Old men chasing young women: A good thing

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It turns out that older men chasing younger women contributes to human longevity and the survival of the species, according to new findings by researchers at Stanford and the University of California-Santa Barbara.

Evolutionary theory says that individuals should die of old age when their reproductive lives are complete, generally by age 55 in humans, according to demographer Cedric Puleston, a doctoral candidate in biological sciences at Stanford. But the fatherhood of a small number of older men is enough to postpone the date with death because natural selection fights life-shortening mutations until the species is finished reproducing.

“Rod Stewart and David Letterman having babies in their 50s and 60s provide no benefit for their personal survival, but the pattern [of reproducing at a later age] has an effect on the population as a whole,” Puleston said. “It’s advantageous to the species if these people stick around. By increasing the survival of men you have a spillover effect on women because men pass their genes to children of both sexes.”

“Why Men Matter: Mating Patterns Drive Evolution of Human Lifespan,” was published Aug. 29 in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE. Shripad Tuljapurkar, the Morrison Professor of Population Studies at Stanford; Puleston; and Michael Gurven, an assistant professor of anthropology at UCSB, co-authored the study in an effort to understand why humans don’t die when female reproduction ends.

Human ability to scale the so-called “wall of death”—surviving beyond the reproductive years—has been a center of scientific controversy for more than 50 years, Puleston said. “The central question is: Why should a species that stops reproducing by some age stick around afterward?” he said. “Evolutionary theory predicts that, over time, harmful mutations that decrease survival will arise in the population and will remain invisible to natural selection after reproduction ends.” However, in hunter-gatherer societies, which likely represent early human demographic conditions and mating patterns, one-third of people live beyond 55 years, past the reproductive lifespan for women. Furthermore, life expectancy in today’s industrialized countries is 75 to 85 years, with mortality increasing gradually, not abruptly, following female menopause.

Grandmother hypothesis

In 1966, William Hamilton, a British evolutionary biologist, worked out the mathematics describing the “wall of death.” Since then, the most popular explanation for why humans don’t die by age 55 has been termed the “grandmother hypothesis,” which suggests that women enhance the survival of their children and grandchildren by living long enough to care for them and “increasing the success of their genes,” Puleston said. However, Hamilton’s work has been difficult to express as a mathematical and genetic argument explaining why people live into old age.

Unlike previous research on human reproduction, this study—for the first time—includes data on males, a tweak that allowed the researchers to begin answering the “wall of death” question by matching it to human mortality patterns. According to Puleston, earlier studies looked only at women, because scientists can reproduce good datasets for humans entirely based on information related to female fertility and survival rates.

“Men’s fertility is contingent on women’s fertility—you have to figure out how they match up. We care about reproduction because that is a currency by which force of selection is counted. If we have not accounted for the entire pattern of reproduction, we may be missing something that’s important to evolution.”

Men and longevity

In the paper, the researchers analyzed “a general two-sex model to show that selection favors survival for as long as men reproduce.” The scientists presented a “range of data showing that males much older than 50 years have substantial realized fertility through matings with younger females, a pattern that was likely typical among early humans.” As a result, Puleston said, older male fertility helps to select against damaging cell mutations in humans who have passed the age of female menopause, consequently eliminating the “wall of death.”

“Our analysis shows that old-age male fertility allows evolution to breach Hamilton’s wall of death and predicts a gradual rise in mortality after the age of female menopause without relying on ‘grandmother’ effects or economic optimality,” the researchers say in the paper.

The scientists compiled longevity and fertility data from two hunter-gatherer groups, the Dobe !Kung of the Kalahari and the Ache of Paraguay, one of the most isolated populations in the world. They also looked at the forager-farmer Yanomamo of Brazil and Venezuela, and the Tsimane, an indigenous group in Bolivia. “They’re living a lifestyle that our ancestors lived and their fertility patterns are probably most consistent with our ancestors,” Puleston said about the four groups. The study also looked at several farming villages in Gambia and, for comparison, a group of modern Canadians.

In the less developed, traditional societies, males were as much as 5-to-15 years older than their female partners. In the United States and Europe, the age spread was about two years. “It’s a universal pattern that in typical marriages men are older than women,” Puleston said. “The age gaps vary by culture, but in every group we looked at men start [being reproductive] later. At the end of reproduction, male fertility rates taper off gradually, as opposed to the fairly sharp decline in female fertility by menopause.”

