Approximately 70 million couples around the world experience fertility issues, and in somewhere between 30 to 50 percent of those cases, the problem stems from the male partner.

A new study from the University of Delaware points to one thing that could change that: eating about 70 grams (2 ½ ounces) of walnuts daily may improve sperm health by reducing lipid peroxidation, which damages sperm cells.

“Sperm is particularly susceptible to oxidative damage since their membrane is comprised primarily of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA),” explains Maggie Ney, ND Board Certified Naturopathic Doctor and Co-Director of the Women’s Clinic at Akasha Center for Integrative Medicine. “PUFA are particularly susceptible to oxidative damage because of their biochemical structure.”

Especially when men are eating the Standard American Diet rich in sugar and processed foods, sperm cells can be deteriorated by lipid peroxidation. Walnuts, as the only tree nut predominantly comprised of these acids, may be the ideal addition to their diets to boost fertility naturally.

But this isn’t the first study to show the healing power of walnuts as far as male fertility is concerned. A 2012 study published in Biology of Reproduction revealed that men between the ages of 21 to 35 who ate 75 grams of walnuts every day for twelve weeks saw “increased sperm vitality, motility, and morphology” and fewer chromosomal abnormalities.

And if you’re including walnuts on your man’s favorite salad to boost his fertility, feel free to have a portion, too: Ney notes that walnuts can also have positive effects on female fertility and egg health.

“Alteration in PUFA content and oxidative damage to female eggs can alter the health of ovarian follicles, affect ovulation rate and progesterone production,” she says.

Ney notes that raw walnuts are even better than toasted or otherwise cooked walnuts, as the PUFA in the latter can be altered by heating. You and your man can eat raw organic walnuts as a snack, in salads or slaws, or even on top of ice cream for a pro-fertility sundae.

Related on EcoSalon
8 Different Nuts and What to Do with Them
Fidelity, Fertility, and More, Revealed in Your Lover’s Face
Common Chemical Linked to Female Infertility

The post Are Walnuts the Secret to Boosting Fertility? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Fertility doesn’t become important to you until, well, you’re trying to get pregnant. And for many of us, it’s extremely frustrating. You spend your entire life trying to avoid getting pregnant and then when you’re ready to start a family, it doesn’t come so easy. More and more women are having problems with fertility caused by advanced age, reproductive issues, or other health issues. But according to Dr Julie Von, a Manhattan-based holistic doctor specializing in fertility, a few crucial steps can help you take control of your fertility. Here’s how to increase fertility, naturally.

What Does Your Cycle Say About Your Overall Health?

According to Dr. Von, tracking your menstrual cycle is important even before you’re trying to conceive because it can tell you a lot about your overall health.

“Blood is essential for life and women tend to use more blood than men,” she says. “The blood around menstruation tells you what’s leftover and hasn’t been used up in the course of the month.”

Dr. Von says that women who have extremely short menstrual cycles tend to have too little blood, whether as a result of restrictive diets like vegan or vegetarian diets, or really intense exercise regimens. These women may need to build their blood back up. On the other hand, women who have extremely heavy flows, or a back up of flow, may need more movement in the body. This can be an indication of inflammation in the body or problems with digestion.

A healthy flow usually ranges from four to seven days. It starts fresh and full and then tappers off. It’s usually bright in color and doesn’t contain clots. Additionally, it doesn’t start and stop, it’s continuous until the end.

When Can You and When Can You Not Get Pregnant?

If you want to get pregnant, you have to understand when you can and cannot get pregnant. Of course, you could just have sex the whole time, but in the event you can’t have sex everyday, knowing your ovulation schedule is crucial. Most women ovulate on day 14 of their menstrual cycle. But everyone is different, and being able to track your ovulation schedule is key to fertility. Additionally, by tracking your ovulation, you’ll know whether or not you’re ovulating at all. If you’ve been on birth control for 20 years, it may take a while to come back. In which case you should talk with your doctor. Here’s how to track your ovulation schedule:

1. There’s an app for that.

Many gynecologists will tell you to get an ovulation tracker app for your phone. By simply typing in the days of your period, it will tell you ideally when you’re ovulating. But here’s the deal: though it is a good idea to use an app, it just tells you when most people ovulate and some people have either longer or shorter cycles. In addition to using an app, you should also take a few other steps to track your schedule.

