Aging Dads: What Goes Wrong
Like every system in the body, experts say the male reproductive organs have not been spared the ravages of time.
“First there seems to be some clear changes that happen on a purely chemical level as a man ages. He has lower testosterone levels, lower DHEA, lower estrogen, plus higher levels of FSH and LH, which signal pretty much the same thing in men as in women — reproductive failure,” says Hackensack University embryologist Dave McCulloh, PhD, director of laboratory services at University Reproductive Associates in Hasbrouck Heights, N.J.
In a French study of nearly 2,000 men published in 2005 in the journal Fertility and Sterility, doctors concluded that even in couples undergoing IVF an aging father could figure into the pattern of pregnancy failure, more than previously thought.
But it’s not just the idea of making fewer babies that is of concern. The new research is also tampering with conventional fertility wisdom, which has long asserted that because new sperm is made daily, male fertility remains untouchable.
And while the notion of unending sperm production hasn’t changed, some researchers now believe that as a man ages, the task of churning out that daily supply is a little like trying to make a fresh batch of macaroni in a worn-out pasta machine.
In short, while the ingredients may be fresh, the mechanism that puts it all together gets slower and works less efficiently with age. And that means far fewer perfect macaroni — and sperm — to show for it.
What Should You Do If Your Biological Clock Is Starting To Rule Your Life
This is a very challenging circumstance for women who feel this pressure, says Lukins. She suggests being very clear about why you want to have children, and looking closely at your resources, motives and desires before making the decision.
The first thing to do is sit down and think it through, advises Professor Ledger. Talk it through with your partner. Make a sensible choice rather than just putting it off and putting it off, which is what we all do when faced with a difficult decision sometimes. Get the information, read around on the internet or talk to a clinician. Get the facts. And once you have all the information, Kays advice is simple: Try to keep a level headand not panic about your biology.
Theres An Easier Way To Meet Men Online
You just have to know how to work the system.
First, you need to be on the right platforms.
If you are in your mid twenties to mid thirties and live in city where the population is over 500,000 you need to be on Hinge.
If you are in the same age group and live in a less populated city, you need to be on Bumble.
To supplement this, I recommend signing up for Match.com because its the most popular online dating site.
Since it is a paid site, the men on there are more serious and they want to settle down.
Now that youre on the right platforms, you need to learn how to use them correctly.
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Gender And The Inequalities Of Reproductive Time
In the interviews I conducted, it is often mentioned that the biological clock functions as a mandate that dictates when women should have children and become mothers. For Consuelo , your biological clock marks the time to have babies, and for Blanca , the biological clock dictates the now to become a mother. Like Consuelo and Blanca, many of the women in my study believed that beyond the boundaries of the biological clock it is not possible for women to become mothers. This is the view of Elisa : Us women have a certain amount of eggs and it comes a certain age in which you get the menopause and you can no longer become a mother, obviously, because you are no longer ovulating.
At the same time, the narrative of the biological clock creates a hierarchy between biological and social fertility by subsuming the role of motherhood to the childbearing capacity of the female body. In doing so, it outlines a disjuncture between the boundaries of female fertility and the fact that women may want or feel constrained to achieve milestones like having a partner, a good job, or financial security before having children . This conclusion is consistent with the findings of Friese et al. who argue that for women, the public domain and paid labour are outlined as an interference to reproduction. In my interviews, women often mention that postponing motherhood is problematic because then there is not enough time left to have children. This is the view of Rafaela :
Other Women In Your Family Have Had Fertility Issues
Did your mother go through menopause at an earlier age, under age 50? Has your older sister had problems trying to conceive? Your mother and your sisters reproductive problems may give you clues to your own. Some genes that control ovarian reserve can lead to early menopause and trouble conceiving.
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Lets Talk About The Idea Of A Biological Clock And Its Impact On Fertility And Our Well
Whether or not you know you want to have children, youre probably familiar with the notion of a biological clock. The concept that people with uteruses have a limited amount of time to get pregnant is a linchpin of conversations about women. We see it demonstrated by the recent creepy tweet pondering Taylor Swift’s fertility and our ongoing obsession with Jennifer Aniston’s childfree life.
The concept of a ticking biological fertility clock is a somewhat modern one. The Washington Post first used the phrase the biological clock in an article in 1978 called The Clock Is Ticking for the Career Woman. The author, Richard Cohen, declared: Most said that they could hear the clock ticking You hear it wherever you go.
