Studies at the University of Indiana have shown that there
may be a connection between the age of the father during conception and the
risk of the child having autism, schizophrenia, and/or learning disabilities.
Advancing Paternal Age, or APA, has been perceived as a risk to a child’s health
because of the increased likelihood of ‘de novo’ mutations. ‘De novo’ mutations
are mutations specifically introduced into a family by a parent for the first
time in the hereditary line. The University did a study on several Swedish
children over a 28 year period. The study involved many children with siblings
from the same father, (one born in the fathers twenties, and the other in the
forties) to conclude whether the age of the father had a large impact on the child’s
risk of autism, schizophrenia, and intellectual problems. The study concluded
that the children born to older fathers had a higher risk, but several variables
were not taken into account such as if the children were raised in the same
manner or with the same mother. Even with these variables, the University
believes their results are reliable evidence. Read more about the consequences of late parenthood here.
This article proved to be scary to me personally. My four
year old sister’s father, my step-father, was forty four when my sister was born.
Although my sister is a perfectly healthy little girl, the risk was still
terrifying. I believe parents should be very careful in planning when to have
their children.
Unfortunately, now a days people have kids at a very young age. Although the older population still have kids, on the positive side it doesn't seem too common anymore.In my opinion, it's extremely sad to see a husband and wife trying for so long to have a baby and it finally happens at an older age. After reading the article and blog post, I understand better the effects and challenges for late pregnancy, but I feel that there are some benefits as well. Maturity, responsibility, stableness with money and a job and knowledge all come with age.
ReplyDeleteI think that there is probably a lot more variables to consider than what the study provided above. It would be interesting to compare this study to a study conducted on older woman having kids. You always here about the woman being to old to still be having children, but you rarely hear someone comment on how the father was to old. As for Nicoles comment, it is interesting to consider the health risks from older parents versus younger(teenage) parents. My boyfriend's sister got pregnant at sixteen years old and she found out after her child's first birthday that he was autistic. With all the testing that can be done with today's society, I would personally want to chose to get my fetus tested incase my baby would have any health complications or genetic mutations and then make any further decisions based on those results. I think older couples and young couples should do the same. I know disability advocates would disagree but that is my personal opinion.
ReplyDelete