At age 83, Al Pacino is about to have a baby with his 29-year-old girlfriend. Robert DeNiro, 79, recently welcomed his seventh child with a younger partner, too.
The actors are just two recent examples of older male celebrities having children with younger partners. And while those on the internet are debating the ethics of conceiving a child so late in life, their ages and age gaps with their partners also represent a frank truth that has long been felt by many: Women face a constantly ticking biological clock that impacts many facets of their lives, and men, simply, do not.
Pacino and DeNiro’s recent headline-making announcements might sting for some, making this inequity harder to ignore, experts say.
“For women (who wish to become moms), there’s that pressure to know sooner what they want (in life), compared to men who have longer to explore themselves or figure out what it is they want,” says Meghan Gillen, a professor of psychology at Penn State Abington.
The privilege of not racing against a biological clock
Not all people who identify as female can or want to get pregnant. But for those who do, it can often feel like a race against the clock, as well as a balancing act with wanting to achieve career successes and figure out what they want in life before being responsible for a child.
“There’s more pressure on women nowadays to have it all,” Gillen says. “Not only is there pressure for women to have children, have a family, but also have a career. And the time in life where women may be striving in their career happens to coincide with a time in their life when they may also be wanting to have children. So if women are focusing on their career, or maybe they haven’t found the right partner yet, that can feel very frustrating.”
A woman’s fertility begins to decrease around age 32 and declines more rapidly after age 37, according to a study by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ Committee on Gynecologic Practice. By age 45, 87% of women are infertile, per a study from the University of Colorado at Denver School of Medicine.
While studies show that men’s fertility decreases with age too, medical experts say their decline is slower, especially because sperm counts regenerate, while egg counts are finite. And even when they do decide to have children, they often aren’t making the same career, social and time sacrifices that their partners are.
The burden of having to make big life decisions early on − and later, alone
Though no parent is guaranteed a long life, a person having a child in their 70s or 80s presumably won’t live much longer than the child’s 20s, leaving the surviving parent alone.
Dr. Jane Frederick, a reproductive endocrinology and infertility expert and medical director of HRC Fertility, urges couples with large age gaps to have the hard conversations before trying to conceive.
“It’s going to be difficult for (the father) to teach a teenager how to drive a car when he’s in his 90s,” Frederick says. “I’m assuming that every couple that has an age discrepancy like that has already talked about the what ifs. … Who’s to say who’s a better dad: someone in their 20s, or somebody in their 80s who’s gone through life and has more (experience) and money to give to their child?”
Remember, there’s a whole list of different ways families can look, Melissa Dowd, a licensed marriage and family therapist with virtual mental health platform PlushCare, previously told USA TODAY.
Sarah Wright, a licensed independent clinical social worker, previously explained: “The social science research still shows pretty clearly that family stability is more important than the family structure.”
David Foster, 73, and wife Katharine McPhee, 39, have said as much about their relationship. McPhee gave birth to their first child together in 2021. Foster also has five adult children.
“We have haters on social media, and there’s not a person around that’s not going to make some comment about the age difference,” Foster previously told USA TODAY of their marriage. “But there are so many things that can bring a marriage down: It can be financial, it can be children, it can be geography, it can be infidelity. And one of them is age difference, but that’s our only problem. Everything else is in line, so it’s not going to bring us down.”
The good news: medical advancements such as egg freezing and IVF procedures are making it easier for women in their late 30s and 40s to get pregnant.
“Don’t give up because (you) see how easy it is to be a dad when you’re older and how difficult it is for women to be a mom when you’re older,” Frederick says.
Contributing: Sara M. Moniuszko, Patrick Ryan
More on celebrity babies, pregnancy and age gaps
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