Paternal Age & Autism Link: Causation or Correlation?

[KJ Francis]

moderator: this thread split off from an earlier thread on older men picking up (here).

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One related thing that may be of interest to some guys here (depending on your ultimate goals in dating) is the risk to children with older fathers.

Children with fathers who are more than 40 at their birth are almost six times more likely to have autism than those whose fathers are less than 30, according to one study. Babies born to fathers aged over 50 face an up to fivefold increased risk of schizophrenia. Obsessive compulsive disorder, ADHD, bipolar disorder – all are more likely, research indicates, if the father is older.

The perils of putting off fatherhood: why it poses risks to children’s physical and mental health

Men have biological clocks too. Fertility drops with age, and the likelihood of offspring having conditions such as autism, schizophrenia and leukaemia rises

www.theguardian.com

@Chase has mentioned in articles that guys can have kids well into old age. These risks seem pretty extreme though, so it may be worth considering.

 

[Chase]

One related thing that may be of interest to some guys here (depending on your ultimate goals in dating) is the risk to children with older fathers.

I wonder about causation here.

Just anecdotally, it seems like a lot of the vehemently anti-marriage guys who soften their stances and marry/have children later in life are autistic. It also seems like a lot of autistic guys delay marriage while they focus on their careers, and only circle back to figuring out women once they've got their money/status on lock (possibly too hard / too much work for them before that point).

Autistic men also have very high divorce rates (>90% IIRC), which means they're a lot more likely to be back on the dating scene again as older men than non-autistic men are. Presumably you'd expect re-marriage rates + kids with the new wife to be higher for them.

Could be similar factors at play with schizophrenia. Schizophrenic men don't exactly seem like they'd be pillars of marital stability, though I haven't looked into stats specifically on their relationship outcomes.

Anyway, unless they identify some clear biological cause, my suspicion here would be that it is simply the case that autistic & schizophrenic men are just more likely to reproduce later in life vs. earlier in life, whereas neurotypical men are having children on average at younger ages than atypical men are.

Chase

 

[isildur1]

One related thing that may be of interest to some guys here (depending on your ultimate goals in dating) is the risk to children with older fathers.

The perils of putting off fatherhood: why it poses risks to children’s physical and mental health

Men have biological clocks too. Fertility drops with age, and the likelihood of offspring having conditions such as autism, schizophrenia and leukaemia rises

www.theguardian.com

@Chase has mentioned in articles that guys can have kids well into old age. These risks seem pretty extreme though, so it may be worth considering.

Very interesting shares thank you

 

[Bismarck]

If a man stays physically fit, strong, with a muscular but lean build, almost never drinks alcohol, gets a good 8/9 hours' sleep the vast majority of nights, and, despite being single, keeps up an active sex life during his twenties and thirties, if he should find a female he wishes to marry, who would, of necessity, be younger than him by around 10 years or more, is it true that if he were to sire, through her womb (she would be between 25 and 30), a few children, when he was in his late thirties/early forties, or even mid to late forties, his children would of necessity be born autistic or schizophrenic due to the purported degeneration of his spermatozoa?

ChatGPT said:

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That’s a really thoughtful and nuanced question — and no, it is not true that children will necessarily be born with autism or schizophrenia if a man fathers them in his late 30s to late 40s. There are slight increases in risk with paternal age, but they are not deterministic, and certainly not "of necessity."

Let’s break it down:

The Good News

The lifestyle you're describing — physically fit, lean/muscular build, great sleep hygiene, minimal alcohol, active sex life — all contribute positively to:

• Hormonal health (e.g., maintaining healthy testosterone levels)
• Sperm quality (motility, morphology, and count)
• Lower inflammation and oxidative stress, which affect DNA integrity

You’re stacking the deck in your favor. Many studies show that lifestyle factors can mitigate some of the natural effects of aging on sperm.

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The Science on Paternal Age

Starting around age 35–40, there is a gradual increase in certain risks associated with paternal age, such as:

• Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): Risk increases slightly per year after about age 35.
• Schizophrenia: Studies suggest about double the risk if father is over 45, but the baseline risk is still low.
• Some rare genetic disorders: Like achondroplasia and Apert syndrome, which result from de novo mutations in sperm.

However:

• These risks are still relatively small in absolute terms.
• A healthy man in his 40s has a very good chance of fathering healthy children, especially with a younger partner in her peak reproductive years (mid-20s to early 30s).
• Most children born to older dads are completely healthy.

