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

There's just so much more to accomplish today.

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the problem is that there's just so much more that people want to accomplish today. It isn't like in the 1950s, where a man would be content going to his 9-to-5 job, coming home to a prepared dinner, smoking a cigar, going to sleep, and doing the same thing again every other work day. Saturdays were used for doing household chores and playing sports with his children, while Sundays were used for going to church and having a Sunday dinner with family.

It's totally different today. Men, women, and even people who don't identify as male or female have so much more ambition. They have so much more they want to do. They want to create. They want to build. They want to learn. They want to express. They want to protest. They want to love. They want to be loved. And they want to do all of these things every day. There's just no time for children these days.

Just look at the Rust programming language. We wouldn't even have the Rust 1.20 release today if it weren't for the hard work and sacrifice of so many people. Of course you can't be having children when you're bust crafting next-generation programming languages!

People today choose many other activities over reproduction and parenthood. It's just a part of modern life. Raising children is just inherently incompatible with creating programming languages that are so unique and special that they couldn't possibly have been created in an era where the focus was on procreation and raising children.

Re:There's just so much more to accomplish today.

[TWX]

The stories I've heard from my in-laws lend evidence that men were not terribly involved in the lives of the young children or even at-times the family. My FIL didn't get married until his forties, and most of his friends that did marry young still went out drinking with the guys, even as their wives became pregnant and raised children.

If expectations now are shifting more toward participation with the family then it would follow that men might be more inclined themselves to hold-off having kids until they're ready. Also, the use of birth control being more acceptable means that people generally have more options to entertain themselves without having kids.

Re:There's just so much more to accomplish today.

[mjwx]

The stories I've heard from my in-laws lend evidence that men were not terribly involved in the lives of the young children or even at-times the family. My FIL didn't get married until his forties, and most of his friends that did marry young still went out drinking with the guys, even as their wives became pregnant and raised children.

If expectations now are shifting more toward participation with the family then it would follow that men might be more inclined themselves to hold-off having kids until they're ready. Also, the use of birth control being more acceptable means that people generally have more options to entertain themselves without having kids.

Actual studies have show than male parents have always played a large role in raising children, right back to the prehistoric age. The idea that women raised children exclusively is a myth that has developed in very recent times.

It may also shock those who believe in old fashioned gender myths that women served aboard ships in Nelson's Navy.

I think the problem is that people now are working longer hours to have the same quality of life as they had in the 1950's. The fact that it takes years to save for a house deposit after completing your 4 year degree to get an entry level job means that raising a family tends to be put on the back burner for a while. I dont think it's just fathers either, women are also choosing to have children later for the same reason.

Hey, but wait a little while and I'm sure some baby boomer who got given a good job after high school, a house on $5,000 deposit, lived through the halcyon days of the 80's and 90's, got a good inheritance and now has a secure high paying job and government pension will be along to tell us kids have it too good these days.

actually older

[TWX]

Stanford Study Finds New Dads In US Are Older Than Ever

After so many nights without adequate sleep we only feel that way...

Re:actually older

[cryptizard]

You might look older but you get to live longer.

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

[tlhIngan]

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.

Actually, it's really about healthcare.

Back when medicine was a dark art, people had a half dozen to a dozen kids. Because you needed them to work the fields and survive - the high mortality rates pretty much ensured you needed lots of kids. You also needed a lot of kids to have enough labour to produce food and all that.

But then medicine became a science and as general health and wealth increases, birth rate drops substantially. You don't need as many kids to sustain yourself - or need as many kids because they're going to live to old age.

This has been seen time and time again - as countries go from impoverished sustenance to growth, the birth rate drops dramatically, and it happens within a short span of time.

In the western world, we've taken it to the next level - because parents are now supposed to raise kids and kids are not supposed to help bring wealth in the family by working. So parents generally delay kids because if you can't maintain housing and other basic necessities, having a kid won't help matters any, and you'll end up having to raise a kid with nothing. Still a mouth to feed and most parents wouldn't dare think of trying to panhandle with a kid. Or even worse, teenage pregnancy, so now try to juggle school, job, and a kid all at once.

And kids are expensive, because you also got to put them through school - the the impoverished cultures, you put them to work on the farms the moment they can walk, school is optional. (It's a big problem in Africa where parents prevent their kids from going to school because they need to work the farms)

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.

Increased birth defects?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you wouldn't fucking DARE point out the increased birth defect rates in older women having children, even though the rate of things increases fucking DRAMATICALLY by 35. But we jizz all over ourselves in the media to celebrate some 58 year old women squirting one out, anyway.

JUST down syndrome: (age/rate)

20 1:2000

30 1:900

35 1:350

40 1:100

45 1:30 (believe this was the age Sarah Palin had her downs syndrome child that she was praised for being so brave and strong to care for, but not taken to task for birthing at an age when you know the risks are very high).

47 1:20

49 1:10

Re:Increased birth defects?

[dargaud]

There's a test and abortion for it, so why should it matter ? (*) Yes, there are other types of rarer birth defects that increase with age. But there's also one thing that gets better with having kids at a later age: overall life expectancy. It selects for people who can live safely older, and selects against things like risky behaviors in teens, early genetic diseases, etc... Want to live longer ? Have kids later. Of course it might take a few thousand generations...

(*) speaking as an old dad.

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: Increased birth defects?

[The Evil Atheist]

I was responding to an obvious "indentity politics" nonsense. But apparently that's okay for you. That's very telling.

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

[Pfhorrest]

Not that obvious troll deserves a response, but 75% of Americans make less than me. Which doesn't make me rich in the slightest, they're all just even more poor; it just means I'm far from some kind of bottom-of-the-heap loser, I'm ahead of the pack and still part of the downtrodden underclass like the rest of us.

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

[dillee1]

What you are describing have been happening in Japan for 1~2 decades now. Local youngsters are refraining from breeding for reason exactly as you mentioned. Population in Japan in decreasing at 300k/yr.

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

[Hognoxious]

There should be a mod which is both -1 and +1 titled "depressing, but true".

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.

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

[tomhath]

Nobody said deaths "need to happen". What does need to happen is for people to stop breeding like rabbits.

See the story "The Midas Plague"

[Paul Fernhout]

"Then the whole economy collapses anyways because a consumption based economy can't function without consumers who all just died out"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
""The Midas Plague" (originally published in Galaxy in 1954). In a world of cheap energy, robots are overproducing the commodities enjoyed by mankind. The lower-class "poor" must spend their lives in frantic consumption, trying to keep up with the robots' extravagant production, while the upper-class "rich" can live lives of simplicity. Property crime is nonexistent, and the government Ration Board enforces the use of ration stamps to ensure that everyone consumes their quotas. The story deals with Morey Fry, who marries a woman from a higher-class family. Raised in a home with only five rooms she is unused to a life of forced consumption in their mansion of 26 rooms, nine automobiles, and five robots, causing arguments. Trained as an engineer, Morey modifies his robots to enjoy helping to consume his family's quota. He fears punishment when his idea is discovered, but the Ration Boardâ"which has been looking for a way to abolish itselfâ"quickly implements Morey's idea across the world."