On the radio - Older Fathers and Reproductive Risks

Earlier this week, Diane Rehm did a very thorough and informative show about older dads, which you can find here: http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/06/09/26.php#12040

For many of us, it's been a difficult summer of bad news about the decision to wait to have children. The first wave of news came in July with reports on a study from the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology that found miscarriage rates rise with the age of the father, regardless of the age of the mother. Then other reports about health risks to the baby, such as the autism link I have posted below, began to come out.

Take heart: The important context comes near the end of Rehm's show, where one of her guests estimated that more than 90 percent of babies born to older couples are normal.

You are not alone - some stats about older dads

Because, of course, all guys like stats, here are some numbers from the Centers for Disease Control that reflect the trend toward older dads. According to the CDC's most recent data, between 1980 and 2003 the number of live births per 1,000 men decreased in males between 15 and 29. But the birth rate increased for that time period for almost all age categories 30 and over. For men 40 to 44 years old, the number of live births per 1,000 men increased from 17.1 to 23.4. For men 45 to 49, the number of births increased from 6.1 to 7.6. For men 50 to 54 years, the number increased from 2.2 to 2.5. The only category where there wasn't an increase was men 55 and older, which stated the same: 0.3 births per 1,000 men.

Of course, there is a parallel trend for women. As the CDC notes:

"Births to older women continue to increase. From 2003 to 2004, the birth rate for women aged 30–34 years increased slightly (less than 1 percent) while the rate for women aged 35–39 years rose by 4 percent. The birth rate for women 40–44 years increased 3 percent, to 9.0, and the rate for women aged 45–49 years increased in 2004 to 0.6 births per 1,000 women."

You can read the CDC's 2004 report on births here.

Finally, something the kids can agree on

Emily Bazelon of Slate summarizes three new books about homework and determines it's a waste of time for elementary- school students.

Best/worst things about being an older dad...

Best: I'm more financially secure than I've ever been so I can provide the basics for my children. And when college expenses start to hit, at least I'll be eligible for senior citizen discounts at restaurants.

Worst: The grandparents thing. I never got to meet either of my grandfathers, they were both dead before I was born. And my kids will never meet my father. I'm thankful for the good health of my mother, a truly "great" grandmother.

Good news for the lady in your life?: 40+ mothers are healthier

If you read through this study, you'll see that the researchers found that women who have a child after they turn 40 experience better health later in life than those who started younger. They say it may not be that having a child late in life makes you healthier, but that the women who had kids later were in good enough health to have a child.

From the headlines: Autism risk increases with advancing paternal age

Click here for an article on Autism

Want to know about MY dad? Here's a column I wrote in 2004

THE FATHER IN MY HEART
PAT GARBER

A few weeks ago, I found a picture of my Dad that I had never seen.
It has quickly earned a special place in my heart.
I don't value it for the quality of the photograph. It's far too overexposed for that. There's so much light coming into the camera lens that most of the details have been completely washed out. My father's face is almost completely lost in a bright flash of white that almost overtakes the whole frame.
But there's enough detail to show that he has his arms wrapped around me and my brother Scott as we stare, blank-faced, into the camera, as we pose by a tree.
The picture was taken near the home where we lived, on the corner of West End Boulevard and Jarvis Street, in August 1964. I was 14 months old, my brother was 2, and my father was 46.
Eight years after that grainy black-and-white photo was taken, my father died.
I have few photographs of my Dad. I like this one the best because it's the only one that I know of that shows the loving bond between him and me.
I know that bond was there, nurtured over countless trips to Tanglewood and the Nature Science Center that was once in Reynolda Village. My Dad, my brother and I did many things together, and I considered him my best friend.
If we had known he would be gone when I was just 9, I'm sure more pictures would have been taken. As it was, Dad was our family's photographer. He's in precious few of the family photographs that fill several freezer bags at my mother's house.
He was usually behind the lens, preferring to snap the picture instead of appearing in it. I still have the camera, part of the Kodak Retina Series of cameras, that he used in the last years of his life.
I'll be darned if I know how to use it. But I often wonder, as I look through its viewfinder, if we compose the world in the same way - as if I could look into this vastly changed world and somehow figure out some kind of universal truth that the two of us could see together that could be captured forever on film.
I'll never really know.
It's part of the mystery of losing a parent at such a young age.
Just as you could look at the picture and wonder about the ghostlike features that the sun erased 40 years ago, I can trace my life through time and wonder how things would have been different had my father been there for me beyond the nine years we spent together.
But I'll never really know.
I am a father, too. My son, Sean, is 3. Already, the pictures I have of the two of us could fill a freezer bag.