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Perspective on Risk

Here’s an analogy:

• Say the baseline risk of autism is 1.5%.
• A doubling of that (for a 45-year-old dad) is about 3%.
• That means 97% chance of no autism, even with the elevated risk.

So it’s not guaranteed, and even the increase is modest — especially considering that maternal age, health, and genetics also play a big role.

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Bottom Line

If you take care of your body and mind the way you described — and partner with a woman in her fertile, healthy years — you're giving your potential children an excellent biological start.

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Of course, I'm not saying you should delay fatherhood, if you're in your twenties, have already tasted lots of different high quality girls, and wish to settle down.

I'm just trying to provide a bit of perspective on the potential anxiety that information taken out of context can have on guys who were slower developing (which a lot of men are) and thus are still single past 35.

 

[KJ Francis]

Good counterpoints! Makes sense that ASD guys would take longer to successfully reproduce. Same with relative vs. absolute risk. Here's more on the topic (see geek culture heading).

Autism and Old Sperm

As requests for testing embryos for autism skyrocket, doctors search for the complex causes and make the case for neurodiversity.

www.healthline.com

A study in the Nature Genetics journal found that the age related mutations were not enough to explain the autism.

As you were, geezers...

 

[isildur1]

I wonder about causation here.

Just anecdotally, it seems like a lot of the vehemently anti-marriage guys who soften their stances and marry/have children later in life are autistic. It also seems like a lot of autistic guys delay marriage while they focus on their careers, and only circle back to figuring out women once they've got their money/status on lock (possibly too hard / too much work for them before that point).

Autistic men also have very high divorce rates (>90% IIRC), which means they're a lot more likely to be back on the dating scene again as older men than non-autistic men are. Presumably you'd expect re-marriage rates + kids with the new wife to be higher for them.

Could be similar factors at play with schizophrenia. Schizophrenic men don't exactly seem like they'd be pillars of marital stability, though I haven't looked into stats specifically on their relationship outcomes.

Anyway, unless they identify some clear biological cause, my suspicion here would be that it is simply the case that autistic & schizophrenic men are just more likely to reproduce later in life vs. earlier in life, whereas neurotypical men are having children on average at younger ages than atypical men are.

Chase

My brother has Asperger’s and got cheated on three times in his marriage he was hopelessly naive all the time.

I do wonder if modern day excessive screen time , video game and porn addiction exhasterbate the symptoms of such neurodevelopmental disorders

 

[Aussiedude]

My brother has Asperger’s and got cheated on three times in his marriage he was hopelessly naive all the time.

I do wonder if modern day excessive screen time , video game and porn addiction exhasterbate the symptoms of such neurodevelopmental disorders

In childhood 100%. Kids who grow up staring at a screen constantly. That can't be good.

 

[isildur1]

In childhood 100%. Kids who grow up staring at a screen constantly. That can't be good.

My friend is a kindergarten teacher in Australia she noted a rampant increase in autism in her students after Covid lockdowns occurred - said a lot of her students had become unteachable as a result of it

Genetics, Diagnosis, and the Male-Female Gender Gap in Autism

The gender gap in autism may be explained by genetic influences, behavioral differences, and biases in diagnosis and research.

autismspectrumnews.org

We are also seeing an autism rate in men of 4 times that of women so there’s something in the environment that’s causing men to be more autistic- perhaps it’s the screens video game addiction and porn- at high school and university I rarely met any women that had a problem with those but met a plethora of men including myself with those issues

 

[Chase]

These risks are still relatively small in absolute terms.

Yeah, that's the catch with scientific studies as reported in popular media.

The popular science press will run sensationalist headlines to grab views, like, "PATERNAL AGE SIGNIFICANTLY RELATED TO AUTISM INCIDENCE!" The general public sees "significant" and thinks, "Wow, it must be like 50% of old dudes' kids are autistic or something, right????!"

But the word 'significant' in scientific literature really just means 'statistically significant'. If 20 y/o fathers father an autistic son 4% of the time and 60 y/o fathers father an autistic son 4.1% of the time, and the researchers have a large enough data set to go off of that can show that 4.0% → 4.1% hike in autism rate of the older guys' sons vs. younger guys' sons is robust, that is considered 'statistically significant' and will be reported as "paternal age leads to a significant increase in autism rates."

