I’m gonna be honest. I’m turning 30 this year and my biological clock is a-tickin’. I want kids in the next 3-5 years, partially because I don’t want to fork over any dough for fertility treatments. That’s why—along with marathon sessions of “The Millionaire Matchmaker”—I’m rapidly losing patience with men my age or older who don’t feel that they’re “ready” to have kids. When you don’t have a fire under your ass that’s pushing you to be ready, or else, it’s really easy to delay parenthood until the day your 40-year-old self grows up, decides it’s time to spread the seed, preferably in a 25-year-old’s egg. But science might finally have a little pressure to put on these guys. In The New York Times’ Sunday Magazine this weekend, Lisa Belkin wrote about a new study out of Australia that found that children of older men have slightly lower IQ than those of younger fathers.
Source: CHI Health
“Data they analyzed from more than 33,000 American children 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 7.”
To be fair, the differentiation is hardly huge, but it’s one of several other “side effects” of men procreating later in life—along with increased chance of birth defects—that prove men can hardly depend on their sperm to stay at peak potency their entire lives.
Obviously, I’m not a fan of kids being born with any problems, but this article made me pretty psyched. Finally, evidence was being discovered that would make men feel at least a little of what women feel as they hit the ‘30s and start thinking about having kids. Could this ignite the end of Peter Pan Syndrome, where men insist on maintaining a certain adolescence for as long as possible? I hope so—although, I don’t know that this will help with the man-child propensity for 25-year-old ass. All in due time!
[NY Times]Original by Amelia McDonell-Parry
