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Meghan, I'm fascinated by the "cultural metabolism" (as you so aptly put it) of these parental age stories, as well, but I suspect that men will never feel the same sort of pressure no matter how many of these studies are pumped out. Even with the rise of a few emo daddy bloggers, there is still not the same sort of imperative. Women are told, implictly and explicitly, that their lives are incomplete unless they become mothers. All you have to do is look at the celebrity fetishization of motherhood to see how this plays out. After Brad and Angelina started having kids, Jennifer Aniston was cast as pathetic because she was childless, and countless tabloid stories were churned out speculating about Jen's potential baby bump or lack thereof. On the other hand, Angelina was heralded as the second coming of Mother Teresa. Do we ever read stories about how George Clooney cries into his Cheerios because he's never been blessed with a bundle of joy? Of course not. Obviously the celebrity media isn't a complete reflection of pedestrian life, but I think in this case its telling.
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Like E.J., I am interested in this news about older men. We're used to hearing about the downsides of being an older mom: It's harder to conceive; there's more risk to you and the fetus, etc. And as a woman in her early 30s, I can tell you that all the women I know have internalized the "you-better-have-babies-before-your-fertility-drops-at-35-notion." It's as if it's tattooed to our inner eyelid. But now we're finally beginning to hear more about what I've always intuitively believed must be true: It's not so great to be an older dad, either. This piece in the Independent has details about a comprehensive study of children of older dads, and the news isn't so hot. They are "more likely" to do "less well" on intelligence tests than the children of younger men. The children of older mothers, by contrast, are not. Meanwhile, as anyone who keeps an eye out for these studies knows, this study is hardly the first to suggest that being an older dad isn't so great. As the article puts it:
However, recent studies have linked paternal age with congenital problems such as neural tube defects and a range of medical disorders of later life, such as schizophrenia, dyslexia, bipolar disorder and autism.
Who knows how many of these studies are credible. But I'm interested in the cultural metabolism of them. In the late '90s, the culture got all frothed up about sending the message to "career women" that they couldn't have it all—they'd lost their chance to have babies by putting it off too long. I remember feeling there was a kind of meanness in the coverage, a "so there" quality. Who's betting the same thing will happen to men? Not me, I have to say. Or if it does, it'll be milder.
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