2. Use an ovulation kit.

Simple ovulation kits that you buy at the drug store can help track ovulation by testing for the presence of a particular hormone in your body.

3. Track your basal body temperature.

According to Dr. Von, this is the most effective way to track your ovulation. It takes a little time, but it’s really effective at tracking your particular ovulation schedule and how it can change from month to month. Each morning when you wake up, take your body temperature and write it down. Notice when your body temperature drops (be it ever so slightly). When it goes back up again, that’s the start of ovulation. This way you’ll notice whether a month of insomnia, excessive alcohol, or even extensive travel impacted your schedule.

4. Notice discharge.

In conjunction with a temperature spike, it’s good to notice discharge. When you start to ovulate, a thick discharge forms. At the time of ovulation, it looks like egg whites, wet and slippery. It can last from two to four days depending on the person. This is another extremely effective means of tracking your ovulation.

5 Tips For Increasing Your Fertility

If you’re having trouble conceiving, there are a number of steps you can take to increase fertility. These include:

1. Improve your diet.

Your diet really does make a huge difference. First and foremost, says Dr. Von, you should learn to cook at home. Eating processed foods or takeout is the worst thing you can do. Processed foods are bad for digestion, which is linked to poor fertility. In the beginning of your cycle during your follicular phase, you should be eating foods like sweet potatoes, yams, millet, whole tofu, black beans, and flax seed oil. During the luteal phase of your cycle, you should be eating foods like sesame seeds, ginger, sunflower seeds, quinoa, and leeks.

2. Avoid excessive alcohol.

While it depends on your how your body responds it, excessive alcohol is usually not good for fertility. Dr. Von says that when a client complains about excessive cramping during her cycle, she’ll often recommend laying off the alcohol. Because hormones are processed in your liver and if your liver is working overtime, it can create problems.

3. Get enough sleep.

Sleep is super important to fertility because your body needs to power down and detox to effectively produce reproductive hormones. Make sure you go to bed early and get seven to eight hours of sleep each night. In the winter time, you may need to hibernate for even longer.

4. Have sex.

Self explanatory I know, but there’s actually even more to it. A healthy sex life helps stimulate the production of the hormones that are important for fertility. It’s also good for relaxation and making you generally feel good.

5. Get a hormonal panel.

It’s really good to understand the baselines for your body’s hormones to know where you normally stand and what may need to be done.

Are you struggling with fertility? What has worked and what hasn’t? We want to know! Drop us a line via Twitter @EcoSalon.

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The post 5 Tips to Naturally Increase Fertility, Without Drugs appeared first on EcoSalon.

A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers.

40%: Decrease in fertility rates from mice kept on a normal sleep/wake schedule and those whose sleep patterns were disrupted in a recent Northwestern study

4700: Age of a Chalcolithic man found buried in the dress and manner of a woman in a Bronze Age settlement near Prague

90: Minutes a night the average penis becomes erect during sleep

13: Anniversary of “Courage,” a Catholic sports camp for celibate gay men in Philadelphia

15 years: Maximum sentence faced by a 43-year-old New York superintendent accused of having sex with a tenant’s Labrador

Image: woodleywonderworks

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Due to the common use of assisted reproductive technology, twins and triplets are now subconsciously labeled “natural” or “unnatural.”

In Katharine Wroth’s Salon article about the questions people ask pregnant women, she expresses her outrage at continually being asked “Were you trying?” She thought it was not only too personal, but the answer potentially passed judgment on her relationship and lifestyle. The good news is that once she gives birth, this question will most likely disappear. As the mother of twins, there is a question I feel is far more invasive and offensive that begins with pregnancy and is more frequent after birth.

