New Delhi, June 2 -- Conversations around pregnancy and child health are always focused mainly on mothers. Maternal nutrition, antenatal care, and pregnancy monitoring are the centre of reproductive healthcare. Meanwhile, fathers stayed mostly outside the biological conversation. In general, people consider a father's role only after birth. But newer scientific research is challenging that old understanding and is now looking at how a father's age, lifestyle, stress levels, smoking habits, and even environmental exposures before conception may influence a child's health, and the result is surprising.

The biological clock and advanced paternal age

The study in the Translational Psychiatry journal claims that children born to fathers abov...