Why Males Are Biology’s Riskier Sex This may be surprising to some: A woman’s ag

Why Males Are Biology’s Riskier Sex

This may be surprising to some: A woman’s age is not alone in affecting pregnancy and birth, despite the impression often given. 

 Reviewing Paul Raeburn’s book Do Fathers Matter?, Tabitha Powledge wrote:

“Everybody knows that older mothers run higher risks of a baby with birth defects — Down syndrome being the most common and best-known. By comparison, hardly anybody knows that the older Dad gets, the riskier it is for him to conceive a child.”

Partners age together, so a fetus or baby with an older mother will mostly have an older father, too. Logic demands exploration of age effects in both sexes. Though few and far between, such studies do indeed reveal that both men and women contribute.

With Down syndrome, age effects for fathers and mothers are roughly balanced.Butnew data clearly show that, when it comes to inherited defects, fathers actually carry greater risks than mothers. Random changes in DNA — mutations — accumulate four times faster in sperms than in eggs.