“Are they natural?”

It is universally the most-hated question asked of parents of multiples, followed closely by “You must have your hands full!” or “Better you than me.” In just three words, strangers pry into your method of conception – a private and intimate moment – and tack a label on your children. Using the term “natural” to describe children conceived without any help automatically conveys what the asker thinks of children who were conceived using assisted reproductive technology (unnatural).

What is an unnatural child, anyway? Am I really supposed to answer: Yes or no? It’s shocking that strangers and casual acquaintances think it’s appropriate to ask someone how their children were conceived. Although fertility treatments account for 77 percent of multiple births, many single children are born that way, too, yet I don’t see the same people marching up to everyone they meet and asking how their child was conceived. Whenever I am asked, I get the creepy feeling that the person is either picturing me in bed with my husband or in a gown and stirrups at a doctor’s office. I was raised to be polite, so as yet I haven’t asked that person how they conceived their own children – flat on their backs or in some other position? Maybe next time, I will.

I have seven friends with twins to whom I am close enough to know the circumstances of their origin. Out of our group, six sets (one mom has two sets) were conceived with no outside intervention, and three were the result of assistance. We have all been asked how our children came to be, and I’ve noticed that when the answer is that they were conceived naturally, the asker smiles and is supportive, commenting on how cute the children are. When the answer is that they were conceived with help, the asker usually replies, “oh,” rather flatly. Many parents report that they have resorted to lying or giving outrageous answers like “No, they’re plastic” or “We had sex twice in one night” in an attempt to end unwelcome conversations in the mall or at the supermarket.

My friend’s mother was talking the other day about a coworker’s daughter who had IVF and subsequently had triplets. She said, “Well, you get what you deserve.”

Exactly what do couples who have infertility issues deserve? The repeated disappointment of not being able to get pregnant, month after month, while watching their family and friends reproduce without issue? The devastation of miscarriages? The bone-deep, hollowed-out heartache of watching a fetus on an ultrasound that is not moving and has no heartbeat? Or, because they had the nerve to see a specialist and use fertility medications, they “deserve” multiples? Evidently, multiples are somehow a punishment.

Assisted reproduction has become more common now due to a variety of factors, and it is certainly discussed more often. Perhaps that’s why people feel that they can ask parents how their children came to be, however inappropriate it still is. While it’s more common, judging by the reactions, assisted reproduction is still looked down on by many. For some reason, having one child through assisted reproduction is a miracle, but having multiples that way is unnatural, even though having twins or triplets is always out of anyone’s control. One commenter on a twins blog said that he had “natural” twins, and felt they were special, whereas twins conceived through IVF were not.

Whether people are fascinated, admiring, or just plain nosy, the issue affects more than the parents – the kids can hear these comments, questions, labels and tone of voice, too. One mother posted a story about a woman who asked her if her triplets were “natural.” She then said, sympathetically, that the mother’s life must be so hard and how did she possibly do it? Later, her sad daughter asked the mother if she wished she had had only one child instead of three. I worry, too, that soon my two-year-old sons will want to know what “natural” means. That funny, irrepressible Ben and serious, cuddly Sam will wonder if they are a burden to me due to the thoughtlessness of others.

When people ask, “Do twins run in your family?” (the fraternal twin question to “Are they natural?”) in that I-would-shoot-myself-in-the-head-if-it-were-me voice, I tell them I’m adopted. Although they are asking for personal information, it seems that when they get some they don’t expect, people shut up – at least long enough for me to make a getaway. But what’s next? Perhaps they’ll want to know if I plan to find my “real” parents someday.

image: Angela Vincent

The post Lovely. Are They Natural? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Does abortion cause psychological trauma? No, but judging might.