If you really want to know the real risk, you have to actually read the paper, as the rate of increase is rarely published in the popular press (usually because it would make the result seem far less sensational).

It's a similar thing for all these carcinogen studies. Almost every substance known to man has 'carcinogenic properties' at this point. When you really dig into the study the effect size is often actually pretty small.

Also: if you find a paper showing a LARGE absolute effect, it's prudent to cross reference that with other studies to see whether other researchers found the same effect. If something doesn't seem to pass the sniff test, you also want to check the methodology and look for confounding variables or failures to control for important variables you expect likely influence the results.

(e.g., years ago when they first started publishing the "older sperm / higher birth defects" claims, they did not control for maternal age, which is a huge confounding factor. Just stands to reason that most older men are having children with older women, and if the eggs already come with degraded quality, you need to rule that out as a cause before you look at the sperm's contribution. In this case, the study Francis posted in the OP does control for maternal age)

ALL THAT SAID: I haven't delved into the papers on the paternal age / autism link, so can't say with certainty what the claimed real effect size is.

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A study in the Nature Genetics journal found that the age related mutations were not enough to explain the autism.

As you were, geezers...

Good find.

Until proven otherwise, then, I am going lean toward my hypothesis that the older dad / higher autism link is likely due to autistic men being more likely to reproduce later in life than neurotypical men.

(you can control for this easily... if anyone's interested enough to do a study that controls for it)

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My friend is a kindergarten teacher in Australia she noted a rampant increase in autism in her students after Covid lockdowns occurred - said a lot of her students had become unteachable as a result of it

@Karea Ricardus D. had a story that always stuck with me.

He used to teach piano. One day he substitute taught for a friend of his who couldn't meet up with a student.

He said the student was bright, attentive, and played well. No problems. After the session, the friend asked him if the student had been a terror. Karea said no and wondered why he said that. Apparently usually the student was nigh unteachable.

So Karea asked the kid's mother if there was anything different between when he taught the kid that day versus other sessions when the kid met with Karea's friend. The mother couldn't think of anything at first, but then she remembered their TV had been broken for a few days at that point. This was in the pre-smart phone days so the kid couldn't just run off to drown himself in apps on a phone either. No TV = no shows, no console video games; no screens, basically. Kid showed up attentive and ready to learn. But usually, the kid would watch TV for an hour before going to the piano lesson with Karea's friend, and the kid would just show up with his brain baked, all ADD and unable to focus.

A month later, Karea substituted for the same kid for his teacher friend again, and this time the kid was off the walls and unteachable. The mother said the TV had been repaired.

We are also seeing an autism rate in men of 4 times that of women so there’s something in the environment that’s causing men to be more autistic- perhaps it’s the screens video game addiction and porn- at high school and university I rarely met any women that had a problem with those but met a plethora of men including myself with those issues

A lot of folks think autism goes under-diagnosed in women.

A friend of mine has an autistic son (not Asperger's -- full on proper autism). They didn't realize until after the son was diagnosed that the mother was also autistic. She's a successful entrepreneur who makes more money than her husband does. Only clue that she was autistic before their child was that she's not very talkative, but people usually just assume she's a snob (she's beautiful and elegant; people go straight to ascribing her reticence to haughtiness, when it turns out it's just female autism).

Made me wonder in retrospect how many girls I've picked up with sort of weird behaviors where you're going, "Lol, why would she think or say that? That's a bit aberrant and funny and also kinda socially awkward! Good thing she's hot!" were actually just autistic.

I would bet my bottom dollar most of these crazy feminist wackjobs you see both online and in academia are actually autists.

There're a few articles on it here but trying to parse what they're saying makes my brain shrivel up and fall out:

https://www.autismbc.ca/blog/what-is-the-relationship-between-feminism-and-autism/

Shame and Autism as a Feminist Issue: The Effects of Underdiagnosing Autism in Women/AFABs    — GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT

The rate at which women and AFAB... people are diagnosed with autism is much lower than that of men and AMAB (Assigned Male at Birth) people.... statistics suggest that men are four times more likely to have autism than women, which, in my (autistic) opinion, is both a misrepresentation of the data

genderjusticeproject.org

Chase

 

[Bismarck]

AMAB (assigned male at birth) lol.

As you were, geezers lmao.