Institute for Social Sciences, School of Educational and Social Sciences, Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, Germany.
Center for Economic Demography, Department of Economic History, Lund University, Sweden.
Hum Reprod. 2024 Jun 3;39(6):1161-1166. doi: 10.1093/humrep/deae067.
There is strong individual-level evidence that late fatherhood is related to a wide range of health disorders and conditions in offspring. Over the last decades, mean paternal ages at childbirth have risen drastically. This has alarmed researchers from a wide range of fields. However, existing studies have an important shortcoming in that they lack a long-term perspective. This article is a step change in providing such a long-term perspective. We unveil that in many countries the current mean paternal ages at childbirth and proportions of fathers of advanced age at childbirth are not unprecedented. Taking the detected U-shaped trend pattern into account, we discuss individual- and population-level implications of the recent increases in paternal ages at childbirth and highlight important knowledge gaps. At the individual level, some of the biological mechanisms that are responsible for the paternal age-related health risk might, at least to some degree, be counterbalanced by various social factors. Further, how these individual-level effects are linked to population health and human cognitive development might be influenced by various factors, including technical advances and regulations in prenatal diagnostics.
有强有力的个体层面证据表明，晚育与后代广泛的健康障碍和疾病有关。在过去几十年中，男性的平均初育年龄大幅上升。这引起了来自多个领域的研究人员的警觉。然而，现有研究存在一个重要的缺陷，即它们缺乏长期的视角。本文在提供这种长期视角方面迈出了重要的一步。我们揭示了在许多国家，当前的男性平均初育年龄和高龄父亲的比例并非前所未有。考虑到已检测到的 U 形趋势模式，我们讨论了近期男性初育年龄增加对个体和人群层面的影响，并强调了重要的知识差距。在个体层面上，一些导致与父亲年龄相关的健康风险的生物学机制，至少在一定程度上，可以被各种社会因素所抵消。此外，这些个体层面的影响如何与人口健康和人类认知发展相关，可能受到包括产前诊断技术进步和法规在内的各种因素的影响。
