The ups and downs of being the intelligent son of an older father

BRITAIN: The geeks shall inherit the later birth. That is the conclusion of a study that has found it is not all bad being the son of an older father.

You might be more likely to be autistic, with a higher risk of schizophrenia and even – according to one study – uglier, but the research has also now found a significant upside.

You will probably be intelligent, focused, and display the kind of healthy indifference to fitting in with your peers that has been known to precede lucrative careers in Silicon Valley.

The authors of the study argue that these strong advantages to being sired by an older man help to explain why men keep on reproducing into old age despite the risk of birth defects and mental illness.

But rather than it being a case of the father’s DNA maturing like a fine wine and becoming full of desirable traits to pass on, it could simply be that it takes geeky men a fair bit longer to find a woman willing to have sex with them.

Magdalena Janecka, from King’s College London, said she conducted the research because of an apparent paradox among older fathers.

‘‘There is an association with advanced paternal age and a whole host of negative outcomes. We thought if it was just those negative things, then people would evolve to stop having children at an advanced age.’’

So she and her colleagues decided to look for any potential advantages to having older fathers, despite the fact that their sperm contains more genetic mutations. They had a hunch there may be a link to ‘‘geeky’’ traits, such as intelligence, focused interests and social aloofness.

In a sample of more than 12,000 twins, assessed at the age of 12 and then through their teens, they graded each child on these traits, which they called a ‘‘geek index’’.

They found that those who scored higher on the geek index did better at school. They also found that boys – but not girls – who scored higher were more likely to have older fathers. The older fathers were making geekier sons.

Janecka said the fact that girls appeared unaffected was one of the more mysterious findings. It may be that their scale did not pick up on female geekiness, or it could be related to another trait linked to older fathers but significantly more prevalent in sons than daughters – autism.

Because the study was in twins, Janecka and her colleagues were able to show that a significant proportion of the effect was down to genetics rather than environment.

Janecka believes one of the corollaries of being a geek is you have your geeky children later.

‘‘It’s not delayed fatherhood itself that’s making offspring geekier.

‘‘It’s more likely that these men spend more time in education, focus more on their career, and only when they are a bit older do they realise it is time,’’ Janecka said. – The Times