Having kids in your 70s

[Tessa K]

Just because men can carry on pumping out sperm until they die, is it advisable, ethical or practical to have a kid at 79 as Robert de Niro has just done?

Obviously the mother must be way younger than him and presumably chose to have a child with him but she's pretty certainly consigning herself to single parenthood within a few years. I guess it helps that he's super rich so the child will be taken care of financially.

Freedom of choice, yes. But it does feel a but like the old alpha male trying to prove he's still got it. Plus he already has six kids. Enough, already.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainmen ... 542079.amp

[lpm]

Are we really going to get into whether it is ethical to have children if you are poor, or old, or disabled, or with a life limiting condition?

This baby will have a prosperous childhood, most likely as part of a family with a mother and a step-father. Out of the 140 million children born into the world this year, this one must surely be among the luckiest 1% or even 0.1%.

[Tessa K]

Are we really going to get into whether it is ethical to have children if you are poor, or old, or disabled, or with a life limiting condition?

This baby will have a prosperous childhood, most likely as part of a family with a mother and a step-father. Out of the 140 million children born into the world this year, this one must surely be among the luckiest 1% or even 0.1%.

I agree that it will be a luckier child than most but poverty and disability are very different from having a seventh kid at his age. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm curious what others think.

[Formerly AvP]

Aging in men has an effect on the likelihood of problems for their offspring, and the mechanism is probably epigenetic rather than genetic, involving DNA methylation.

The increasing rate of de novo genetic mutations in the offspring of older males elevates the risks for some rare monogenic and complex, in particular, neurodevelopmental disorders. The number of spermatogonial cell divisions increases from35 times at puberty to >800 times at the age of 50 years. During each replication cycle, not only the DNA sequence itself, but also epigenetic marks must be correctly copied to the daughter cells. Since the error rate of this copying process is estimated to be 10–100 times higher for epigenetic than for genetic information, the spermatozoa from older males have accumulated many more epimutations than DNA sequence mutations.

From

Prell, A., Sen, M.O., Potabattula, R., Bernhardt, L., Dittrich, M., Hahn, T., Schorsch, M., Zacchini, F., Ptak, G.E., Niemann, H. and Haaf, T., 2022. Species-Specific Paternal Age Effects and Sperm Methylation Levels of Developmentally Important Genes. Cells, 11(4), p.731.

A recent systematic review characterises these problems as

a tendency of association between older fathers and psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, autism, bipolar disorder syndrome, intellectual disability), nervous system cancer and overall musculoskeletal congenital anomalies

from

Franco-Buenaventura, D., Glina, S. and García-Perdomo, H.A., 2022. The association between the presence of genetic disease in the offspring and the paternal age: A systematic review. Revista Mexicana de Urología, 82(5), pp.1-22.

Effects are not huge: Odds ratios are generally from just over 1 up to 2.

[noggins]

Yeah its wrong. There should be compulsory vasectomies at 50.

[bob sterman]

Just because men can carry on pumping out sperm until they die, is it advisable, ethical or practical to have a kid at 79 as Robert de Niro has just done?

Don't know - but it might have been advisable and ethical to stop pumping out movies before "Dirty Grandpa" - although I suppose then we would have missed out on "The Irishman".

[dyqik]

Yeah its wrong. There should be compulsory vasectomies at 50.

Maybe 18 instead, with sperm freezing services.

That way women only get pregnant when they want to, and responsibility for contraception is no longer largely on them.

(this is not an entirely serious or necessarily my position, but I think it's a valid one)

[lpm]

No, it should be like a driving licence. Training and a test beforehand, lose it if you get too many points.

[dyqik]

No, it should be like a driving licence. Training and a test beforehand, lose it if you get too many points.

*Looks at the general standard of driving from licensed drivers*

Nah. Unless the test is repeated regularly.

[lpm]

*Looks at the general standard of parenting*

Can't get any worse.

[Tessa K]

Just because men can carry on pumping out sperm until they die, is it advisable, ethical or practical to have a kid at 79 as Robert de Niro has just done?

Don't know - but it might have been advisable and ethical to stop pumping out movies before "Dirty Grandpa" - although I suppose then we would have missed out on "The Irishman".

He's terrible at comedy.

I wonder if he ever gets up in the night to do a feed or nappy change or if the nanny does it all. Permanent exhaustion might put him off repeated spawning.

[dyqik]

*Looks at the general standard of parenting*

Can't get any worse.

I was thinking about it more in terms of men actually trying to avoid getting women pregnant when they don't want to be, but you make a valid point.

[dyqik]

Just because men can carry on pumping out sperm until they die, is it advisable, ethical or practical to have a kid at 79 as Robert de Niro has just done?

Don't know - but it might have been advisable and ethical to stop pumping out movies before "Dirty Grandpa" - although I suppose then we would have missed out on "The Irishman".

He's terrible at comedy.

I wonder if he ever gets up in the night to do a feed or nappy change or if the nanny does it all. Permanent exhaustion might put him off repeated spawning.

The thing about being well off is that you can pay someone to do that

[Trinucleus]

Just because men can carry on pumping out sperm until they die, is it advisable, ethical or practical to have a kid at 79 as Robert de Niro has just done?

Don't know - but it might have been advisable and ethical to stop pumping out movies before "Dirty Grandpa" - although I suppose then we would have missed out on "The Irishman".

He's terrible at comedy.

I wonder if he ever gets up in the night to do a feed or nappy change or if the nanny does it all. Permanent exhaustion might put him off repeated spawning.

Men of a certain age often get up during the night anyway

[IvanV]

In the 19th century, a fair proportion of the male gentry married late, often because they needed to wait to get sufficiently wealthy, eg through legacies, or seniority in their work, to be able to attract a wife of the right class. Whereas the working classes generally married rather younger, as their value lay more substantially in their health and fitness.

