While fewer than 1 percent of first-time fathers are over 50, there are benefits to being a later-in-life father. Dr Paul Turek, a men's health and fertility urologist, says that men who have children at an older age tend to live longer.
It is still possible for men to father a child in their 50s and older. According to Guinness World Records, the oldest man to father a child was 92 years old at the time of the birth. Still, researchers have found that a man's age can affect a couple's chances of becoming pregnant.
Of the roughly 4 million births each year in the U.S., about 9 percent of fathers are over 40. And "about 40,000 newborns have a father over the age of 50," says Michael Eisenberg, an assistant professor of urology at Stanford University Medical Center and the senior author of the study.
Although most men are able to have children well into their 50s and beyond, it becomes gradually more difficult after the age of 40 .
Among the more recent cohort, men's first births occurred at an average age of 27.5, 2.3 years later than in the late 1980s. Trends in mothers' age at first birth have been similar, rising two years between the late 1980s and today.
There's no maximum age that stops a man from being able to have a baby. You can become a father long into your older years, but there are risks.
“Men's sperm quality seems to deteriorate after the age of 35,” a report published in the peer-reviewed journal, New Scientist, cautions. The scientists also note that at the age of 35, the proportion of sperm carrying an X chromosome also seems to increase, meaning older dads are more likely to have daughters.
While fewer than 1 percent of first-time fathers are over 50, there are benefits to being a later-in-life father. Dr Paul Turek, a men's health and fertility urologist, says that men who have children at an older age tend to live longer.
Guys can father a child at any age, right? Well, not exactly. While it's true men continue to produce sperm into old age, it doesn't mean they'll be fertile at 50. And just as a woman's chances of getting pregnant start to decline in her mid-30s, so does a man's fertility.
About 9 percent of all newborns in the United States now have dads older than 40, and almost 1 percent have dads over the age of 50.
There is certainly a trend of fatherhood becoming a delayed life stage, with the average age of a new father now 33.1 years of age! The Northern Territory and Tasmania are home to our nation's youngest dads, with the median age of fathers at 31.5 and 31.7 years respectively at the child's birth.
A recent study in the USA found that there are additional risks for the baby, demonstrating that fathers older than 45 had a 14 per cent greater chance of their babies being born prematurely and at low birth weight (each of which can cause long-term complications).
While it's not impossible to become pregnant naturally at 50, it is very rare. Women are born with all of the eggs they will ever have. As you get older, you have fewer eggs, and they are more likely to have abnormalities. Most women who get pregnant after 50 use donor eggs.
A 2019 study determined that a father's age has a significant impact on a child's health and development. The study found that babies born to older fathers had an increased risk of cleft lip or palate, heart defects, autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Older paternal age may be harmful to the offspring's health in terms of genetic mutations, telomere length, and epigenetics [66]. Several lines of evidence suggest that epigenetic changes occur in the sperm of older fathers, particularly defects in DNA methylation [67–69].
The oldest man to father a child in history is disputed. Biblical claims aside (sorry, Abraham), a Baptist preacher in Illinois named James E. Smith claimed in 1951 to have fathered a child at 101 but couldn't prove his age; neither could Indian wrestler Ramajit Raghav, who said he had fathered a child at 96 in 2012.
Male fertility generally starts to reduce around age 40 to 45 years when sperm quality decreases. Increasing male age reduces the overall chances of pregnancy and increases time to pregnancy (the number of menstrual cycles it takes to become pregnant) and the risk of miscarriage and fetal death.
Although a man's fertility can theoretically last until death, sperm production has been found to decline from around the age of 50. Although it is still possible to conceive a child, and many men do have children in their 50s or later, it may take longer for you and your partner to become pregnant.
We would argue it is certainly not too old to become a father. Although having said that there are some health issues to consider. Complications do occur from time to time, but they are not the rule and they are not strictly confined to men over 50.
While certain risks may rise with age, men continue to produce sperm throughout their lives and can father healthy children into old age.
While some men can become fathers later in life, sperm quality declines with age — and partners of men aged 45 years or older take longer to fall pregnant and have a higher risk of miscarriage.
The statistics speak for themselves. An incredible 56% of women state they prefer to date a guy older than them – and 45% of those women want their man to be between 5 and 15 years older than they are! Those are some pretty good odds.
The researchers also found that the sex ratio for families followed the father's side, not the mother's side. For example, if a man had more brothers, his own children were more likely to be male; if he had more sisters, he was more likely to have daughters.
It depends on so many things like future health and personality that it's impossible to predict. But I'd go for it sooner rather than later, if you're going to do it at all. My Dad was 50 when I was born, and my experience was very much like the poster above whose father was an "old man" by the time she was a teenager.
Since men don't hit menopause—the time in a woman's life where her fertility ends—they can typically continue to father children into their later years. And more and more men are choosing to do so.