conceive" meme is that this age group of women has the highest abortion rate, even while the rate is going down markedly for teen girls and women in their twenties. So there's a lot more going on there than meets the eye.
As for aging dads and low-quality seed, science has simply confirmed what centuries (millennia?) of received wisdom has taught us.
In terms of genetic health, Bristol Palin did exactly as nature intended (notwithstanding the scorn heaped upon her by liberals, while coke-snorting Biden-girl gets a free pass). Early motherhood and early fatherhood are natural - only modernity and its endlessly delayed adulthood make nature inconvenient.
PatrickMcEvoyHalston
08-04-2009
Best psychological age
A lot of people I know become not just mellower but nicer as they age. (I sense this, perhaps, most especially in novelists--where characters are obviously more patient, sweeter, to other characters in later books, than they were in the novelists' very vibrant but more charged and angry earliest works.) I have some suspicion that what happens with those who have self-esteem enriching experiences of validation and attendance when they were young, but also hampering experiences of abandonment and sadistic treatment, is that they still have it in them to acquire more of what they were lacking, and deal with some of what has tended to haunt and stop them, while they go through life. This may in fact be--without them being consciously aware of it--what a great deal of their life endeavors are mostly about. And if they end up getting some of the attention they were needing, learn not to denigrate but work to satisfy their own needs, they no doubt end up being better able to attend to their children when they have them, than they would have been if they had had them when they were younger. That is, even if the seed is worse, the DNA somewhat hampered, the story of the unfolding and development of such into its final psychogenetic form (which is where all true growth has occured with homo homo sapiens: our story has not been a wit about changes in genes, but rather in changes in the nature of the "unravelling" of the DNA in the womb and early childhood--psychogenic evolution) may be a better one with older parents.
My mom is a nicer, more giving person than she was when I was a teen: she listens better, more generously, than she once did, and conversations with her leave me feeling warmer and more optimistic. She has largely satisfied her need to be the career woman, a pursuit which left us feeling like our own ambitions were of secondary import, when we were teens. I wonder, given how important the quality and quantity of attendance is to the emotional/intellectual development of children of our species, if we should be looking more to the best PSYCHOLOGICAL age and less to the best biological age, for having children?
In any case, this is vein to be mined. Not just because real rightness will be discovered there, but much needed fairness too: as Vanessa argues, if you're in your 30s, without kids, and not obviously on a professional path, you will be looked at as if you are the runt of the pack. Conversely, if you are professional, late 20s, and have a child or two, you are being everywhere "told" you shine golden--whatever the true dullness of your story.
Jeffrey J.
08-04-2009
Chauvinist Elites As Usual
While our elites (corporate and political) push for a return to male chauvinism, the majority of citizens have clearly embraced gender equality. Most men I see have enjoyed becoming parents, sharing household and child rearing duties, and understanding intuitively that male chauvinism is deeply unfair. Women in turn are integrated into society's employment and social fabric and have no intention of being marched back into the kitchen, ala the 1950's.
However, the elites refuse to accept equality. Hollywood, news corporations, magazines and advertizers keep foisting chauvinistic images on the public, replete with girls in pink little outfits. Today, most of them are going bankrupt, which perhaps isn't a coincidence. The people have spoken!
Great coverage of a topic we need more of.
Stump
08-04-2009
Old(ish) Dad sez
I'm glad to be a parent in my mid-40s, simply because the child I had, has turned out to be a wonderful little kid. I think that's partly because I'm a slighter better more patient with others type of person now than when I was younger. However, I definitely have a smidgen of envy for my friends who bred young and will soon have their kids out of the house. Footloose at fifty would be grand.
freebear
08-04-2009
What about the Earth's biological clock!
I, and circumstances, chose not to father offspring. I chose to smother the 'clock' (usually with dispair for the future!).
A small contribution to the population growth problem and earth's diminishing carrying capacity.
Wilfred Laurier
08-04-2009
Kids....
I had my kids in my late 30s and I think it was actually a good time. My wife, fortunately, had no serious complications at all. Being a little older and (I hope) more wiser has, in my opinion, benefited my kids in a positive way.
Besides, you are only as old as you feel. People know what makes you old, that being stress, diet and lack of exercise. Paying attention to those will mean that older parents will still be around when their kids are doing well in their careers.
nightbloom
08-04-2009
Just as an aside on the
Just as an aside on the point about older men being “distinguished” (while women experience an inversely-proportional loss of value on the proverbial “meat market”), I must say I never knew how true this was until I became a slightly paunchy late-thirties guy with a blackberry and good clothes.
As a scrawny teenager and twenty-something, I was an “invisible male” routinely ignored (or worse) by women my age and older. They invariably gravitated to high-status hockey-jocks, moneyed preppies, or “genetic celebrities” (nobodies who happen to be drop-dead gorgeous). My straight male friends, who occupied the same league as I, complained about this regularly (they complained about that, and the fact that girls always seemed to prefer total jerks...which probably comes automatically with social status).