The imagined link between abortion and psychosis is just that: imaginary. But just in case we weren’t sure, last month, the New England Journal of Medicine published a Danish study showing definitively that abortion does not put a woman at increased risk for subsequent psychiatric disorders.

This isn’t even news, but try saying that at the picket line. Last year’s UCSF-Guttmacher Institute study found no relationship between abortion and later mental health problems. In 2008, Johns Hopkins did a meta-analysis of studies and came to the same conclusion. The American Psychological Association’s official position is that abortion does not lead to increased risk of mental health problems, a position the association has held since 2008.

But why stop saying something just because it happens to not be true? Despite the evidence from reputable health authorities, the battle goes on. And that’s just the way the anti-choice movement likes it.

In the late ’80s, the anti-abortion movement realized that screeching about Jesus was not winning them many fans, and that most people, pro-lifers included, tended to support things like individual liberty and protecting women’s health. So instead of putting all the focus on the fetus, they added a softer, gentler, more insidious tactic: claiming that abortion hurts women. They turned the debate from one about sticky moral questions like “When does life begin?” into one about objective science and medicine, re-casting women as the vulnerable victims.

Suddenly, abortions were causing breast cancer, subjecting women to dangerous surgery, impairing fertility, and triggering a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder called “post–abortion syndrome.” If you believed the hype, women everywhere were suffering from incapacitating depression, guilt, despair, regret, and suicidal thoughts, even though not one reputable or methodologically sound study has ever supported any of these claims. At any anti-abortion rally today, the signs claiming “I regret my abortion” or “Abortion hurts women,” are likely to outnumber the signs depicting gruesomely dismembered fetuses – because it works.

Despite being medically suspect (and we’re being generous here), the mental health claim has been a successful tactic in chipping away at choice. Even the specter of these claims is enough to allow the anti-choice movement to pass laws requiring that women watch ultrasounds, receive counseling, hear inaccurate medical information, or undergo a state-mandated waiting period before having an abortion, all under the guise of concern for our welfare.

If you think the paternalistic faux concern was limited to Bible-belt senators, think again. In his majority opinion upholding the 2007 partial-birth abortion ban, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy  wrote, “The State has an interest in ensuring so grave a choice is well informed. It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns…what once she did not know.” This is for our own good, you see.

Of course, there’s no right or wrong way to react to an abortion. Research shows that most women report feeling relief, but some women do experience sadness or guilt. A few even experience regret. But studies have repeatedly found that the best predictor of a woman’s mental health after an abortion is her mental health beforehand. Those relatively few women who do experience prolonged grief, anxiety, or depression are more likely to have had mental health problems before the procedure, they are more likely to have less social support for their decision, and they are more likely to have been influenced by anti-choice propaganda or picketers. The stable women who were healthy and happy before they had an abortion tend to be just as healthy and happy afterward.

Choice doesn’t hurt women. Misinformation does.

Image: Joe Szilagyi

The post Choice Doesn’t Hurt appeared first on EcoSalon.

BPA, or Biphensol A, has become the scourge of environmentalists and health advocates. And rightly so – the chemical has been used for over forty years and is found in nearly everything made of plastic. From bottles, to children’s toys, to the lining of tin cans and even the coating of sales receipts, this chemical was long considered safe by the FDA. Then studies started showing up proving the government wrong.

Just how does BPA harm you? As Time reported, “the chemical has been linked to neurological disorders, hormonal disruptions, cancer and genital abnormalities in newborn boys.” Now studies have turned their attention to its influence on fertility, as lab animals showed side effects such as infertility.

Ah, yes, fertility. It seems like you can’t open a web browser these days without someone wringing their hands over the state of women’s reproductive abilities. (We’ve previously discussed fertility drugs and misconceptions about this topic.) Do we really need another discussion over the state of women’s reproductive skills? Won’t someone think of the (unborn) children?

