The rise of the older dad

This week,  (Al Pacino became a dad for the fourth time with his 29-year-old girlfriend. The news broke nearly a month after Robert De Niro made headlines for welcoming his seventh child at age 79. Previously, Insider said Pacino was on track to be the "oldest dad in Hollywood." Indeed, the club of older dads in Hollywood isn't a small one. Comedian Steve Martin was 67 when he had his daughter in 2012. Richard Gere welcomed his youngest when he was 70. Mick Jagger, Billy Joel, Alec Baldwin, all are men who have had kids later in life, too.)

When stories like these make headlines, people usually respond by being reminded that nature presumably favors the male sex when it comes to human reproduction. The myth goes that men can have children their entire lives. They have no "biological clocks." But after 35, a woman is considered to be "advanced maternal age." And after menopause, when a woman's ovaries stop releasing eggs, pregnancy is highly unlikely.

It's not just Hollywood men who are becoming fathers at an older age. Between 1972 and 2015, the number of men having a child over the age of 40 nearly doubled in America, according to an analysis of 168 million births. Becoming an older father is now more common, sure, but does that really mean men don't have these so-called "biological clocks" in advanced paternal age?