” Hurry up ! » This small voice, Vincent (some of those interviewed requested anonymity), 34, a professor in the Var, has heard it more and more distinctly in recent years. An intimate alarm first. “I feel an urgency because I deeply aspire to be a dad, I have that in my heart”explains this recent bachelor. “At 25-30 years old, I had a lot of anxieties and the fear of passing them on. Now I’m more ready.”, he believes. To this personal timing are added a few catalysts: childhood friends who became fathers, the innuendoes of his – “when you are a man, Vincent” –, confrontation with the younger generation when resuming studies, or incipient baldness. Moreover, his attraction to much older women “who are not in the same periods of life” does not help. “I realize that time is running out”drop this “hypochondriac”who monitors her lifestyle but did not take a fertility test. “I have a little anxiety about being sterile. »
Social injunction, psychological process, physical ultimatum, the biological clock was until now the tribute of women, their “internal meals”, according to comedian Guillermo Guiz in his sketch The Surprised Child. In the line of fire: the decline in fertility and the ax of menopause. The men themselves seemed preserved from these considerations. But the delay in the age of the first child, the problems of infertility shared by 50% in the couple and the fall of half of the quantity of gametes in the sperm in half a century led them to wonder. The fertile man at any age: myth or reality?
“It is a received idea, conveyed by the mediatized examples of late paternity”, slice Geoffroy Robin, gynecologist and andrologist at the center for medical assistance in procreation (AMP) of Lille. It reminds us that men are subject to andropause, a “gradual decline in testosterone”who becomes “significant from the age of 50”. However, this has an impact on the conception time and the risk of miscarriage, “regardless of the woman’s age, but with an increased risk if she is over 40”.
Risks to the fetus
In 2001, a study by Elise de La Rochebrochard, from the National Institute of Health and Medical Research, stated: “For men, fertility peaks at 30-34 years old, then it slowly declines. At 55-59 years old, men have twice as low fertility. » The researcher also reported for fathers over the age of 40 “an increased risk of genetic diseases” of their offspring which, for certain pathologies, is “of the same magnitude as the risk of trisomy 21 observed in children whose mother is between 35 and 39 years old”. Doctor Robin sees patients over 55 convinced that the couple’s infertility comes from their partner, “since they have already had children from a previous union”. He pleads for “fair and collective information” of the general public. “Don’t worry!tempers Florence Boitrelle, president of the French-speaking Andrology Society (SALF). The risks remain minimal in absolute value. These are mostly men over the age of 60-70. »
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