How Older Parenthood Will Upend American Society
Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2012 11:18 am
A phrase I heard repeatedly during these conversations was “natural experiment.”? As in, we’re conducting a vast empirical study upon an unthinkably large population: all the babies conceived by older parents, plus those parents, plus their grandparents, who after all have to wait a lot longer than they used to for grandchildren. It was impressed upon me that parents like us, with our aging reproductive systems and avid consumption of fertility treatments, would change the nature of family life. We might even change the course of our evolutionary future. For we are bringing fewer children into the world and producing a generation that will be subtly different—“phenotypically and biochemically different,”? as one study I read put it—from previous generations.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/mag ... an-society
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/mag ... an-society