There is no denying that said friend is in good shape, with a decent job, and a lot to offer any woman who might be willing to breed with him. He fully acknowledged that it was going to be difficult to keep up with the demands of a newborn as a 50-year-old, and that raising a teenager in your mid-sixties would be challenging, but he was sure that he was up to the task. We spoke lot about the physical, mental, and financial demands of a baby, but it quickly became apparent that the issue of his fertility had not crossed his mind, not even once.
We don’t often talk about male fertility and age, do we? Perhaps that is because there is a pervasive belief that men stay fertile for ever and can be popping out healthy spermatozoa in their twilight years if they want to. I mean, Al Pacino became a father for the fourth time at 83, for goodness’s sake!
If I had a pound for every time I have heard it said that older men are attracted to younger women because these are their fertile years, I would have enough money to just flat out buy a baby – several babies, in fact.
It is also untrue that men’s fertility stays in tip-top condition and does not significantly decline as they age, because it most certainly does. If you’re a man reading this who has been quietly confident in the tenacity of your little swimmers, even as you struggle to get out of a beanbag in middle age, buckle up. This will make for uncomfortable reading.
We are all aware that rates of dysfunction increase dramatically in men over 40, as levels of testosterone decrease. Even if a little blue pill can help with that, the age of the father has now been found to potentially impact not only the pregnancy, but the health of the offspring and the mother.
square KATE LISTER
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Research is emerging all the time, but several studies suggest rates of miscarriage rise significantly with advanced paternal age, as does the likelihood of a stillbirth, preeclampsia, postpartum haemorrhage, and the mother developing gestational diabetes.
I don’t say this to scare anyone, although women have been thoroughly terrified with these kind of statistics around their own age for decades, but only to point out that male fertility is not constant or unaffected by the ageing process. Even if an older man does get someone up the duff, there could still be a risk to the resulting pregnancy and the health of the baby.
“Geriatric father” has never been a clinical term, by the way. Mercifully, “geriatric mother” (meaning over 40) has now been replaced by “advanced maternal age,” and “advanced paternal age” is now a recognised clinical term.
I wondered how many other men are wandering about believing their semen to be immortal. I conducted a rapid and highly unscientific survey of my male friends to ask them if they thought their fertility would expire, and every single one of them believed they could keep going as long as they had Viagra and enough strength to thrust. It hadn’t occurred to any of them that their fertility may be finite, whereas every single one of my girlfriends has worried about this at one time or another.
But perhaps another reason that conversations about older men and fertility are lacking is because it disrupts a very comforting, if deeply patriarchal, narrative, namely that it’s “natural” for an older man to lust after a woman half his age. That “men age like fine wine” and “women age like milk”. So, it’s not about being a creep, it’s basic biology!
Unfortunately, the actual biology is now telling us a very different story. Our cultural obsession with women and youth isn’t about fertility – it’s patriarchy.
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