Graham Seibert, American Renaissance, November 29, 2019

Developed societies are not reproducing themselves. This includes the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and European peoples along with their former white colonies.

Societies must have children. At the same time, children of our peoples will enjoy better prospects if they can live among others like themselves rather than among a mix of other ethnicities. And governments, whoever their citizens may be, have a constant need for new generations of taxpayers and soldiers.

A significant number of older men become available for marriage. Though some are widowed, more are divorced. Whether they sought this freedom or not, many older men find themselves no longer bound by obligations to former wives, children, and grandchildren. They are free to start over.

Identitarians, who are making the strongest case for increasing the fertility of their own groups, should look at older men as natural allies and recruit them to the cause. Older men identify more strongly with the societies into which they were born. They retain traditional values. They have demonstrated by their survival and success that they have “the right stuff” worth passing on to a new generation. They generally have the material resources to support children, and if they do not already have a family, they should start one.

Men should not be encouraged to fritter away the last few decades of life traveling and playing golf. Like younger men who are re-discovering their identities, they should raise strong families to perpetuate their heritage.

Genetics

Genetics lie at the core of most arguments against older fatherhood. Although the bulk of the harmful mutations that appear in every person’s genome are inherited from parents, an older man is more likely to have de novo mutations to his genome — those that appear during his lifetime.

According to Alexey Kondrashov, author of Crumbling Genome, most mutations arise spontaneously, attributable to neither radiation nor chemical interference. It is simply a risk of cell division and replication. Different organisms have different rates of mutation, and in human beings it is approximately 100 de novo mutations per generation. Of this number, 90 will be benign, but 10 are deleterious, and they will be passed to children through the gametes. Beneficial mutations are more rare. Moreover, they are usually associated with complex traits, whereas the detrimental ones are frequently associated with a single gene.

To keep the mutation load on a genome constant, new, harmful of mutations must be eliminated in each generation — dropped from the genome and not passed along. Kondrashov and others note that human natural selection has weakened since the Industrial Revolution. Few die young, and society supports the children born to our worst specimens, so harmful mutations have been accumulating. Modern society also supports and even pampers people with antisocial personalities, whereas before the Industrial Revolution, if you did not have what it took to make a living and attract a mate, you had a good chance of dying childless.

The germline cells in the mother do not multiply after birth; a woman is born with all the eggs she will ever produce. The father’s germline, on the other hand, continues to divide throughout his life. The number of mutations is a function of the number of divisions, which is a function of age. As a rough approximation, a child will receive a number of de novo mutations equal to about half the father’s age, so older fathers pass on more mutations, both benign and harmful. This arithmetic favors younger fathers.

Still, the number of harmful de novo mutations is small compared to the thousand or so inherited mutations. Kondrashov includes a table showing that in the genome of a newborn, de novo mutations make up 10 percent of the worst mutations (which reduce fitness by 10 percent or more), 1 percent of those that reduce fitness by 1 percent or more, and 0.1 percent and .001 percent of the lesser orders of magnitude of deleterious mutations. However old a father may be, he can take comfort in the fact that a significantly greater percentage of his children’s load of deleterious genes will be ones he and his wife inherited rather than new ones he passed along to his children. The increase in the risk of harmful mutations is probably no more than about 25 percent. If the rest of his genome gives children a 25 percent edge — in terms of charm, good looks, intelligence — it can be a fair trade.

Genetic advantages of an older father

An older guy who is available for marriage probably inherited fewer harmful mutations than most. He obviously didn’t inherit anything that would kill him young. Heart disease is about 30 percent heritable. An older guy fit enough to marry probably doesn’t have it. Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia are about 50 percent heritable. The older husband who doesn’t yet show any signs of dementia is less likely to carry those mutations. An older guy on the marriage market is less likely to carry genetic mutations favoring bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or other conditions that show up over the course of adult life.

An older man available for marriage has almost certainly been successful, and therefore above-average in intelligence. Intelligence is about 80 percent heritable. A woman can’t control her own contribution to a child’s intelligence — that’s baked into her genome. But if the older partner she attracts has a 20 IQ point advantage over a younger suitor, she can reasonably expect her children will be correspondingly smarter.

Part of the argument about de novo mutations is that since the rates of childhood mortality fell from about 50 percent at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution to today’s 1 percent, an increasing number of deleterious genes are retained in each successive generation. The older father is one or two generations closer to the Industrial Revolution. In all, though the older father will have somewhat more deleterious mutations, his genome may be superior to that of a young woman’s younger potential partners.

What do we want out of life?

There are other considerations, and each of the following has a particular point of view: the older man, the younger wife, the children, and the state. Finally, society has an interest in perpetuating its culture, values, and traditions and this interest may conflict with those of the individuals and the state.

Will children make an older man happy? Children take time and money away from the pursuit of commercialized happiness. A man whose concept of “happiness” is skiing, surfing, and rock concerts will find that children do not bring happiness.

