Aging Male Infertility

"We want to see fertility taught as part of the curriculum and have been successful in getting it included."
"Young men need to know they won't necessarily remain fertile their whole life, and are more likely to have problems as they age."
Professor Adam Balen, Fertility Education initiative, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust 

"Online dating makes me nostalgic for the meat-market discos of my  youth. At least then you could eye each other up straight away and let hormones do the rest."
"I have been on so many dates with men who take to the hills when I said I wanted a serious relationship."
"It's such a waste of time and effort when my biological clock is ticking like a time-bomb."
Unnamed

A new study has revealed that the age of a man when he has a baby may have an effect on his child's social development later in life.

In 2013 the average age of men becoming new fathers was 32.9 as compared to the present where the average age is now 33.3. Ten percent of new fathers are in the age bracket between 40 and 44, while 5.1 percent are over age 45. Men over 40 are half as likely to see their partners pregnant as men under age 25, according to studies. The miscarriage rate tends to be higher with older male sperm, and there appear to be links between the age of a father and the increasing incidence of schizophrenia and autism.

Researchers in Israel and the United States presented data in 2017 revealing sperm counts in men living in the West had fallen in the last 40 years by 59.3 percent, attributable to smoking, stress, obesity, pollution and exposure to chemicals in plastics, in large part. Where sperm is present, it becomes less healthy as it ages; less motile, likelier to result in fetal abnormalities. The ageing male is just as likely to be responsible for elusive fertility as is a female, age 35 and beyond.

Data from the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority whose function is to regulate treatment, discovered last year that the most common reason when a couple seek out treatment was attributable to male fertility problems. One issue for males postponing parenthood is economic insecurity, not surprisingly. Lack of job security, hindering a search for a home, has its impact.

In the current world of boy-meets-girl, all too frequently contact is made on line. There are countless dating sites. People 'meet' one another far more often through the Internet than they do now in person. Among some, there is a prevailing notion that no one takes these contacts really seriously; they're meant to arrange the typical one-night-stand, or casual relationships, an attitude not conducive to forming long-term bonds.

When dating potentials take place online a personal element is missing, and it may seem to many as though the 'many fish in the sea' syndrome prevails; so many choices and so many opportunities to look around, greet and meet, and keep on looking. For men in particular a prevailing attitude of moving on as a compelling option should a woman they've chosen for a casual relationship convey her wishes for a deeper commitment.

According to the Office for National Statistics in the U.S., the proportion of childless women has, in a single generation doubled; close to one in five women will remain childless. Women generally now give birth to their first baby at 28.8 years, with more becoming new mothers in their 40s than their 20s. Concurrently, the incidence of single-person families has grown exponentially.

• It takes longer: If a man is over and the woman is under 25, it can take about two years to get pregnant. On the other hand, if both partners are under 25, it takes just over 4.5 months, on average.
• In vitro fertilization (IVF) becomes more challenging: The risk of not having a baby after IVF is more than five times higher if the male partner is 41 years old or older.
• Semen volume decreases with age: The amount of semen a man produces, as well as the sperm's ability to move towards an egg, decreases continually starting at the age of 20.
• There's a higher risk of miscarriage: Believe it or not, a father's age can even impact the likelihood of the baby surviving in the womb. The risk of the woman having a miscarriage is twice as high with a male partner over the age of 45 as it is with a male partner under 25.
• Autism risk increases: Children fathered by men older than 40 are more than five times as likely to have an autism spectrum disorder than those fathered by men under 30.             Source: verywellhealth