Ann Kirchheimer, a writer for the Boston Globe, followed Cohen soon after, reporting that the beneficiaries of the womens movement, a first generation of liberated young ladies who opted for careers, travel, independence rather than husband, home, and baby are older now and suddenly the ticking of the biological clock is getting louder and louder.
In Belle Boggs memoir, The Art of Waiting: Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood, Finnish sociologist Anna Rotkirch calls the idea of the biological clock an emotion which may be typical for societies when women have many choices.
Having Kids Wont Make You Happy If Youre Miserable On Your Own
Same goes for being married.
If you think that you are going to find a pot of happiness once you settle down, get married and have kids, you are going to be slapped in the face with reality and its going to hurt.
Chasing happiness is the exact opposite of what it is.
Happiness doesnt just happen to you when you have a white picket fence and a Tesla in the garage.
Happiness is a mindset that you carry with you throughout your life.
If you need help with this stage, you may want to check out these posts:
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What Causes Fertility To Decline With Age
When a female baby is in the womb, they can contain as many as 7 million eggs in their ovaries, according to ACOG. From that point on, the number of eggs drops steadily and naturally over time.
The health of your eggs and the level of reproductive hormones in your body also decrease over time. At the same time, your risk for certain conditions goes up as you get older.
Some examples of conditions that may make it harder to get pregnant include:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that around 12 percent of people between ages 15 and 44 dont get pregnant after theyve tried for a year or dont carry the pregnancy to term.
The main symptom of infertility is not getting pregnant if youre having sex without using birth control.
There may be other indications that getting pregnant may be harder. For example, if you have irregular periods, your body might not be releasing eggs on a regular schedule, either.
If your periods are more than 35 days apart or if theyre too close together , ovulation might be disrupted, too.
For men, symptoms of infertility might include:
Clock Time As Biopolitics
I draw on Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian approaches to biopolitics as a theoretical framework to address the ways in which the narrative of the biological clock shapes womens views and experiences of reproductive time. Foucault outlines biopolitics as a new technology of power that emerges to control men insofar as they are living beings. This politics of life means that biological processes like health, birth-rates, and life expectancy become the focus of governmental practice. It is, in a word, a matter of taking control of life and the biological processes of man-as-species . The regularisation of reproduction is at the core of the governing of life. Foucault argues that the rate of reproduction and the fertility of the population become biopolitics first objects of knowledge and the targets it seeks to control. It is through techniques like the socialisation of procreative behaviour and the prescription of compulsory birth-control , that governments seek to regularise social reproduction.
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What Happens To Your Eggs As You Get Older
So, what have we learned? Basically, that we have a much higher chance of conceiving below the age of 35. And this isnt only because we have more eggs. How age affects fertility is more than just a numbers game.
Its to do with the quality too.
So, why is it hard to get pregnant as you get older? You know, in addition to a half-empty basket of eggs?
Like the best-before mark on the supermarket eggs, the longer we leave ours, the closer to their expiry date they get.
Changes occur in the eggs, and although all women whatever their age have a certain number of unhealthy or abnormal eggs, the older we get, the higher the percentage of abnormal eggs in our cluster.
The risk of chromosomal abnormalities increases rapidly, particularly for those aged 40 and over, which in itself can lead to a higher risk of miscarriage and complications.
Other complications can include gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia, placenta previa and even stillbirth.
Your Biological Clock May Be Older Than You Think
Many women assume they will have no difficulty getting pregnant until they discover they cant, says Rachel McConnell, MD, assistant professor of obstetrics & gynecology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and medical director of the new Columbia Fertility Center clinic in White Plains, New York.
A lot of women in their 40s feel that because they are healthy and they exercise that they should still be okay reproductively, McConnell says. Its important for people to know that the biological clock is a little bit different than physical health.
And looking to the age when their own mothers or grandmothers conceived isnt an accurate guide, she adds. Ive had patients say, I didn’t worry about this because my grandmother had a child when she was over 40. But your grandmothers or mothers experience doesnt predict what will happen to you.
According to McConnell, women generally begin to see some gradual changes with fertility starting at around age 30, as a womans egg reserve and quality decline.
Its not that fertility falls of a cliff starting at age 30, but the chance of getting pregnant really goes down after age 35.
McConnell explains that even for younger women who are having regular periods, it can be difficult to get pregnant.
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How Can You Tell When Your Biological Clock Will End
Unfortunately, there’s no way of knowing exactly when a woman’s fertility window will end, but the clock is always ticking.