Based on the recent news out of medicine covering the dangerous effect of BPA on fertility – yes, we do. As Time reports, extensive studies were conducted in 2007 and 2008 at the University of San Francisco to see if BPA had an impact on fertility and IVF by studying women who were undergoing the procedure. It turns out, it does. Scientists think that BPA damages the quality of eggs in women. They found that higher blood levels of BPA, they found, were linked to a “50% reduction in normal fertilization of eggs after they were retrieved for IVF.”

Further, BPA may damage sperm. Via The Daily Green, Kaiser Permanente recently published a report that BPA can reduce sperm count and mobility in men. BPA mimics estrogen in the body which would account for its negative influence on sperm. Experts conclude that more studies will be necessary to look at this connection. But in the light of this evidence, one wonders why Congress recently refused to ban BPA from baby products.

The good news? While regulations seem to rise and fall regarding the permanent disuse of this chemical, people are starting to listen to its dangers. Even the government has released a warning on how to reduce you and your children’s exposure to the chemical.

And until BPA is banned permanently, there are some easy ways to avoid BPA. Lose the plastic bottles and containers in your home. And if you must go plastic, avoid plastics with recycling codes 3 and 7. They are more likely to contain BPA. Also, lose any plastic containers that are scratched. This is an easier route for the BPA to leech into your system.

Image: stevendepolo

The post BPA and Infertility: What’s Really Going On? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Infertility is a major bitch. It can seem like an almost endless font of emotions, misconceptions, fears, and at times complete and utter despair for the women and men who suffer through it. For women of a certain age who are not yet even trying for babies, it can swing like a scythe out of nowhere. For women (and yes, men) who are on the path to babies and facing road block after road block, it can be one of the hardest roads to travel in life.

The good news? Infertility is a bitch who almost always gets made over into a happy stork. Of the many strong women and men I know who have been down this road, they all have children now – be they biologically-derived or of another mother. And all of them feel with the depth of their souls that they have the children they were “meant” to have. Some confide they would not even change the path that got them to parenthood, as stressful as it was at times.

Still, for our sisters and brothers still on this road, one of the most painful things about it can be the misconceptions of others. People in the midst of infertility may know the technical ins and outs almost as well as some doctors. But the same doesn’t go for the aunt at Thanksgiving dinner who loudly asks three times in one evening if you’re pregnant and haven’t you been trying for years? (Because you got knocked up in the ten minutes since the first time she asked, right?) For the nosy aunts and well-meaning friends out there, here’s a look at some of the common misunderstandings about fertility that are better left unsaid.

It’s all in your head. It’s not all in your head. As Parents Magazine points out, some may tell men and women struggling with infertility that “if you’d stop worrying so much, you’d get pregnant.” Dr. John Zhang is the director of New Hope Fertility Center in New York. As he told New York Family, your relaxed mental state is important while trying to conceive. But he points out that “It’s also not [the case] that you can just relax and everything will be fine.”

Isn’t it easy for women to get pregnant? Shows like 16 & Pregnant make it seem like a case of wine coolers is all you need to be with child. But the CDC reports that 7.3 million women in the United States have “impaired fecundity.” This is 11.3 percent of all women and by some estimate, one in every 10 couples. The struggle to get pregnant is more common than people think.

She had twins, so she must have used fertility treatments. Yes, with the rise of IVF, the rate of twin births has risen. One in 32 births are now twins, a rate that has gone up 65 percent since 1980 due to fertility treatments. But that doesn’t mean that every twin birth is from using fertility drugs or procedures, as one in 89 women still have fraternal twins and one in 250 women give birth to identical babies. More over, is it really a nosy aunt’s business how you conceived?

You’re healthy and look so young, so why are you having trouble? As a woman ages, her chances for conceiving a baby decrease no matter what. And while healthy choices are important on the road to baby, ultimately it is just about the joining of a viable egg and viable sperm. Further, infertility can strike men and women of any age.

