Emily Oster

2 min Read Emily Oster

Emily Oster

Are Older Men’s Sperm Really Any Worse?

From FiveThirtyEight: Are Older Men’s Sperm Really Any Worse?

Emily Oster

2 min Read

Everyone knows that a woman’s eggs don’t improve with age. The arbiter of turn-of-the-millennium pop culture, “Sex and the City,” gave us the image of the single woman in her mid-30s (Miranda) and her maturing eggs. And while fertility may not quite fall off a cliff at 35, it’s hard for women to ignore the idea that things are getting worse as they get older. Obstetricians have a special category for pregnant women over 35: “advanced maternal age.”

So, I challenge any woman in this group not to feel just a teensy bit of schadenfreude at the increasing discussion of aging sperm and its effects on childbearing. I’m sure we can all look forward to the day when television features 25-year-old women on dates with desperate 37-year-old men discussing their sperm-freezing plans. Of course, for this to happen there has to be something to all of this concern. So, are older sperm really worse?

Worries about aging sperm — or, more accurately, sperm from aging men — are the same as the concerns about aging eggs: decrease in fertility, and increase in genetic problems and psychiatric and behavior disorders among offspring. The primary issues in the latter category are autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

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