![]() ![]() And the Daily Mail, not exactly a bastion of gender equality, even called out the gendered hypocrisy around when it’s acceptable to have a baby. The Daily Mail, for example, published two op-eds essentially calling him a creepy old man who wasn’t going to live long enough to see his kid grow up. Having said all that, I should point out that news of De Niro’s new baby hasn’t exactly been greeted with unanimous high fives and cheering for his virility. And yet the risks associated with declining sperm quality are very real: studies show that men over 45 can put their partners at risk for increased pregnancy complications and infants born to older fathers are at greater risk of birth defects. The same stigma, the same guilt, doesn’t attach to older fathers: most men in their late 30s aren’t fretting about their biological clocks and wondering whether they ought to freeze their sperm. Phrases like “geriatric pregnancy” and “advanced maternal age” are bandied around and your pregnancy is automatically considered high-risk. If you get pregnant past the age of 35 in the US then you’re basically treated like you’re on death’s door. A 2021 study out of Canada analyzed the language in policy documents, guidelines and government reports and found older mothers were represented as “risk-producing subjects, as unnatural mothers, and as irresponsible reproductive citizens”. There is still a ridiculous amount of stigma attached to “older” mothers. While both men and women may be waiting longer to have kids, women tend to be judged a lot more harshly for it. And women with the resources to use surrogates and reproductive technology are having kids even later: Naomi Campbell recently had her first child at the age of 50. In recent decades birthrates have declined for women in their 20s and increased for women in their late 30s and early 40s. In 2022 the median age of women giving birth in the US rose to 30 for the first time. Mothers in rich countries are also getting older. Germany and England are seeing similar trends in advanced paternal age. And the percentage of new fathers aged 50 and above increased from 0.5% to 0.9%. The percentage of new dads in their 40s doubled during that time, to almost 9%. A 2017 study by Stanford researchers found that the average age of a new dad in the US rose from 27.4 to 30.1 in the years between 19. ![]() American parents, in general, are getting older. While he may be on the extreme end of things, it’s not just De Niro who is having kids later in life. ![]()
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