The average biological clock starts shortly after menarche and terminates at menopause .
The exact timeline is different for each person, but age is the most significant factor impacting reproductive potential. The older the woman is, the more difficult it is to conceive. And pregnancy rates often decline much earlier as early as the late 30s and early 40s.
No specific physical signs denote that your biological clock is ticking down. The timing varies across cultures, ethnicities, and even families, but the age at which your mother began menopause offers clues.
Symptoms do not start appearing until a woman is nearing menopause. Unfortunately, some women can experience premature ovarian insufficiency and go into menopause before age 40.
Peri-menopausal symptoms include:
- Vaginal dryness
Any woman under 40 who has had difficulty conceiving for the past 6-12 months should seek consultation with a reproductive endocrinologist.
Stop Comparing Yourself To Others
Its possible to be happy with yourself and still have low self esteem.
You could love your job, love your friends and your lifestyle, but still feel the pressure to settle down because of your friends, family, society in general or social media.
When you compare yourself to others, you give away your life to them.
You need to live your life for YOU, not for other people.
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Risk Of Birth Defects
Associations have been made between paternal age and the risk of birth defects and developmental disorders such as autism and Apert’s syndrome, as well as mental illnesses like schizophrenia. Moreover, studies conducted by Kleinhaus and colleagues at Columbia University looked at some 90,000 births and concluded the older a man is when he conceives a child, the more likely his partner is to miscarry — even when she is young, healthy, and has no other risk factors.
Many believe this is just the beginning of what there is to learn.
“What we know now may be just the tip of the iceberg, particularly regarding birth issues we don’t fully understand. We are just beginning to look at the role of a father’s age. And as time goes by it’s likely we are going to learn a lot more,” says Jeremy Silverman, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York City, and the researcher of a study that associated paternal age with risks of autism.
Schedule Your Online Dating Time
The reason Bumble or Tinder can suck the life out of you is that they are so addictive.
Youre swiping away and then you feel like stopping.
You feel like thats enough and you want to put your phone down.
So you tell yourself just one more.
And you proceed to do one more swipe for the next hour.
Hinge is a lifesaver here because they have a limit on how much you can swipe.
If youre on Bumble or Tinder, or messaging on Match, you need to value your time.
Set aside a certain amount of time for online dating. Tell yourself you will do this for 1 hour every night after dinner.
Once that hour is up, you stop.
This is how you stick to the dating thing night after night without getting tired. If you start to get tired of this, just reduce it down to one hour a day for three days a week.
Theres nothing wrong with reducing the time you spend on it. There is everything wrong with giving up.
This is how you stay dating because when you give up, you leave things to chance.
After all, you want to find a man and have kids with him right?
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When Does The Biological Clock Start Ticking
Every woman’s clock’ starts ticking when she is still a fetus inside the womb. A female has six to seven million eggs the highest number she will ever have at 20 weeks gestation, in utero.
From there, the number of eggs begins to diminish. By the time a female infant is born, she has approximately 1-2 million eggs left.
When a female reaches puberty, her ovaries will begin releasing a mature egg every month. This process is called ovulation.
Technically, the real ticking of the biological clock starts at this point, as this is the true beginning of a woman’s reproductive years.
At this point, there are approximately 300,000 500,000 eggs left.
A woman is most fertile when she is in her early to mid-20s.
Fertility declines gradually after that but begins to decline rapidly after 35. The drop is most dramatic after the age of 37.
At that point, the remaining eggs are more likely to accumulate genetic mutations and develop chromosomal abnormalities. Those abnormalities often lead to poor egg quality, decreasing the chances of fertilization and implantation while increasing the risk of miscarriage.
How Do I Know It Is Ticking
- Youll start to feel broody. Maybe youve never been bothered about the children your friends or family have, but suddenly you do notice. Youll be really interested in babies and youll find yourself peeking into prams and pushchairs and smiling.
- Youll want to give all the babys you see a cuddle, even if they are crying. You wont mind friends bringing their babys with them when you meet them for lunch and you might find yourself offering to babysit.
- Youll suddenly find yourself looking longingly in baby shops and cooing over baby clothes, shoes and nursery décor.
- Having a baby around the place wont fill you with dread and you begin to imagine being a mom and the things youll do with your child.
- You think seriously for the first time about giving up smoking and drinking less. You even start to look forward to cosy night in.
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