Father's Age is Linked to Autism in Children

It has always been said that older women have a higher risk of having birth defects. As for men, it was thought that they can have kids at any age with no worries. Well, a new study recently proved that belief wrong.

Researchers in Japan have found that older fathers are twice as likely to have autistic children as younger men while the mother's age has no influence as such on the likelihood of her offspring developing the disorder.

Their findings were based on an analysis of 84 kids with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders, meaning they had social impairments of the condition -- but had normal intelligence, and 208 children without the disorder. Children whose fathers were over 33 years were 1.8 times more likely to have autism than those fathers were under 29. And men who fathered children between the age of 29 and 32 years were 30 per cent more likely to have an autistic child, the study found.

Experts though are not fully convinced, stating that the pattern of behavior from which autism is diagnosed may not result from a single cause.

After hearing this, it makes me glad I had kids at a younger age.