Well, at least you have each other. To insinuate that a childless couple can’t have a happy or fulfilled life without babies insinuates that all people need parenthood as the lasting key to fulfillment. Life has disappointments. And if adoption and/or fertility treatments fail, people move on.

Genetics are everything. No, they aren’t. As Dr. Cooperman pointed out to New York Family, there is “no correlation between your mother’s infertility and your ability to conceive.” So if your mother or sister had trouble, that doesn’t mean you will.

It’s the woman’s fault. Sadly, CDC points out that 7.5 percent of all sexually-experienced men have sought treatment at some point for fertility issues. This comes to 3.3 to 4.7 million men. Couples who are trying for children are in this together. And as for the rest of us? We’re there for support.

Images: Vivian Chen, e3000

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“To be or not to be” – a parent, that is the question. The thing is, more American women are choosing “not to be.” Research shows that 1 in 5 women are now without children as opposed to 1 in 10 women in the 1970s. Childlessness has increased across most educational groups and all racial and ethnic levels.

Further, most adults no longer think you need a child to be happy. According to Pew Research (via YourTango) 59 percent of adults in 2002 said they disagree with the statement that people who don’t have kids “lead empty lives.” In 1988, only 39 percent of these people didn’t agree with that statement.

There are many reasons for this, such as better contraception options, and perhaps a heightened concern about financial security. But as Dr. Laura Corio told AOL Health, some of it may simply be due to a larger enjoyment of life. “People are enjoying their lives: they’re traveling, shopping, eating out. Putting a baby into the situation is going to change everything.”

What does this all mean? Some parents like to espouse that “when you have a child, you will love in a capacity like you have never known before.” Frankly, I think these are parents who never had nieces or nephews before they had their own children. Because for some devoted aunties and uncles, we’re already at “throwing ourselves in front of a train to protect them.” And you’re telling us there’s more?

Yes, some argue that parenthood opens up a sense fulfillment that you may never have experienced before. But it looks like American women just aren’t buying it like they used to. As we’ve mentioned before, having children is one of the most personal decision we can ever make.

And this is what we should be celebrating – that we have this choice. Yes, reproductive rights are still being assailed by extremists and this is a battle that should never be discounted. But the fact that we now live in a world where you’re not immediately cast in a tragedy as an unmarried, childless woman is pretty outstanding.

We live in a world where women have options to get educated and out of the house, or choose to remain in it. Obviously, due to our cranky uncle socioeconomics, this is much easier for some than others. But opportunities exist for women as never before – and I, for one, say let’s raise a glass to our feminist foremothers for making this happen.

Sure, there will always be the rogue relative who snarks at Thanksgiving dinner that you should be sitting at the kid’s table, or the bridal bouquet toss during which a cousin will insist on dragging you out on the dance floor. But chalk that up next to the burden of bearing 10 or more children or struggle to feed several more hungry mouths than you can afford, and things are off to a good start for women at the beginning of the 21st century. Let’s just keep the momentum going.

Image: carbonnyc

The post You Need a Child to Be Happy, Right? appeared first on EcoSalon.

A hint: when someone who has self-identified for years as a singleton gets married, don’t ask her, at the wedding, if her Prince Charming has come. This will take her completely out of the moment, which is a good thing since her left foot has gone suspiciously numb from high heels. What does Prince Charming really mean? (And why is my left foot still numb?)

There’s lots of advice out there about dating and marriage. Some think you should settle after a certain age if the right fella hasn’t come along. After all, there’s that tick tock of the biological clock to consider. (And for our response to that, click here.) But others propose that settling for a spouse is the quickest way to Divorce Town, and that living the single life is the most fulfilling path.

What truth is there to it all? All I know is that I met my now-husband precisely at the moment when I decided that marriage was unnecessary – for sense of self and for survival in this wacky new century. Is the new hubs about the best man walking this earth right now? Yes, he pretty much is. And I know this not because I’m a Smug Married flaunting my significant other like a Prada bag at Condé Nast. Really, it’s because I’m old.

