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.
Finally, you can comfort yourself with the fact that, while male fertility may gradually decline through the years, some men will still be able to father a healthy child well into their 50s and beyond.
Although a man's fertility can theoretically last until death, sperm production has been found to decline from around the age of 50. Although it is still possible to conceive a child, and many men do have children in their 50s or later, it may take longer for you and your partner to become pregnant.
While certain risks may rise with age, men continue to produce sperm throughout their lives and can father healthy children into old age.
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.
While fewer than 1 percent of first-time fathers are over 50, there are benefits to being a later-in-life father. Dr Paul Turek, a men's health and fertility urologist, says that men who have children at an older age tend to live longer. As an added bonus, their children tend to live longer as well.
Is it too late to be a dad in your 50s? Of course it's not too late. The only things that should matter in your decision making are “will I be able to take care of this baby and support it”, be it from a health, financial or emotional point of view.
A 2019 study determined that a father's age has a significant impact on a child's health and development. The study found that babies born to older fathers had an increased risk of cleft lip or palate, heart defects, autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
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.
The scientists also note that at the age of 35, the proportion of sperm carrying an X chromosome also seems to increase, meaning older dads are more likely to have daughters. In human reproduction, the Y chromosome is responsible for making a male child.
Although men never stop producing sperm throughout their lives, sperm production does begin decreasing after age 35. Motility, volume and genetic quality of sperm of older men are less likely to achieve a successful pregnancy even in younger women.
Most men make millions of new sperm every day, but men older than 40 have fewer healthy sperm than younger men. The amount of semen (the fluid that contains sperm) and sperm motility (ability to move towards an egg) decrease continually between the ages of 20 and 80.
For many men, ejaculation is a sign of sexual pleasure and satisfaction. There is no definite age at which male ejaculation stops, but it has been suggested that it may occur when a man reaches his late 40s or early 50s. There are steps you can take to prevent premature ejaculation.
Older dads may live longer, as do their offspring
If you're looking for the scientifically backed pros here, consider this: both older dads and their offspring tend to have longevity on their side.
The risk of complications increases dramatically after 55, including pre-eclampsia, diabetes and high blood pressure. There are health risks from older fatherhood, too. Sperm from an older man, researchers say, puts children at an increased risk for autism, schizophrenia and dwarfism.
Older paternal age may be harmful to the offspring's health in terms of genetic mutations, telomere length, and epigenetics [66]. Several lines of evidence suggest that epigenetic changes occur in the sperm of older fathers, particularly defects in DNA methylation [67–69].
Getting Pregnant After 50
While it's not impossible to become pregnant naturally at 50, it is very rare. Women are born with all of the eggs they will ever have. As you get older, you have fewer eggs, and they are more likely to have abnormalities. Most women who get pregnant after 50 use donor eggs.
There is very limited data about men in extreme old age (80 yr and older). Of older men who produce spermatozoa in their ejaculates, sperm motility, a manifestation of viability and fertilizing capacity, tends to be reduced. The ability of men to impregnate their wives gradually reduces from age 25 onward.
While stories about women giving birth in their 50s, 60s, and even 70s make for good headlines, these pregnancies are usually accomplished with donor eggs and in vitro fertilization (IVF). There is no set oldest age when you can get pregnant naturally, but fertility starts to decline as you age.
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.
A recent study of more than 40.5 million births in the United States revealed potentially harmful effects of advanced paternal age on a baby's risk of prematurity, low birth weight, low Apgar score and risk of seizures, as well as the mother's chances of developing gestational diabetes.
The study, published 30 August in Human Reproduction , used a federal repository of nearly 170 million birth records to find that the average dad is now 30.9 years old at their child's birth—and that 9% of newborns' fathers are at least 40 years old.
There are a select few examples where women over the age of 60 have conceived naturally at this later life stage. For example, 60-year-old Claudette Cook had twins, and although the twins were premature, and were birthed through a c-section, she was absolutely thrilled after struggling to have children in the past.
Male fertility generally starts to reduce around age 40 to 45 years when sperm quality decreases. Increasing male age reduces the overall chances of pregnancy and increases time to pregnancy (the number of menstrual cycles it takes to become pregnant) and the risk of miscarriage and fetal death.
Of the roughly 4 million births each year in the U.S., about 9 percent of fathers are over 40. And "about 40,000 newborns have a father over the age of 50," says Michael Eisenberg, an assistant professor of urology at Stanford University Medical Center and the senior author of the study.