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.
Although most men are able to have children well into their 50s and beyond, it becomes gradually more difficult after the age of 40 . There are many reasons for this, including: Sperm quality tends to decrease with age.
Am I too old? While certain risks may rise with age, men continue to produce sperm throughout their lives and can father healthy children into old age.
The youngest father in the world is reportedly a boy from China, who, at 9 fathered a child with an 8-year-old girl. This occurred in 1910. There is also a 10-year-old father recorded in the USA, no details about the mother.
Charlie Chaplin had 12 kids. The silent film star was 73 when he welcomed his youngest child, Christopher James, with wife Oona O'Neill in 1962.
Valentina Vassilyev and her husband Feodor Vassilyev are alleged to hold the record for the most children a couple has produced. She gave birth to a total of 69 children – sixteen pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets – between 1725 and 1765, a total of 27 births.
In 20 percent of the cases, the husband was in the room… Ed Houben is a sperm donor — but he doesn't deposit his sperm in a cup.
One study estimated a woman can have around 15-30 children in a lifetime, taking pregnancy and recovery time into account. Since men require less time and fewer resources to have kids, the most "prolific" fathers today can have up to about 200 children.
Pablo Picasso was 68 when he fathered Paloma in 1949 with Françoise Gilot.
PABLO PICASSO
His youngest daughter Paloma, a notable jewellery designer, was born in 1949 when the artist was 67.
On January 11, 1927, Charlie Chaplin's $16 million estate is frozen by court receivers after his second wife, Lita Grey Chaplin, sues for divorce. Lita was a 16-year-old hopeful actress when the 35-year-old Chaplin married her in 1924.
The oldest recorded mother to date to conceive was 73 years, while the youngest mother was 5 years old. According to statistics from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, in the UK more than 20 babies are born to women over age 50 per year through in-vitro fertilization with the use of donor oocytes (eggs).
Zi, Mum-Zi's daughter, became a mother at the age of 8 years 8 months. An 8-year-old-girl gave birth to a healthy baby boy, who was fathered by a 9-year-old. They are the youngest recorded parents, in combined age.
As men age, their risk of fathering a child with Down syndrome may increase—the older the man, the more likely that the process of spermatogenesis, or sperm production will go awry, leading to sperm that contain errors like an extra chromosome.
While a 92-year-old woman delivering a 60-year-old baby may sound like a bizarre plot twist from the movie “Benjamin Button,” it's true. Huang Yijun, 92, of southern China, recently delivered a child which she'd been carrying for well over half a century. The baby wasn't alive, however.
As the father grows older, the number of mutations in the father's genome increases, leading to an increase in the incidence of congenital malformations in offspring [11, 65]. Older paternal age may be harmful to the offspring's health in terms of genetic mutations, telomere length, and epigenetics [66].
Absolutely. So my advice for other would-be, could-be or soon-to-be fathers is as follows….. Regardless of your age, if you and your partner both feel ready (or almost ready) then don't wait.
There's no expiration date on when guys can father a child. Case in point: Rocker Mick Jagger just had his eighth child at the age of 73. 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.
"Studies have also proved that children of older men are also at higher risk of developing a chronic disease in the future," states Ghayda. Conditions found to be related to older paternal age include: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Schizophrenia.
Having Babies After 35 Is Safe
And while it's true that conceiving after 35 comes with an increased risk of complications—like preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, chromosomal abnormalities, and even miscarriage or stillbirth—many people go on to deliver healthy babies.
From a biological standpoint, experts recommend a man is best suited to fatherhood from his late 20s to early 30s. 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.
Having babies after the age of 35 increases the risk of miscarriage, birth defects and other birth-related complications for women. The same doesn't exactly apply for men. Although sperm quality declines with age, men can and do father children well into old age – just ask Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty or Rupert Murdoch.
This means the baby has three genetic parents: the father who supplied the sperm, the mother who supplied both womb and the egg nucleus, and an anonymous donor who supplied healthy mitochondria. Of these, the mitochondrial DNA is by far the smallest contribution.