Personal consumption is a major element in many men’s idea of happiness. They want the latest iGadgets, imported wines, and Swiss watches. Children are expensive, so all but the wealthiest men must make trade-offs, but children can also be a vehicle for conspicuous consumption. Sending them to private schools, exclusive camps, and Ivy League universities burns money almost as well as buying yachts.

It is impossible to measure the value of sex. The man raising children within a marriage can be reasonably sure of getting sex every now and again, but he can be equally sure that he will not get all he wants. The man who equates happiness with frequent sex is better off being a wealthy bachelor, frequenting prostitutes, or using Tinder. An older husband, presumably with a somewhat reduced libido, is likely to be better matched to his wife.

Responsibility for a family gives a man a reason for living. The family provides emotional support. A lifelong partnership gives a man an anchor in life, a sense of stability. Happiness comes with satisfying ones felt obligation to God and/or the church, one’s clan, one’s tribe, and one’s nation. For a patriot, serving his country also brings happiness.

Family financial stability

For the past half-century, the government was a better bet for long-term financial security than children. For one thing, fewer children may have been doing much better than their parents, so they were not able to take care of parents. For another, the government shouldered aside children and private charity and has been in the business of caring for the elderly. Rearing children in the hope they will care for you in your declining years became a losing proposition.

However, there is no way that government can fulfill the promises it has made on health care and pensions. Both government and private pensions are under water. In an atmosphere of 0 percent interest, they can’t earn a high enough return to remain solvent. Although few people talk about it, there may be no alternative to supporting yourself or having your children support you in old age. And just as more people are getting old, there are fewer doctors, and fewer young people with the skills needed to be doctors. Government control of medicine has made it an unattractive field. Government also made medical insurance and medicine itself expensive. The baby boomers are in better shape than the succeeding generations.

Community involvement

Being married provides a man with a niche in society. Other people know how to peg him: married with children. He is automatically included in other groups: the PTA, parents who carpool, babysitting cooperatives, swimming pool parents, etc. These connections keep an older father involved in society. It is easy for a retiree to let go of life bit by bit as his family obligations are satisfied and no new ones appear. A late-life family poses real obligations, and keeps a man connected with society.

Why would an older man start a family?

Having children doesn’t offer material benefit for the older prospective father. If he is already old, he won’t last long enough for children to care for him in his dotage. Having a younger wife will confer some status whether or not she bears him children, but the tax and welfare benefits of children are laughably small. Ultimately, the only motive is to have children for their own sake, and perhaps to follow some higher calling, such as an obligation to ancestors, society, or the church.

Why would a woman have children with an older man?

Western society has been drenched for decades with anti-fertility messages. We are told there are too many people on earth and Westerners, because of our material consumption, damage the planet. Our societies are inherently unfair to women and racial minorities and sexual minorities; we should die out. Add to that the scare stories from women’s magazines about the genetic risks of an older father.

If a woman decides, despite all the opposition, that she wants children, what are the advantages and disadvantages of an older man? The age of the mother is dictated by biology. A woman’s fertility declines quickly after 35. If she is over 40, the couple may well seek medical help, and will probably stop at one child. This is asymmetric: he has three more decades of fertility than she.

In Western society, a woman who has decided to dedicate her fertile years to having children is in a privileged position for choosing mates. This is especially true for intelligent, educated women, because so many of their competitors are busy with careers. Such a woman can choose a partner from more or less her own age up to the limits of male fertility. Why would she choose an older man?

Financial resources

Raising a family takes money. A woman wants a man who can provide for her.

In choosing a younger man, a woman is betting on the future. It’s uncertain how far he will rise. He may burn out — and prove to be an unsuitable provider — or, he may become spectacularly successful, pull away from his wife and family, and become subject to all kinds of temptations. With an older man, you get what you see. The drama has already played out.

Older men tend to have more money. This is especially true of older men looking for younger woman in the marriage market. They would not be looking unless they were successful. It is also something specific to this generation. The baby boomers have been running society for more than 40 years, and have stacked the deck in their own favor. The baby boomers are the richest generation in America’s history, and also in Western Europe. Younger men are not likely to have as much money.

Men already on pension are probably receiving healthy ones. This is on top of the wealth they have accumulated. Gen X and millennial men have had such a hard time scraping together the down payment for a house that they have not benefited from the rise in stocks and real estate. Moreover, they could well be cheated out of social security; there will be nothing but a dry well for them.

Maturity

People tend to become more stable and predictable as they get older. They know more about life and they fall into habits that have proven successful. An older husband is less likely to make erratic decisions, such as changing careers, moving, or developing a newfound taste for drugs, alcohol, or video games.

Arguments and stress are part of every marriage. A mature man will understand his long-term interests better, and favor the long-term benefits of marriage over short-term concerns about one-up-man-ship or self-esteem.

A woman should enter marriage with the expectation that her partner will be there for the 20 years or so it takes to raise children. An older guy can be a good bet. Actuarially, an older suitor in good health is very likely to survive another 20 years, and psychologically, he is more likely to remain the same person.

