Problems With Old Poppas

Men often brag about their virility and their ability to sire children well into old age—after all, Segovia, Picasso, and Pablo Casals all fathered healthy children quite late in life—but guys should probably garner as much of the blame for problem pregnancies and birth defects as mothers of a “certain age.” A number of studies have linked older fathers to the incidence of certain birth defects, for instance, and children conceived by older men are more likely to suffer from schizophrenia—perhaps because older guys have more abnormalities in their sperm.

Two recent studies add fuel to this fire by associating paternal age with miscarriages and with autism. In the first, an analysis of data taken from interviews with 13,865 Israeli women as part of the Jerusalem Perinatal Study from 1964 to 1976, the researchers found that independent of maternal age and multiple other factors, pregnancies conceived from fathers aged 40 or older were almost three times as likely to end in spontaneous abortion as those in which the father was younger than 25.

The second study looked at another large group of men and women born in Israel during six consecutive years. Practically all of the men and roughly 75 percent of the women had been assessed by the Israeli draft board at age 17, and the researchers knew the age of both parents for more than 300,000 of them. After controlling for year of birth, socioeconomic status, and maternal age, the researchers found that offspring of men 40 years or older were 5.75 percent more likely to have autism spectrum disorder (ASD) than those whose fathers were younger than 30.

The mother’s age, on the other hand, had no association with ASD.

While neither study can be used to assess the risks facing specific couples, it’s worth noting that the American Society of Reproductive Medicine has set an upper limit of age 40 for sperm donors.