Stanford Study Finds New Dads In US Are Older Than Ever (mercurynews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Mercury News: American fathers keep getting older, raising the prospect of increased birth defects but also greater economic and emotional security for U.S. families, according to new research from Stanford University's School of Medicine. The average age of the fathers of newborns in the United States has climbed by 3.5 years over the past four decades, growing from 27.4 years in 1972 to 30.9 years in 2015, said the study -- the nation's most detailed analysis ever of paternal age. The number of newborns whose fathers were over age 40 has more than doubled over the past four decades. Those births now make up nearly 9 percent of births in the U.S., Dr. Michael Eisenberg and Yash Khandwala reported in the journal Human Reproduction. The share of fathers who were over age 50 rose from 0.5 percent to 0.9 percent. Asian-American fathers -- men of Japanese and Vietnamese descent, in particular -- are the oldest, becoming fathers at the average age of 36 years, the study said. Black and Hispanic men are the youngest fathers -- age 30.4 and 30, respectively. White men, on average, have children at age 31. Paternal age rose with educational attainment. The typical newborn's father with a college degree is 33.3 years old -- compared with 29.8 years for high school graduates.

Comments

As the child of people who couldn't afford kids...

[Pfhorrest]

As the child of people who couldn't afford kids: people shouldn't have kids until they can afford them.

Unfortunately, this means that most people just shouldn't ever have kids, because they will never afford them, because everyone is perpetually poor and only getting poorer.

And yes, that means I shouldn't have been born. And no, I'm probably never going to have kids.

The good news is, if everyone actually followed this advice (not that they will), whatever tiny number of kids were actually born in the future would live in a better world for it. If the underclasses upon whose backs the wealthy survive stop perpetuating themselves (ourselves, because I'm down here too), eventually the wealthy will have to support themselves, and the tiny future population will be forced to be more egalitarian.

It worked with the black plague.

DUH ... Kids are bloody expensive

[UnknownSoldier]

And we're surprised by these findings???

Kids are bloody expensive. Having kids ties you down (time/space/money-wise).

I suspect this trend will continue for another few decades.

Re:DUH ... Kids are bloody expensive

[tezbobobo]

I think you're wrong. People in poverty have always had kids. Financial insecurity doesn't preclude kids. We are seeing this trend in mostly Western countries where people are told that they should wait until they are financially secure before having kids. During that time the wife's fertility drops substantially and they end up have a couple of kids late. This will continue as long as there is the message, "wait until you're financially secure until you have kids." Unfortunately there are real problems with having kids late. Further, it doesn't need to stop - immigration (which I have no problem with) will take the place. But there are consequences to that - demographic changes and a change in cultural values.

Re: DUH ... Kids are bloody expensive

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I think your argument should take opportunity cost into account: it is true that the poor often have kids(generally higher fertility rates than the middle class; not sure about the wealthy, though they simply aren't numerous enough to be a terribly important population-level supply of children); but consider the difference in opportunity costs.

If you are middle class, or at least on the right side of poor, the message(and it isn't entirely a lie, though the student debt will hurt; and some majors aren't worth much) is "stay in school, work hard, get into a decent college, get a real job, then you'll have a chance at economic stability, living somewhere safe and with decent schools, etc. If you don't do that; people with a high school diploma or less are basically screwed, you'll be doomed, and so on." Sometimes exaggerated; but strongly emphasized and by no means entirely false. In the face of those incentives, unless you are particularly dumb, impulsive, or powerless enough that it isn't a choice, deferring children is pretty sensible behavior(both for men and women; though the fact that pregnancy and child rearing are time consuming as well as expensive likely means that women are even more likely to have to halt school or work because they just don't have time for both; while child support will be a real punch in the wallet; but not directly time consuming; and a situation where they want you to be working and earning as much as possible).

Among the poor, by contrast, the message is vastly less optimistic about the rewards of deferring children(one can blame 'culture'; bad role models, etc; and that may have a role; but it is hard to deny that people educated in really lousy school districts and with limited means to pay for college(scholarships and aid tend to cover tuition and room and board; but incidentals and foregone wages because of the time you aren't working still hit harder) simply have less reason to expect that their situation will improve if they defer children: your earning potential doesn't just magically increase with age; you need to obtain the appropriate degree, experience, promotion, etc.

Obviously, children are themselves expensive, so having them tends to make you poorer; but approximately a zillion years of evolution have left people, on the whole, liking children and the idea of reproducing, so just trying "tell them not to breed" doesn't work all that well. The poor face an overall grimmer situation; but also have little to gain by deferring children if they do want them. The middle class is offered much more convincing assurances that having children later might actually leave them better off.

Re:As the child of people who couldn't afford kids

[Pfhorrest]

And then the super rich who own automatons and natural resources enough to completely sustain themselves without any labor become the only survivors in a miraculously egalitarian future, for those who live to see it. Egalitarian because everyone (who's still alive) has everything they need and for that reason nobody has to work for anybody else. Just predicated on the deaths of almost everyone else in the process. But for whoever survives, it's a bright future indeed.

I considered noting the analogy to that scenario in my post but couldn't find a way to work it in. Thanks.

Re:Increased birth defects?

[The Evil Atheist]

What do you mean "wouldn't dare"? Are you living under a fucking rock? Women have been told since prehistory to have children young. The birth defects from older women are well known. Only now we're seeing a slight correction the other way warning that it actually does effect men too. For a while, the folk wisdom was that only the woman's age mattered and not the men. Nice try in attempting to play the injured party here.

Re:As the child of people who couldn't afford kids

[AmiMoJo]

whatever tiny number of kids were actually born in the future would live in a better world for it.

Probably not... Population decline is a serious problem for society. It causes all sorts of economic and social issues. Workers end up supporting too many retired/non-working people, there is a shortage of workers to do all the jobs that need doing (especially healthcare) and so on.

The world fertility rate is already nearing 2.1, i.e. zero growth/decline except for people living longer or catastrophic events like war. The total population will likely level off around 10-12bn by 2100. Modern farming methods can provide more than enough food for that already, and clean energy sources can provide more than enough power for us all to live well. We still need to deal with pollution and waste, but those are solvable problems and the solutions don't involve huge declines in living standards.

Population decline means either massive declines in quality of life or massive immigration. People don't seem to be very keen on either of those.

Re:A man's age

[Anonymous Coward]

You got that right. I'm 46 and for some reason I've never had so many 20 something women smile and acknowledge my existence. Far more than when I was in my 20s. Probably because I'm more built now, no bald spot, no gray hairs, no wrinkles and no gut. I look like a 30 something with confidence.
When I was young I was super-skinny, awkward, and terribly anxious and shy, especially around women.

No woman back then thought it might be worth it to get to know me. I built up quite a lot of resentment against women. I might just be able to finally live what I should have lived in my 20s.

I feel no great need to date women in their 40s, these are the same women that rejected me and even pushed me away and insulted me.

Women my age are pre-menopausal and either so demanding as to be comical, or so unattractive as to be repulsive. So the hell with them, they had their fun in their 20s while I was crying alone at home.