Despite small differences based on marriage traditions, all women and most men in the six groups stopped having children by their 50s, the researchers found. But some men, particularly high-status males, continued to reproduce into their 70s. The paper noted that the age gap is most pronounced in societies that favor polygyny, where a man takes several wives, and in gerontocracies, where older men monopolize access to reproductive women. The authors also cite genetic and anthropological evidence that early humans were probably polygynous as well.

Older male fertility also exists in societies supporting serial monogamy, because men are more likely to remarry than women. “For these reasons, we argue that realized male fertility was substantial at ages well past female menopause for much of human history and the result is reflected in the mortality patterns of modern populations,” the authors say. “We conclude that deleterious mutations acting after the age of female menopause are selected against … solely as a result of the matings between older males and younger females.”

According to Puleston, the “grandmother hypothesis” may be true, but the real pattern of male fertility extends beyond this explanation. “The key question is: Does the population have a greater growth rate if men are reproducing at a later age? The answer is ‘yes.’ The age of last reproduction gets pushed into the 60s and 70s if you add men to the analysis. Hamilton’s approach was right, but in a species where males and females have different reproductive patterns, you need a two-sex model. You can’t correctly estimate the force of selection if you leave men out of the picture. As a man myself, it’s gratifying to know that men do matter.”

Grants from the U.S. National Institute on Aging supported this study.


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1,805 thoughts on “Old men chasing young women: A good thing”

  1. I just turned 50. I don’t feel like 50, but it is what it is, I’m not intereated in dating 20 year olds. Just don;t have enough in common, and yeah, 20 year olds woukd be dating me for my money.

    But I do like women in their 30s. They’re mature enough to know whats going on, but not bitter at the world, yet.

    and thats the problem with women 40 and over. Most are bitter. And most talk like my grandma!

    So yeah, part of the attraction for younger women is that of reproduction. But here’s another one: women matures faster than guys. So for me, dating a woman 10-15 years younger is like dating someone closer to my maturity level.

  3. You old geezers with saggy balls and greasy gray hair. Chicks that dig you have either:
    A) VERY low esteem
    B) Need $
    C) Don’t care about having good sex
    D) Are very good actresses
    E) All of the above

    The answer is ‘D’. And here’s some advice. Stop having delusions of grandeur and thinking you got some game. Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees,Michael Myers, and Chewbaca all have women lined up to sleep with them, too, for money. Women will sleep with anything if they think there’s a dollar bill attached to it. They will even pretend to enjoy the sex even though they probably wanna puke.

    I’ve never been with one of you and never will. You’re just too hard to look at, let alone imagine sleeping with. And this article? Keep dreaming, geezers.

  4. Sorry, I told me daughter that she is to marry someone close to her own age not an old man who lived his life and has alot of baggage. Even I was smart enough to not take on another man’s (Older Man’s problems).

    • As well as Ive learned to keep my options open and entertain those men I have interest in while Im dating someone.

      Why?

      It donesnt pay to be faithful anymore. Most women lose out.

  6. i am a beautyful lady of 36. having 3 kids( 9, 7 & 5). my husband is 2 years younger than me. he is a marketing profetional. last 10 years ago i married. because i am a housewife so i spend alone with out my husband.i love sex but my husband spend almost 25 days outside from home. last 2years i listen of my marriage my husband took another wife in another place. so he spend lot of time with my new sister in my absence. i live in a rented house. my family expence
    bear by my husband. but it not enough for me and my family. so i finally i want to do myself. my house owener is a man of 65. having 2 wives. one is dead last year another is ill and take bedrest. but that old man of 65 is maintaining himself 45. in my probleme he says i have no child for my family. so he said you have give me a child i will aggry. so from last 2 years i made sexual realation atlist 2 in a day and pragant . last year i born a boy child of that old man. now my last husb and divorce me. now the old man is my new husband. now i feel my new husband(65) more powerful than last one(34). now 36 age i fell i am 55 . but my husband(65) seems 45. now i am praganate of 7 months of my sweet husband(65) and awaiting for another new coming baby. so i fell old man is very romantic in sexplay with experience.

