Men Are Affected By the Biological Clock As Well, Researchers Find (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A new study reveals that a couple's chances of having a baby fall with the man's age, to the point that it can have a substantial impact on their ability to start a family. Laura Dodge, who led the research at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, said that couples should bear the findings in mind when planning a family. "When making this decision, they should also be considering the man's age," she said. Scientists have long known that a woman's chances of conceiving naturally drop sharply from the age of 35, but fertility research has focused so much on women that male factors are less well understood. To investigate the impact of a man's age on a couple's chances of having a baby, Dodge and her colleagues studied records of nearly 19,000 IVF treatment cycles in the Boston area between 2000 and 2014. The women were divided into four age bands: those under 30, 30-35 year-olds, 35-40 year-olds, and those aged 40-42. The men were divided into the same age brackets with an extra band for the over 42s. Some of the couples had received up to six cycles of IVF. Dodge then looked at how age affected couples' chances of having a live birth. As expected, women in the 40-42 age bracket had the lowest birth rates, and for these women the male partner's age had no impact. But for younger women the man's age mattered. Women aged under 30 with a male partner aged 30 to 35 had a 73% chance of a live birth after IVF. But that impressive success rate fell to 46% when the man was aged 40 to 42. Whether they can hear it or not, the biological clock ticks for men too.

Comments

Younger Sperm Donors

[mentil]

Sooo, younger sperm donors are better, is the takeaway? I thought this was common knowledge.
Usually, a prospective mother will want to use her partner's sperm for IVF, and won't say "I'm gonna use someone else's sperm because you're old so the chances of success are lower, sorry honey." even if that means higher cost for more rounds of IVF. If a woman has a partner 10+ years older than her, chances are he's rich enough to afford those extra rounds.

Re:Younger Sperm Donors

[BESTouff]

If a woman has a partner 10+ years older than her, chances are he's rich enough to afford those extra rounds.

I'm exactly 10 years older than my SO, that smart gorgeous girl and mother of my lovely daughter, and rest assured she didn't choose me for my wealth.

Re:Younger Sperm Donors

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a load of crap right there. First off, why should men have to adjust to women being selfish?

Secondly, those "losers" aren't necessarily losers, they're the 90% of men that aren't the top 10%. Yes, some of them are losers, but most of them aren't. She's looking for a soulmate, which is great for her, but let's be honest, why should men have to do all the work to earn her stamp of approval? It takes men a significant amount of effort to get a date, but women pretty much just have to say yes and show up.

She definitely is destroying relationships. That's what women do. At virtually every stage of the process women kill a disproportionate number of relationships. Claiming otherwise is rather silly, we know they're the ones that generally say yes or no to requests for dates and that they initiate divorces more than twice as often as men do.

What's more, if you haven't actually had to do anything to earn or even deserve to be loved, then you're not going to feel a meaningful attachment to the person you're with. Women get all this messaging about how wonderful they are and how they should have Mr. Right or Prince Charming and they don't. Mr. Right is married to Prince Charming because they got sick of dealing with the bullshit.

Eventually, they hit the wall because men that are "Mr. Right" and haven't given up on women completely are either already taken by somebody else or they've got the financial means to date 20 yearolds and leave the older women to their own devices. Which is karma. You can't treat men like that while you're young and expect that men will treat you better when you're old.

Need more data

[GeekWithAKnife]

Have we factored in lifestyle into this as well?

Something tells me that men that do not smoke, don't indulge in alcohol often or at all and keep fit will have better results...(seems obvious right?)

The men I know at those later ages seem to have given up on a healthy lifestyle at least in terms of fitness. Also family stress factors in.

More data needed. Time to crowdfund a study on the subject?

Re:Need more data

[geekmux]

If men and women take better care of themselves at least in the first 30-40 years of their lives then they might have all that time for study and work to create that stable financial base without having to factor in serious fertility issues later.

We can't even create a world that offers financial stability to the younger generation, and you want to demand personal responsibility for maintaining a good diet, an active lifestyle, and practicing safe sex 100% of the time? Understanding human behavior, I'd say there's exactly a fat fucking chance of that happening.

Also, as an aside, we need to have loads more young people so they can work and pay off the wasteful ways of the previous few generations. Just a thought.

Automation is going to destroy many of those jobs that young people rely on for employment, and remove their ability to climb the proverbial ladder and seek out educated positions. Imperfect AI that's merely good enough will destroy the concept of human employment altogether. Welfare 2.0 will encompass the globe in ways we cannot even fathom yet. In short, future generations won't be paying off jack shit. They will be consumers, just like the other 99.9% of the human race. Earth doesn't want or need more added to make the parasitic infection worse.

Re:Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

"father being 40 or older is the main known risk factor for autism."

SIMPLY NOT TRUE.

"In the case of autism, the risk associated with parental age is DWARFED by the impact of inheritance."

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/opinion/sunday/how-to-think-about-the-risk-of-autism.html

Re:Responsible Progressive analysis

[aliquis]

Since we know men and women are equal and that means exactly the same, time to move forward with adjusting society until both men and women reach peak fertility at the same age. I vote for 40.

Yeah yeah yeah, women and men.

But what about trans-men furies MLP-lovers?
Has anyone studied us?

Such intolerant bi-gender society. Fuck you all.

Re:Not Soon Enough

[amalcolm]

Be careful what you wish for. I can tell you, infertility is no joke when the time comes when you do want to have children. It's a cause of a lot of pain and grief

Re:Quality

[goose-incarnated]

Rates of genetic disease are also much higher with older dads, and the father being 40 or older is the main known risk factor for autism.

It's a narrative being sold because men are checking out. The odds are so slightly higher than they are almost insignificant.

The "story" being sold is due wholly to reality not matching feminist ideology, and almost all of these stories about how men have a biological clock are hyped to get men to play the game again.

It is true.

[Charcharodon]

Yes I agree men are most certainly affected by biological clocks. There is the constant nagging, the weight gain, demands for a baby, the impending crash into "the wall" in terms of her looks, and god help them the hair style that she just "loves" that makes her look just like her mom. Not to mention the hoards of friendly and attractive younger women that seem to come out of the wood work once a guy gets to that point in his life.

Something must be done.