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The Average American Father is Getting Older. Find Out Why!

American fatheramerican fathers

As time passes, things start changing. The current American dad is roughly 3.5 years older than his counterpart from four decades ago, according to a study. CNN recently published an article addressing this topic. I have summed up the main points in this blog post.

The average age of an American father of a newborn in the United States increased from 27.4 years old to 30.9 years old between 1972 and 2015, found Stanford University School of Medicine researchers led by Dr. Michael Eisenberg.

“There is data that a man’s fertility declines with age,” Eisenberg, an assistant professor of urology, wrote in an email. “As such, it may make sense to not wait too long as it may be more difficult to conceive. In addition, there are some potential risks to children.”

The youngest dad for the period studied was just 11 years old, while the oldest was 88.

“A surprise to me was that more than 10% of birth certificates in the US lack paternal data,” Eisenberg said, although the reasons for that aren’t clear.

However, there are positives when older men become fathers, Eisenberg noted. Generally, they are more likely to be stable, with better jobs and more resources, and perhaps most important, they are more likely to live with their children and help with child-rearing.

“One clear message” still emerges from the studies to date, Janecka said: “Contribution of paternal age to those disorders/traits is overall negligible and should not influence individuals’ decisions about the timing of parenthood.”

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