    • i gues i am interested on you so please my dearest mail me with your full datails and a full photo of yours and contact number for easy communication

      thank i wait to hear from you soonest

      YOURS TRUELLY IN LOVE SAMUEL BROWN

  8. Old dads should give silent treatment to their own daughters for not showing interest in older men, instead of giving silent treatment to other people’s daughters. They should encourage their young daughters to go with older men, especially older men with kids. They should also tell their young daughters that they are silly for showing interest in young men.

    • It’s obvious, Soccer Tips, that you are NOT a parent – or not a decent one – and are just posting with your selfish dick.

      Men should not encourage their daughters to date some delusional old fart that has GROWN OLD and wishes to use some new, fresh person’s body parts!

      Listen up, you sick old pervs, we don’t care if you think young girls are attractive – your old rotten parts DON’T MATCH OURS.

      Try to get some with people LIKE YOURSELF.

      That’s what normal girls do! They look for people fairly close to their age!

      The messed up girls, the ones that have been abused and the ones that want to sell their body for money, those girls are will to be a whore with an old guy, and they will approach you!

      Leave the NORMAL girls alone, they don’t want you old raisins!

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  13. i am a 48 year old woman and divc.and i was marryed for years.why would (A) older man bragg,about committing asdultery? some might would wonder if that makes him feel like a really big man.i wonder,but not long.

    • Ask the man that committed adultery how much is divorce will cost him as well as he may not find his Trophy.

      Lots of men have “Delusions of Granduer” and most middle aged Divorcees many times don’t find the Trophy they want. They go from woman to woman every 2-6 months

  14. This just goes to show you that we’re much more like animals than many people would like to believe. Much of what we do is unconsciously motivated by primal urges and our higher brain functions think of creative ways to act on these urges. I’ll bet some old bankruptcy lawyers in Cleveland Ohio are having some fun with younger ladies too :)

  15. Amy, you need to stop your lib-lady rantings and get ready for your NOW meeting. This article is not attempting to reach any moral conclusions. Rather, it simply explains new dimensions in the knowlege of human reproduction. I’m sorry that your husband ran off with a younger woman, or your daughter married an older man, but that does not alter the facts related to human reproductive dynamics. They are not moral judgements, simply facts and conclusions based upon sound, logical reasoning – nothing more, nothing less. They are not a primer for survival through male mid-life crisis. Take a deep breath – your fear-based predispositions are showiing.

  16. Wow. obviously if men continue “mating” with younger/fertile women the population will have a “greater growth rate”, becasue they have been mating with more women over a longer period of time. can we say “No S#!t” together? I’m intrigued as to why this article trys to serve as some sort of justification for old men chasing young women. Yes, men with lots of money “high status” have ‘always’ been able to get whatever they want. this dose not need to serve as a guide for the rest of society. This is obviously written by a man. However, if the two are consenting adults, I do believe age shouldn’t matter (That’s “not science/ only oppinon”, BUT I’m NOT trying to justify it with Science).

    • say that again,what goes on in the bedroom is between THE TWO ADULTS.and yes i do like science,but what does that have to do with it.society,some men date women 48 years and older like myself because,they know there will be NO seeds planted,everything has stopped.NO,MAYBBS! we can’t HAVE ANY! AND,SCIENCE,YES IT VERY VERY TRUE,LOVE MAKING IS BETTER NOW!And being a 48 year old women,WHAT is A OLDER MAN FOR ME?????

  19. Have you seen the research that says that women who reproduce after age 45 will live much longer than those who cannot?

    Women who have long telomeres can live a long healthy life – and pass this benefit onto their offspring.

    Repoductive years will be lengthened in successive generations.

    If women do not mate in their later repoductive years (because the men are mating with young women) this benefit is missed.

    Both the eggs of women and the sperm of men deteriorates with age.

    It’s true that nature has set us men up to be expendable. Women are kept alive and kicking long after menopause – up to fifty or sixty years.

    Women get released from baby-making duties and kept alive (even longer than men.)

    The sperm of young men is the most valuable – without as much deterioration as men who are 35 and over. Older men are kept alive in case of catastrophe – where all the young men are away or dead.

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