• Old Dads for Sale

  Posted Tuesday, April 28, 2009 9:51 AM | By Emily Bazelon
  
  
  sponsorship
  
  Give ScienceDaily credit: Next to the write-up of the new study that found a correlation between autism in kids and advanced maternal age (oo, rotten phrase) is a link to the 2006 study that found that "children of men age 40 and older have a significantly increased risk of having autism spectrum disorders compared with those whose fathers are younger than 30 years." There is so much scientists don't understand about the autism spectrum, which may very well turn out to be a constellation of related but different disorders, with their own or overlapping genetic links. Maybe these apparent correlations between the disorder and older parenthood will prove unimportant in the end, or as you suggest, Jess, a proxy for other underlying factors. But at least it's equal opportunity bad news in the meantime. And the findings about older dads reminds me of a Lisa Belkin's argument about why men might want to start worrying about their biological clocks, too. She cited the autism study and another one showing that the children of older fathers have slightly lower IQs. Now maybe focusing on all of this is wrongheaded, because people shouldn't decide when to have kids based on preliminary findings about slight upticks in risk. But since Meghan is right about how much more often women's marketability is on the line, I'm glad to have a reason to bring up men's, too.
  
  Filed under: parenting, autism, Mark Regnerus, biological clock
  0 Comments

  Add Yours

  Or join the discussion
  on the Fray