Now that I’m late thirties, I’ve lost the skinny twinky qualities that made me a commodity in the gay scene…but women of all stripes - from twenty-something students to overly-tanned cougars - now ogle me. I’m not exaggerating. The economics of sex are just that bizarre. And they're very forward about it. There are times at the office, in the food court, or at the mall (anywhere!) when I just have to look at the floor and wait for it to stop. The power dynamic has totally switched around, and all I had to do was wait ‘til I got “distinguished”. The thirty-plus hetero meat market really is the proverbial Revenge of the Nerds.
This should brighten the day of any underweight, pimply, serially-rejected adolescent male reading this. Your day will come.
snert
08-04-2009
Patrick McEvoy
By waiting too long one runs the risk of passing problems on to your children. That does not imply that anyone in this forum is a loser. Also if one decides to drop out of the gene pool that is a personal decision but it does not eliminate the fact that they have lost out in that respect.
As I said, the comment was a bit cryptic but not directed at anyone in particular.
Somebody may have tried on a shoe that wasn't meant for them and found it fit but that's not my doing.
Fii
08-04-2009
Great post Nightbloom!
"I must say I never knew how true this was until I became a slightly paunchy late-thirties guy with a blackberry and good clothes."
haha... I myself tend to ogle young, fit men on bikes/walking dogs. To each his/her own, I guess. AND I might add, this late-30s woman gets smiles (in the cold cold 'couve to boot) from men of all ages/stripes... still. Just today a young Asian guy (unless he was a former student I didn't recognize?) was checking me out...
As for Snert's post, I reckon there are three types of people out there:
1) Those who have always known they wanted kids and will stop at nothing/make the right choices to achieve that end
2) Those who don't have a clue what's going on and go with the flow because they have nothing better to do (most of them end up having children)
3) Those of us who have always known, for whom the 'blueprint' was laid out a long, long time ago and who have never really had a choice. Hard to explain. We pretty much just tread lightly through the world and asked to be left in peace.
Fii
08-04-2009
And I think most people fall
And I think most people fall into category #2 :)
jwstewart
09-04-2009
There is a long way to go for men too...
before reaching gender equality as concerns having children.
Will it be reached when it becomes equally common for men to choose single parenthood from the start? Presumably through surrogacy or adoption, at a level equal to women who choose single parenthood.
Or will it come when men are able to equally share parenthood after separaton/divorce, instead of becoming 2-weekend per month "uncles".
Certainly it won't happen based on a realistic evalution of sperm quality as the author suggests.
alive
09-04-2009
There is something called a
There is something called a sexdrive!
Common sense tends to fly out the door where sex is concerned.
So what is the solution? mandatory prevention?
This is the kind of subject where many people will agree in principle but soemhow feel that they personally should be extempted.
In any event the real problem is too many babies and too many people in this world.
The next dilemma is that we spend fortunes trying to keep unhealthy babies alive!
nightbloom
09-04-2009
"Will it be reached when it
"Will it be reached when it becomes equally common for men to choose single parenthood from the start?"
It takes lots of money. Like Ricky Martin (who basically rented a uterus for a huge sum, if I’m correctly informed). So for most men there’s really only one option. As for non-biological fatherhood, I’m not sure how men fare as single foster parents. I doubt the system makes it easy for them. And I know male *couples* need to be very careful, as we know anecdotally that there’s an unreported pattern of trying to saddle male applicants with kids whom the “normal” hetero applicants don’t want (i.e. with developmental or behavioural issues).
The ball really is in the women’s court when it comes to reproduction. It’s the era of the multi-option woman and the zero-option man. Straight men have basically rolled over on this one and called it 'progress'.
G West
09-04-2009
I think you're right about #2 Fii
And, lots of times what's perceived as oogling (from both sides of the gender coin) actually ain’t - it's just someone who's friendly and at peace with the world....and doesn’t mind showing that to everybody…
Sorry to bust both your bubble and nightbloom's.
Ahda
11-04-2009
long view
If we consider this question with a long lens we find that the age at which people become parents has implications into future generations. If "elder parenting" becomes a popular trend for a few generations, grandparents, great-aunts and uncles and certainly great grandparents become a remnant of our history. At the same time that 35-40 year old parents gain wisdom and patience, many of us, mellow and slow down physically. Certainly child raising requires emotional and social energy, but no less - physical stamina. Without extended family - as we find ourselves becoming grandparents at 70 - children may not even have memories of the elder generation. Additionally, their parents will not benefit from the support that multi-generational families enjoy.
PatrickMcEvoyHalston
12-04-2009
Just say no to incestual smothering
@Ahda: Do people really need to know their grandparents? Mine were way spookier than my parents are. I could have done without meeting them, for sure. Is it more true to say multi-generational families support, or that they smother? The depression ended with nuclear families, and the independence, space, and freedom, this configuration offered, didn't it?