Fidelity

A woman should not bet on a man who is unlikely to settle down. A man’s character becomes clear by the time he is 50. An older man is less likely to his affections wander, so long as he has a reliable partner.

To return to a previous point, the primary reason an older man would want to marry a younger woman and have children is because he wants children. The best way to succeed at that is to remain in a monogamous marriage. Children in a stable marriage are more likely to succeed, and the man himself is far more likely to have more children with a single loving spouse than he is with whatever paramours he may find by stepping out.

Traditional values

The rate at which society changes has accelerated dramatically. Members of the silent generation grew up attending church, not cursing (very much, anyhow), believing in the Golden rule and that honesty was the best policy, and expecting that we would marry and stay married. Our millennial children think we are hopelessly square. More than that, they slur us with epitaphs such as patriarchy, racist, bigot, homophobe, and whatnot when we utter what was merely common sense when we were younger.

A woman might conclude that the family values with which an older man grew up are a better foundation for a family than the social justice ideas that fill the minds of younger men.

Commitment to children

Convincing a much younger woman to have children is not an easy task. A man who does so has already shown his commitment to children. He probably already has children. A prospective bride can talk with him about what worked and didn’t, and how he will contribute to raising a new family. A man who has never married may not have given the subject much thought, and except for a few who have had the chance to help raising younger siblings, not much experience either.

Experience

Older men who are inclined to marry have probably done it before. They have experience changing diapers and babysitting. They probably know how to wash dishes and keep house. If the guy has kept himself in shape, as a great many have in this day of bicycling and health clubs, he should be up to the task. A man who works to stay in shape can sustain himself pretty well until he reaches his 70s, but at some point age catches up with him. An offsetting benefit is that an older husband is likely to have more time to spend with his wife and family

The wife’s career

The odds are strong that the prospective husband has already reached the peak of his career. If he is a workaholic, it will be evident — and he will probably not want to saddle himself with family responsibilities. If he truly wants children, there is a strong chance he will find time to spend with them. If her husband has more time to spend with children, his younger wife may find her own life easier. It will be easier for her to pursue a career if she wants, or to take music lessons, attend lectures, and do other things strictly for herself.

Predictable problems

An older man will have a different circle of friends and different interests than those of a younger wife. If both man and wife come from the same country and culture, he may expect his wife to socialize with people of his generation. If they come from different countries, as is often the case with modern May-December marriages, one of them will have to adapt to a whole new environment and make a new set of friends.

For an older man, the better option appears to be to rise to the challenge of learning a new language, making new friends, and adapting to new customs in his bride’s country. If it is the woman who is doing the adaptation — moving to a wealthier Western country — there is a chance the new environment will change her perception of her husband. Not a few older men have seen their tender Asian or Eastern European brides go feminist and decide that this marriage was not exactly what they wanted.

Advantages to children of an older father

The children of an older father will see more of their father. Spending time with their father doesn’t contribute to intelligence or the formation of personality, since these things are mostly inherited. However, boys, especially, turn out better if they grow up in intact families and spend a lot of time with their fathers. When mother and father agree that developing a child’s character is important, it seems they can do that. Even in a therapeutic society dedicated to the proposition that every child should be “happy,” parents who emphasize responsibility and hard work seem to be rewarded.

The good of society

Society needs children. A culture needs new generations to share everything that defines culture: customs, religious beliefs, history, dress and so on. The more fathers, the more children, and the more children, the better — at least in the West. If older fathers sire more productive children — intelligence, personality, etc. — their children make more positive contributions.

If we look at society as a gene pool, an older father’s increased load of de novo mutations is more than offset by the likelihood that he is perpetuating superior genetic material

The good of government

A government needs soldiers and taxpayers. Government benefits from children — and pays for their education and services — whoever the father may be. Older fathers do not impose any special costs on government. Their pensions do not go up. An older father is more likely to be solvent and less likely to be on welfare. This benefit is more than enough to offset the greater likelihood that he will die and his family will go on welfare.

Conclusion

We of today’s older generation have more education, resources, and time than any in history. Although we do not have as much of a feeling for our family, tribe, and nation as our ancestors did, we certainly have more than the generations following us. If there is going to be a renewed ethnic identity among our people, we have an important role. Many of us are already committed.

Awareness alone, however, will not solve the problem. We need new generations of people like ourselves. White people need to be raising white babies. Japanese need to be raising Japanese babies, and Chinese, Chinese. There is no danger in encouraging other groups. Given our shrinking numbers, the world has room for all of us.

We reached the zenith of human accomplishment when we had pride in ourselves and our people and believed that what we had was worth passing on. We can continue to do this by spending time with our grandchildren but, when possible, we should start new families.

Resolving to begin again and find a committed partner is not easy but it isn’t impossible. There are traditional women in our own countries, women who have not been swept up in the moral ambiguities of the age, who are looking for reliable partners. There remain countries such as those of Central and Eastern Europe where a majority of women of childbearing age want a traditional family.

Stop lamenting the unfortunate changes that have affected our countries and our society, and create a new generation to perpetuate all of the good that we inherited and cherish.