At my extreme advanced age, I’ve dated enough of the bad to know what the good looks like. Is he the fantasy lover of my youth? Okay, I will concede that maybe he’s not riding around the universe in the Millennium Falcon, hanging out with a Wookiee and getting encased in carbonite. This is probably for the best, because I can’t imagine putting on a Princess Leia clay bikini.

Further, a new study out of England and France shows that people often pick mates that are far from the ideals we held for our fantasy lovers. Researchers interviewed 100 heterosexual couples living in Montpellier, France. They found that these mates differed in height, weight and body mass index from how their spouses identified their ideal lovers.

As researcher Alexandre Courtiol of the University of Sheffield told Time, “Whether males or females win the battle of mate choice, it is likely that for any trait, what we prefer and what we get differs quite significantly. This is because our ideals are usually rare or unavailable.”

Of course, it seems like this study was just focused on the outer aspects of our mates. (And yes, that seems like a rather shallow way to rate up your significant other.) So is the reality of love really so dire? For this newlywed, it’s only dire if I can’t find a way to deal with chafing on a clay bikini.

Image: happyhipposnacks

The post Why Our Fantasy Lovers Don’t Exist appeared first on EcoSalon.

Recently, an issue so-powerful-it-could-only-be-emailed was batted around the hallowed halls of EcoSalon. The issue was complex, kind of like asking 24-to-39-year-old women to name their favorite Jonas Brother. Sure, the middle one seems a bit cute, but is it really okay to have an opinion on the matter? And while we’re on the subject, could our own Stiv Wilson be dreamier while reporting on insanely important issues around the globe? Probably not, and let’s get back on target. (Seriously, people!)

Rather, the EcoSalonistas were debating another topic – and that was men having children past 50. As some of us saw it, people will go all monster judgey on women having kids over 40, but no one bats a fake eyelash over men doing the same. NBC’s 30 Rock is gravely exploring this topic as 50-year old Jack Donaghy has a baby with his younger girlfriend. He tells Liz Lemon, “50 is the new 40 for men. 50 is still 60 for women.” To quote the great Tina Fey via the great Liz Lemon, “Whatever, Tony Randall.”

Men often remarry or have children late. Aforementioned actor Tony Randall has his last child at age 78, while Charlie Chaplin had his last at age 73. Yet bring up a woman having children into her 40s and you’re going to hear some hooting and hollering on the matter. Recently, the bloggers over at Babble raised a spectacle on the web when they mocked a group of 30s-to-early-40s actresses who dared to risk aging out of their barren wombs. (The original article has since been taken down, but luckily our friends at Jezebel still have it cached.)

We responded by looking at the issue of fertility drugs for the plus 35 crowd o’ women. But what about the boys and men? Do men worry about older paternity? Or do they fantasize about changing dirty diapers alongside young girlfriends who look like Elizabeth Banks? We polled a few, prodded some others, and found the following.

PROS OF OLDER DADHOOD

“Derek” (names all changed for privacy aka “How many people are going to read this now?”) thinks older fatherhood enables more financial security and a better life for his kids. Stephanie’s husband is 16 years older, and she tells me that he’s very attentive, calmer and nurturing with their kids. And research backs this up, as “older dads are three times more willing and more likely to share in the daily child rearing tasks, including diaper changes, feeding the toddler, and putting the kids to bed.” Steve said he’s not ready to settle down anytime soon (Steve is 42) so it’s either older fatherhood or nothing. Probably nothing. Thank you, Steve.

CONS OF OLDER DADHOOD

Mike thinks older fatherhood means “more cash, less ass.” Quippy, and as Captain Obvious might point out, indicative of the fact that some people believe children cost money and can hinder your ability to sleep with women, sexually or otherwise. David says “having less energy” and “uh, DYING” as a con of being an older father. And Mitchell told me that he doesn’t want to be mistaken for his kid’s granddad.

Image: Courtesy of NBC

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