An article about how some people in their late 30s, 40s and 50s fear that they're getting old to have kids because after 35 they become less fertile.
An article about how some people in their late 30s, 40s and 50s fear that they're getting old to have kids because after 35 they become less fertile.
It was when Connor woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom that he started thinking about it. The 38-year-old civil servant from London got back into bed and couldn’t sleep: he was spiralling. “I thought: ‘Shit, I might not be able to have children. It actually might not happen,’” he says.
“It started with me thinking about how I’m looking to buy a house, and everything is happening too late in my life,” Connor says. “Then I started worrying about how long it would take me to save again to get married, after I buy the house. I was doing the maths on that – when will I be able to afford to be married, own a house and start having kids? Probably in my 40s. Then I started freaking out about what the quality of my sperm will be like by then. What if something’s wrong with the child? And then I thought, oh no, what if me and my girlfriend don’t work out? I’ll be in an even worse scenario in a few years.”
Connor’s fears aren’t entirely baseless. Children born to men aged 45 and above have a higher risk of premature birth, seizures, low birth weight and being admitted to neonatal intensive care. There is also data linking an increased risk of autism with babies born to older fathers, although the evidence is not conclusive. Male fertility also decreases with age: although men don’t experience a menopause in the same way as women, researchers pinpoint the 35-40 age bracket as the point at which sperm counts typically deteriorate.
Worse is when people make flippant remarks about how “lucky” men are for theoretically being able to father children into old age. “People make comments like: ‘Look at Charlie Chaplin,’” says Adam (Chaplin fathered a child at the age of 73). “I think, what on earth does that mean? Someone famous was medically able to have children at a certain age, and that means I’m OK to have children? I want to have children in a meaningful way … And to just dismiss it by saying: ‘Well, you can biologically have children, so it’s OK,’ is upsetting.”
An article about how some people in their late 30s, 40s and 50s fear that they're getting old to have kids because after 35 they become less fertile.