Sons of Older Dads Have Normal Levels of Intelligence, No Link Found Between Mental Health and Age

Sons born to older fathers and those who were born to younger ones scored almost the same level of intelligence, according to a new study released Wednesday.

Researchers involved in the study confirmed that the negative biological effects a father's age might have on his son may be easily offset by the benefits of being raised by a more educated and more financially stable older father. "Our results are reassuring for older fathers," Liselotte Petersen, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health in an email. "Our finding is that any potentially deleterious effects of older fathers on general cognitive ability, as young adults may be counter-balanced," Petersen, an associate professor at Aarhus University in Denmark, said.

Past studies have also suggested that children of older fathers are more likely to be diagnosed with conditions like autism and schizophrenia. This led the researchers to initially think that children of older fathers may also have much lower intelligence scores, according to News Max Health. A data collected from 169,009 men born after 1955 was used in the research. The purpose was to check if there were any differences in intelligence related to how old the fathers were at the time of the child's birth. It initially appeared that children born to younger fathers or to fathers aged 35 and above scored lower on intelligence tests compared to kids of fathers who were in their mid to late 20s.

When Petersen adjusted the scores to account for the parent's educational attainment levels, the children's birth order, the mother's age and the year the test was conducted, all of the previous differences in findings disappeared. However, children of teenage fathers scored one point lower compared to fathers aged 25 to 29 on average.