Like dorky father, like dorky son.
That was essentially the conclusion after a team of researchers surveyed nearly 8,000 British twins to see how focused and socially aloof they were as well as measure their non-verbal IQs.
After using those metrics to create a “geek index,” the researchers went back and examined the ages of the men who had fathered the children. What they discovered was the children who were born to older dads scored higher on the geek index. This was determined by looking at their progress in school, their social skills (or lack thereof) and ability to focus, among other details. The older the father, the greater the geek.
On the index, kids who were born to a dad over the age of 50 average a 47. For kids with dads age 35 to 44 that number drops to 41 and for children with fathers aged 25 or younger it’s 39.6.
“Certain men who delay fatherhood tend to be better educated and have better jobs and a higher geek index and they pass those genetics on to their offspring,” researcher Magdalena Janecka told The Guardian. “It causes them to delay fatherhood, but other factors might contribute too.”
While the researchers point out there’s also a strong link between advanced parental age and conditions like autism, their findings are overwhelmingly positive for older dads and their sons.
“A cluster of behavioral and cognitive traits identified as characteristic of ‘geeks’ was strongly predictive of academic, and thus likely also career success,” their conclusion states. ”We could show that paternal age is more strongly associated with such combination of traits than any of these traits alone, suggesting a special relationship between APA and educational attainment.”
May we add, Glavin!
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