Men’s Biological Clocks

Lisa Belkin has a fascinating piece in The New York Times Magazine about how research is indicating that men’s ability to successfully fertilize an egg declines after 35 and declines sharply after 40. Similarly, “British and Swedish researchers, in turn, have calculated that the risk of schizophrenia begins to rise for those whose fathers were over 30 when their babies were born” and other research indicates that children of older dads are more at risk for autism spectrum disorders and bipolar disorder. Of course if you substituted “women” for “men” nothing about this would be very interesting at all. Everyone “knows” that parenthood in your late thirties and forties is problematic for women and not for men. The evidence, however, is that we know no such thing—that as Dolores Malaspina put it “the optimal age for being a mother is the same as the optimal age for being a father.”

Dana Goldstein comments:

Imagine a world in which the stereotype of women rushing men to the altar, biological clocks on overdrive, simply disappeared, as men took full 50 percent ownership over the reproductive process. Or in which wealthy 50- year old divorced men ceased to be such catches for 30-year old women, because of weakened sperm. I wouldn’t want to return to a society in which both men and women are pressured into settling down and having babies at an unduly young age. But I do like the idea of rejiggering our notions about the intersection of gender and aging. It isn’t just women who have a lot to fit into their lives in terms of career, romance, and parenthood. Science is beginning to tell us that men are facing the same pressures.

I think this may be unduly optimistic about the impact of actual facts on people’s stereotypes. My sense is that scientific findings that appear to bolster traditional gender stereotypes have a way of getting both wider and deeper attention than do findings that seem to undermine them. But more to the point, in this particular case I think women are less after equity than relief from pressure. These findings, if they continue to be disseminated and if further research backs them up, seem much more likely to increase pressure on men than to relieve pressure on women.