Children born to older fathers may have lower IQs

[ecstatic]

A new study on 33,000 young U.S. children found that those with older fathers had reduced cognitive abilities. In contrast, researchers found that children born to older mothers scored higher on cognitive tests.

Recent studies have drawn links between older fathers and specific health problems in their children, including birth deformities and cancer, as well as neuropsychiatric conditions such as autism and schizophrenia.

In the study, the researchers analysed data from intelligence tests taken by 33,437 children who were born between 1959 and 1965 in the United States.

The children were tested at 8 months, 4 years and 7 years and were assessed for their sensory discrimination, hand-eye coordination, reading, spelling and arithmetic ability.

They found that the older the father, the more likely the child would have lower scores on the various tests.

In contrast, the older the mother, the higher the scores of the child in the cognitive tests.

http://news.aol.com/health/article/older-fathers-iq/378694

Interesting...

[hobbit709]

1. So how do you explain redneck yahoos?

[Evergreen Emerald]

2. They don't define "older"

I wonder how they define "older," 30's?

[ecstatic]

11. I was wondering about that too

:scared:

[Thor_MN]

28. Nor do they define "lower"

Likely, there is a weak corelation where the overlap is far greater than the actual difference.

[seabeyond]

3. hooyahhh. i married a younger man and had kids when i was older.

bah hahahha.

love it.

[etherealtruth]

7. So did I

I was 30 and he was 25 .... go figure ;)

[seabeyond]

8. wink

the funny, ... we can play with it and have fun. (like anyone taking seriously). and so many dont think it is so cute. ah well.

[ecstatic]

12. seems like the reverse (an older man marrying younger woman)

might be a problem.

[seabeyond]

13. like isnt that a duh...

lol lol. teasing.

there are lots of things i observe to not take this seriously, but sure fun to play with.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

14. Sometimes I feel like I haven't been born yet. n/t

[seabeyond]

15. that is funny....

well, it is all good. could work

[HysteryDiagnosis]

16. Well, there is a joke about returning to the womb... I tried much

harder when I was a young bloke... now not so much. :)

[seabeyond]

17. my youngest. he is 11 and i am STILL trying to shake off hip. lol lol

again, it is all good... most all just love the kid and gets away with so much, so not all bad there if pattern continues in life. that is funny. until i actually had a child like that, i would never have truly appreciated that saying.

[seabeyond]

23. booyah... not hooyah. hubby corrected me. n/t

[lunatica]

4. This is crap

Anyone can manipulate data any way they want to. Was the age of the parents the sole factor under consideration? What about the mental abilities of the parents, or the economic status? Did they study nutrition and health care access in early childhood of the parents and the children as part of the tests? It goes on and on.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. My father was 34 and my mother 29 when I was born. My IQ is above average.

Define "older" . . .

[tonysam]

20. I Doubt 34 and 29 are Considered "Older."

It's more like 40s, 50s, and older.

[no_hypocrisy]

22. LOL, back in the Fifties, it was . . . .

Women tried to get married as soon as they were emanicipated and start a family soon after the wedding.

[blondeatlast]

6. "may" have lower IQs. Walking across my quiet street "may" get me killed, but

there's no direct cause and effect.

GD is in rare form today, it seems.

[JSK]

9. Idiotic

My dad was 42 when I was born; mom was 22. I have two younger brothers, one of whom was born when dad was 50, and we're all uber-smart. No brag, just fact.

[F.C.James]

10. The good news is children of older parents live longer n/t

[lumberjack_jeff]

18. Alternative explanation:

Intelligent fathers tend to have children earlier in life. Intelligent mothers, later.

There's nothing in the article which suggests they tested the parents.

I don't know if it's researchers or reporters which are conflating correlation with causality.

There's a significant link between genetics and autism. It seems that the more "geeky" and "techy" the parents, the more likely that the children will have autism. In my experience, nerds like me marry and have children later in life.

[mecherosegarden]

19. My father was 48 when I was born ...

and shock ! my mom was so very young :shrug:

No wonder I had such a hard time getting all those degrees... and The PsyD seems like and uphill battle .

I am almost there, but after reading this... I should stop cause I am not smart enough. Oh wait, that is why my spelling and writing skills sucks... because my dad was so old when I was born!

Me say... many studies are just bull :think: :think:

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

21. What is older? 30s? 40s? 50's? 60's70's? The article doesn't mention it. Journalism

at its worst.

[Cerridwen]

24. The funniest part about this thread is how few people (none?)

bothered to look for the study taking the article at "face value."

The study cites some very disturbing evidence of other issues with Advanced Paternal Age (APA) that isn't even touched in the original article.

