We already know that as women get older, they have more difficulty getting pregnant. What about men? Does age affect a man’s fertility?

Michael

Dear Michael,

When women reach a certain age (usually sometime between 45 and 55 years) they stop producing eggs and will no longer be fertile. Unlike women, men continue to produce sperm throughout their lifetime. A man may be able to father a child even when he is sixty or seventy years old. Two examples are celebrity Paul McCartney and the late Pierre Elliot Trudeau, former Prime Minister of Canada who fathered a child when he was 72 years old.