According to New York Times coverage of a study in Nature, older men are more likely than young men to father a child who develops autism or schizophrenia. This is due to random mutations that become more numerous with age. The age of mothers had no bearing on the risk for these disorders, the study found.
Experts said that the finding was not a reason to forgo fatherhood later in life. The overall risk to a man in his 40s or older is in the range of 2%, at most, and there are other contributing biological factors that are entirely unknown.
