I was catching up with an old buddy of mine when he suddenly announced that he now felt ready to start a family and was going to factor this into his dating life going forward. He wasn’t asking me to have any part of this, you understand; he was simply sharing his upcoming plans. Still, this was quite a lot of information to take in over dim sum, but what really caught me off guard was the fact my friend had recently celebrated his 50th birthday.

There is no denying that said friend is in good shape, with a decent job, and a lot to offer any woman who might be willing to breed with him. He fully acknowledged that it was going to be difficult to keep up with the demands of a newborn as a 50-year-old, and that raising a teenager in your mid-sixties would be challenging, but he was sure that he was up to the task. We spoke lot about the physical, mental, and financial demands of a baby, but it quickly became apparent that the issue of his fertility had not crossed his mind, not even once.

Like so many men, my friend was labouring under the misapprehension that his fertility was evergreen and that he would be able to sire offspring throughout his entire life. The only consideration around age and fertility he had made was that whoever ended up carrying his baby would have to be a lot younger than himself. Oh dear.

We don’t often talk about male fertility and age, do we? Perhaps that is because there is a pervasive belief that men stay fertile for ever and can be popping out healthy spermatozoa in their twilight years if they want to. I mean, Al Pacino became a father for the fourth time at 83, for goodness’s sake!

It is clearly possible for men to reproduce well into old age. The metaphorical “biological clock” is only ever invoked for........

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