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Parental Age Differences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2008

William H. James
William H. James
Affiliation:
The Galton Laboratory, University College London
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Summary

Data are presented on a representative sample of legitimate live-born first infants in England, Scotland and Wales. When they are categorized simultaneously by paternal age, maternal age and social class of the father, it is found that:

(1) Mean parental age difference (father's age — mother's age) is higher in upper class births than in other births.

(2) If a man is younger than his wife, he is probably more likely than otherwise to come from the lower social classes, though this conclusion becomes less secure as the age difference increases in this direction.

(3) Mean parental age difference increases with paternal age and decreases with maternal age.

(4) For a given paternal age, parental age difference increases with a decline in social class, and for a given maternal age, parental age difference increases with a rise in social class.

(5) In general, young parents have smaller mean parental age differences than old parents.

If such mating patterns are characteristic of white North Americans one would infer:

(1) that the risks of neonatal death and stillbirth previously reported in association with aged paternity are the result of biological rather than sociological phenomena, and

(2) that the risks of neonatal death and stillbirth previously reported in association with youthful paternity are the result of sociological rather than biological phenomena.

In general, it seems that mean parental age difference is unlikely to be a fruitful clue to the aetiologies of pathological conditions unless there are simultaneous controls on the age of at least one parent and on social class.

The question is raised whether age disparity between spouses is associated with childlessness as well as with perinatal death and congenital malformations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , January 1974 , pp. 93 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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