Advantages And Disadvantages Of Being Older Parents

Advantages and disadvantages of being older parents

The tendency to wait longer before having children, like the Clooney family, is real in the United States. But is it better?

Shelley Emling

 

Amal and George Clooney - Advantages and disadvantages of being an older parent

MIKE MARSLAND / WIREIMAGE

Amal and George Clooney have a higher average age than first-time parents in the United States.

When it was learned a few weeks ago that George and Amal Clooney were expecting two little packets of joy in the middle of the year, the whole world sighed with tenderness. These will be the first children of the popular Oscar-winning producer and actor, who will have to change diapers at age 55, and his wife, a 39-year-old human rights lawyer. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both are older than the average for first-time parents in the United States. In the United States, the average age for first-time moms is 26.3 years, according to 2014 data, while the average age for first-time dads is 25.4 years.

Despite these statistics, there are couples today - like the Clooons - who are part of the trend of waiting longer before expanding their family. Since 1980, according to Reviews in Urology magazine, the birth rate for women over 35 has risen nearly 60%, while the birth rate for men over 40 has risen nearly 30%.

Although having children at a young or adult age is generally subjective, and each will have their reasons, there are scientific data regarding the advantages and disadvantages in terms of age for parenthood.

Here are six of them.

Older new moms could live longer

A large multi-year study of 28,000 postmenopausal women published in 2016 revealed that women who were over the age of 25 when they had their first child were 11% more likely to live to age 90 than those who were not yet 25 years old .

Who led the report, said in a press release? I study with the UC San Diego School of Medicine.

Shadyab also said more research is needed to determine the explanation for the results

Children of older dads could live longer

It appears that telomeres, those little "caps" at the ends of chromosomes that fight the aging process, are longer in older dads. A recent study revealed that these long telomeres can be transferred from a dad to his children. In fact, it seems that all the cells found in the children of older parents have longer telomeres.

The big winners of everything in this genetic phenomenon are the children whose parents and paternal grandparents had children at an advanced age.

Children of older moms are better educated

This phenomenon of delaying motherhood has to do above all with the speed at which society advances, and not so much with the mother's age. What's more, a study of more than 1.5 million Swedes revealed that a child born even a few years after [the average age of parents] can enjoy the benefits of constantly improving education and healthcare systems. "The benefits related to being born a year later outweigh the individual risk factors that arise at the birth of an older mom," said a principal investigator at the Max Planck Institute, where the study was conducted.

The researchers, on the other hand,

Children of older parents may be at higher risk for developmental problems

More than one recent study revealed that children born to parents over the age of 45 were more likely to develop autism, ADHD, and bipolar disorder, compared to children of parents between the ages of 20 and 30. Additionally, a study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry revealed that children of older parents were at increased risk of addiction, lower IQ, and brad pitt leather jacket