Many of the gentry shortened their lives with excess tobacco and alcohol - they could afford it. Even for them, there were higher adult death rates generally resulting from the effects of poor sanitation, limited medicine and more frequent wars. So a fair proportion of these older husbands did not survive to see their children grow up. Or else they might lose a first wife, for example to death in childbirth, and marry again at such an age and reproduce all over again. And it was often apparently acceptable to such wives, typically those with some disadvantage in the marriage market - less money, lesser looks - to marry a much older man with money. It was explicitly recognised that there was a material risk he would die at such a time that it left her with children still to bring up. Such a marriage would proceed only with solid arrangements to provider her with sufficient money in such an eventuality, and live out her life in acceptable comfort.

These mores and behaviours lie at the core of many of the novels of Trollope especially, and seen other authors of the period such as Austen, etc.

The thing about human, and more broadly animal, behaviour is that people do what they will, and what others will let them do. And Darwinism might act, but it can take time. So, for example, historical studies have shown that in mediaeval and early modern Britain, people with more money had have more surviving children, on average. So it made sense to marry money, in terms of prolonging your genes. This book, which I often mention, summarises the evidence for that, among other things, if you are interested.

If an animal, of the kind where 2 parents participate in the upbringing, lost a parent at that stage, the progeny would typically fail to survive. Among humans, single parenting is increasingly common, and easier the more money there is to go round. Indeed some might say single parenting has become more common precisely because there is more money to go around.

So we see that among humans, money does in practice act as a substitute for an active and present parent. I think many of us are disgusted by the idea of a very old father, we wouldn't like it for ourselves. But probably a fair proportion of us had a fairly old father - I'm a fairly old father. And many of us are the children of broken marriages, and had only one parent available for part of our upbringing. Or had a distant parent who didn't contribute much. Or were sent away to boarding school. There is little we can do about it. So many of us did not have the canonical best. But it is unrealistic that all of us will have the best, and what is in practice good enough enables things to carry on. At least we can observe that such very old fathers are rare enough it gets remarked on in the national news.

[Tessa K]

In the 19th century, a fair proportion of the male gentry married late, often because they needed to wait to get sufficiently wealthy, eg through legacies, or seniority in their work, to be able to attract a wife of the right class. Whereas the working classes generally married rather younger, as their value lay more substantially in their health and fitness.

Many of the gentry shortened their lives with excess tobacco and alcohol - they could afford it. Even for them, there were higher adult death rates generally resulting from the effects of poor sanitation, limited medicine and more frequent wars. So a fair proportion of these older husbands did not survive to see their children grow up. Or else they might lose a first wife, for example to death in childbirth, and marry again at such an age and reproduce all over again. And it was often apparently acceptable to such wives, typically those with some disadvantage in the marriage market - less money, lesser looks - to marry a much older man with money. It was explicitly recognised that there was a material risk he would die at such a time that it left her with children still to bring up. Such a marriage would proceed only with solid arrangements to provider her with sufficient money in such an eventuality, and live out her life in acceptable comfort.

These mores and behaviours lie at the core of many of the novels of Trollope especially, and seen other authors of the period such as Austen, etc.

The thing about human, and more broadly animal, behaviour is that people do what they will, and what others will let them do. And Darwinism might act, but it can take time. So, for example, historical studies have shown that in mediaeval and early modern Britain, people with more money had have more surviving children, on average. So it made sense to marry money, in terms of prolonging your genes. This book, which I often mention, summarises the evidence for that, among other things, if you are interested.

If an animal, of the kind where 2 parents participate in the upbringing, lost a parent at that stage, the progeny would typically fail to survive. Among humans, single parenting is increasingly common, and easier the more money there is to go round. Indeed some might say single parenting has become more common precisely because there is more money to go around.

So we see that among humans, money does in practice act as a substitute for an active and present parent. I think many of us are disgusted by the idea of a very old father, we wouldn't like it for ourselves. But probably a fair proportion of us had a fairly old father - I'm a fairly old father. And many of us are the children of broken marriages, and had only one parent available for part of our upbringing. Or had a distant parent who didn't contribute much. Or were sent away to boarding school. There is little we can do about it. So many of us did not have the canonical best. But it is unrealistic that all of us will have the best, and what is in practice good enough enables things to carry on. At least we can observe that such very old fathers are rare enough it gets remarked on in the national news.

Not just the gentry. In Ireland men with small farms often married later (if at all) because they had to wait to inherit a scrap of land.

You're right about second marriages being more common because of women dying. One of my ggfs remarried after my ggm died (not in childbirth). The frequency of the wicked stepmother in stories shows how common it was.

I wonder how common late paternity is now among men with low income.

Btw didn't Scottie from Star Trek have a kid in his 80s?

[lpm]

Isn't Bernie Ecclestone the record holder? Has a child who is younger than his great-grandchildren.

[dyqik]

I wonder how common late paternity is now among men with low income.

Until fairly recently, men with low income weren't that likely to live into their late 70s or 80s, so paternity would have been out of the question for that subset that didn't make it.

Even now, wealth is a reasonable predictor of lifespan at the lower end of the income scale.

On top of the that, the number of poor old men with a young enough partner to give birth is going to be very low. (I assume we're sticking to acknowledged children from a reasonably stable relationship)

[Tessa K]

Isn't Bernie Ecclestone the record holder? Has a child who is younger than his great-grandchildren.

It must make for complicated wills.

[monkey]

Isn't Bernie Ecclestone the record holder? Has a child who is younger than his great-grandchildren.

It must make for complicated wills.

IANAA, but I think being a billionaire tax avoider would do that more.