Articles you can use: Waiting to Marry /Your Old Man/ My Clock Was Already Ticking - 4/7/09

[Smartmarriages]

- YOUR OLD MAN 
- MY CLOCK WAS ALREADY TICKING
- THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST WAITING TO MARRY
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Your Old Man is an incredibly important article that brings radical,
culture-changing research to our attention. It adds the tick-tock of the
male clock to the mix.  A bummer for men and women in their late 30s or
older who were unaware and still planning babies, but it is information we
must make available.  Also see the companion piece, just one more on the
consequences of ignoring the female clock and the decisions we can't undo. -
diane 

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- YOUR OLD MAN 

Your Old Man
Lisa Belkin
The New York Times Sunday Magazine
April 5, 2009 


> If those underlying assumptions were to change, would all that follows from
> them change as well? A world in which each man heard his clock tick even a
> fraction as urgently as each woman could be a very different world indeed. All
> those silver-haired sex symbols, and balding sugar daddies, and average-Joe
> divorced guys who are on their second families because they can be while their
> exes are raising their first set of kids ‹ what if all of them became, in
> women¹s eyes, too darned old?
> 
> What if 30-year-old women started looking at 50-year-old men as damaged goods,
> what with their washed-up sperm, meaning those 50-year-olds might actually
> have to date (gasp!) women their own age? What if men, as the years passed,
> began to look with new eyes at Ms. Almost Right? Would men of all ages come to
> understand ‹ firsthand, not just from the sidelines ‹ the fear that the very
> passage of time will put your not-yet-conceived baby at risk?


Read between the lines of a recent study out of Australia and you can see
hints of a coming shift in the gender conversation. Researchers at the
University of Queensland found that children born to older fathers have, on
average, lower scores on tests of intelligence than those born to younger
dads. Data they analyzed from more than 33,000 American children showed that
the older the man when a child is conceived, the lower a child¹s score is
likely to be on tests of concentration, memory, reasoning and reading
skills, at least through age 7.

It was a small difference ‹ just a few I.Q. points separated a child born to
a 20-year-old and a child born to a 50-year-old. But it adds weight to a new
consensus-in-the-making: there is no fountain of youth for sperm, no ³get
out of aging free² card. The little swimmers, scientists are finding, one
study at a time, get older and less dependable along with every other cell
in the male body.

And men don¹t have to be all that old to be ³too old.² French researchers
reported last year that the chance of a couple¹s conceiving begins to fall
when the man is older than 35 and falls sharply if he is older than 40.
British and Swedish researchers, in turn, have calculated that the risk of
schizophrenia begins to rise for those whose fathers were over 30 when their
babies were born. And another Swedish study has found that the risk of
bipolar disorder in children begins to increase when fathers are older than
29 and is highest if they are older than 55. British and American
researchers found that babies born to men over the age of 40 have
significantly greater risk of autism than do those born to men under 30.
(The age of the mother, in most of these studies, showed little or no
correlation.)

Lay this latest I.Q. news atop the pile, and you find yourself reaching the
same conclusion as Dr. Dolores Malaspina, a professor of psychiatry at New
York University Medical Center, who has done some of the schizophrenia
research: ³It turns out the optimal age for being a mother is the same as
the optimal age for being a father.²
 
For the full article and photo:
http://tinyurl.com/clb83q

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- MY CLOCK WAS ALREADY TICKING

And, here's yet another article for women - like all of the articles in this
vein, it's painful, and poignant but important information.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/fashion/29love.html

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- THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST WAITING TO MARRY

Both articles ­ the male and female ticking clocks ­ serve as companion
pieces to Van Epp's WAITING TO MARRY keynote (read the transcript with
slides and order the DVD here:
http://www.smartmarriages.com/avoid.jerk.vanepp.keynote.html )

You could create a great lesson plan that would begin with showing the DVD
of the Van Epp keynote and then use these articles as reading assignments -
guaranteed a hot discussion among singles.

Also, the chapter: *Amanda's 39th Birthday* from Unprotected - a must read
Order here: http://www.smartmarriages.com/app/Media.Booklist

And this one, Marry Him! : http://tinyurl.com/cnck9t

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