Old daddy a bad idea

It seems to be the glamourous thing to do lately. A 60-70 years old man fathering a child. With a youngish, 20-something wife. Whoa….isn’t that such a proud thing to do? A grandpapa-like man with a cute lil babeeeeee……

I had been wondering…Is this only limited to the rich and famous? The kind of fathers who can afford millions of dollars in trust funds for their kids’ future? Or will it eventually go down to the layman?

As we can see, nowadays there are all kinds of drugs to wake up a dormant manhood. And we can also see, from the news and gossip magazines, there are lots of young, sometime virgin women who travel from far and wide who readily trade love for the sake of security, money, a place to stay and hitch off an old man.

I am one who sometimes, eavesdropped on kopitiam talks by bunches of old men. When I say old, I mean anything like 60 years and above. Just the other day, I was at a hawker centre and these group of old men were drinking beer, wine and Chinese rice wine, all in one. So, they started getting a high and the stories got raunchier and voices got louder. They were comparing which girls, Chinese or Vietnamese or Cambodian were more ‘hiao and song’ (sexy and good?).

Well, it is not my business to wonder about their real families and wives. But I do wonder what if they father children with these girls? And I do feel it rather morally-not-so-right that they probably want to father a child just so that people know that “hey, I can still perform. oooh…I am he-man!”. So, I guess nature has its way of getting to us, right? Read this news:

The rising age of fathers has been associated with reproductive problems including spontaneous abortion and with genetic diseases like achondroplasia, a type of dwarfism, and Apert syndrome, which involves severe bone malformations. Evidence from other studies also suggests that aging sperm plays a role in disorders like schizophrenia, in which genetic contributions to the illness are more complex and not as well understood. But little is known about which sperm abnormalities rise with age.

Using techniques that can detect DNA and chromosomal defects directly in sperm cells, the researchers examined the sperm of 97 healthy nonsmokers, ages 22 to 80. Compared with men in their 20′s, those who were 40 to 49 had almost twice as much sperm DNA fragmentation, which is associated with failures of fertility, conception and sustained pregnancy.

“Our research suggests that men, too, have a biological time clock,” said Brenda Eskenazi, one of two lead authors of the study and a professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

News excerpt taken from NY Times (you need to sign up to read)