I also find it entertaining to read the posters describing themselves as intelligent offspring of older fathers yet who didn't bother to spend the approximately 2 minutes it took to google the study and only replied "Nuh, uh! I'm brilliant as are my siblings!" If brilliant is defined as intellectually incurious and lazy mixed with a willingness to accept pablum packaged as "journalism," I guess they fit their definition.

The second paragraph in this snippet is most disturbing.

In recent decades there has been increased attention to health outcomes in the offspring of older fathers. Evidence shows that advanced paternal age (APA) is associated with an increased risk of a wide range of disorders <1>. While not discounting the influence of various age-related psychosocial factors that may translate to differential health outcomes for the offspring of older fathers (e.g., higher socioeconomic status, better education), advances in genomics have refocused attention on the vulnerability of sperm from older fathers to carrying de novo mutations. The development of the germ cell differs between human males and females—there are many more germline cell divisions in the life history of a sperm relative to that of an oocyte <2>. In the female there are 22 mitotic cell divisions that occur in utero. In contrast, after puberty, progenitor sperm stem cells undergo mitotic cell division once every 16 d. By age 20 the progenitor sperm cells have undergone approximately 150 cell divisions. By age 50 this number is 840. Thus, the chance of copy error mutations increases with age in males more dramatically than for females.

Advanced paternal age is associated with increased fetal deaths <3,4> and certain rare congenital syndromes (e.g., achondroplasia) <1,5>. In recent years evidence has accumulated linking APA with a wide range of neurological and neuropsychiatric conditions including Alzheimer's disease <6,7>, bipolar disorder <8>, dyslexia <9>, neural tube defects <10>, and epilepsy <11>. A sizeable body of evidence has accumulated linking APA with an increased risk of schizophrenia <12–18>. A recent meta-analysis based on eight studies found that paternal age above 35 was associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia <19>. There is also evidence linking APA to autism spectrum disorders <20–24>.

The associations between APA and outcomes such as autism and schizophrenia are of particular interest, as these disorders have recently been associated with genomic structural variation <25–30>. It is feasible that APA-related mechanisms may contribute to genomic structural variation (e.g., copy number variants, microdeletions) <2>. Thus, within the fields of schizophrenia and autism research, there has been an unexpected convergence between epidemiology and molecular biology.

While there is good evidence linking paternal age with several clinically distinct neurodevelopmental disorders, the evidence linking paternal age and other neurocognitive outcomes such as general intelligence is less robust. Earlier studies noted an association between APA and poorer performance on neurocognitive tests <31–34>. This issue has been addressed specifically in a recent study based on male and female Israeli conscripts (age 16–17 y, n = 44,175) <35>. The study found independent effects of paternal age on offspring intelligence with the lowest scores associated with both younger and older fathers (inverted “U”-shaped association). This finding is in contrast to the association between maternal age and offspring intelligence, where most studies have reported a linear association between older maternal age and superior neurocognitive ability <36–39>. Link to the study that is actually online

[seabeyond]

26. interesting. thanks. n/t

[TahitiNut]

25. So, baby boomers have lower IQs because their father was off in the war??

Hmmm... :dunce:

[Gormy Cuss]

27. Link to study for anyone interested in more about methodology, limitations, etc.

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?SESSID=e263c946ca0313413c8d5c9459ae6b53&request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000040

What Did the Researchers Do and Find?

The researchers gathered no new data but reanalyzed data on children from the US Collaborative Perinatal Project (CPP), which had used a variety of tests given to children at ages 8 months, 4 years, and 7 years, to measure cognitive ability—the ability to think and reason, including concentration, memory, learning, understanding, speaking, and reading. Some tests included assessments of “motor skills”—physical co-ordination.

The CPP dataset holds information on children of 55,908 expectant mothers who attended 12 university-affiliated hospital clinics in the United States from 1959 to 1965. The researchers excluded premature babies and multiple births and chose one pregnancy at random for each eligible woman, to keep their analysis simpler. This approach reduced the number of children in their analysis to 33,437.

The researchers analyzed the data using two models. In one, they took into account physical factors such as the parents' ages. In the other, they also took into account social factors such as the parents' level of education and income, which are linked to intelligence. In addition, the authors grouped the children by their mother's age and, within each group, looked for a link between the lowest-scoring children and the age of their father.

The researchers found that children with older fathers had lower scores on all of the measures except one measure of motor skills. In contrast, children with older mothers had higher scores. They found that the older the father, the more likely was this result found.

One caveat by the authors is that the intelligence measures only followed children through age 7 and the most pronounced differences were in the earliest ages. It may be that the children catch up as they grow up.

[ecstatic]

29. I finally read it

Interesting!