IT'S UP IN THE HEIR

One of the great trump cards that men have held over women has been freedom from the biological clock. With our boundless fertility, we can father children well past our youthful prime, as long as there are plenty of Viagra prescriptions, young women with father issues and clever divorce lawyers.

Or so we thought. Medical research, that gloomy nerd who never fails to spoil the party, recently came out with a study saying that children fathered by men older than 40 are far more likely to have autism or other birth defects than children fathered by men in their 20s and 30s. Our sperm, it seems, is not immune from the ravages of age. Over time, it goes from swimming with the vigor and urgency of a salmon headed upstream to sluggishly drifting about like a manatee on heroin. And when it does reach the egg, it just might be as battered and damaged as something tossed about by really pissed off baggage handlers at LaGuardia International.

At 44, I find this information dispiriting for two reasons. First, it denies men their usual fallback position when things go wrong: blame the woman. "What?! Junior is showing no aptitude for sports at 3 months?! It must be because of all that Vogue you read when you were pregnant!" Or maybe "What?! Junior is playing with Barbie dolls?! It must be because of all that Britney music you listened to when you were pregnant!" The most assiduous practitioner of this was Henry VIII; in his quest for a suitable male heir, he ditched or beheaded four of his six wives, and he probably punished the other two by reading them his poetry.

Second, it presents a damned-if-I-do-damned-if-I-don't problem. A man's 20s and 30s might be the best time to ensure fathering healthy children, but his 20s and 30s are also the decades when he's most likely to spend the children's milk money on booze and strippers. So the kids might not be autistic, but they are far more likely to produce books titled My Dad, the Loser. Not exactly the legacy to be proud of. On the other hand, a man in his 40s has at last built up the wisdom and emotional patience to be a good, supportive father (by that I mean his doctor has told him to lay off the booze and he's blacklisted at all the local strip bars), but his children might wind up living in a world all their own that has no use for his wisdom and emotional patience.

So what's a guy to do?

Well, medical science can giveth as it taketh away and it can give us help with eugenics. That's right people, I'm talking genetic engineering here. I'm talking getting into the DNA and making sure that Junior has the mind of an Einstein and the hitting ability of Lawrence Taylor coming in unblocked off the edge. I'm talking about taking any chance out of the miracle of conception, and making sure that Junior is destined to make enough money so that I can borrow from him in perpetuity (the strip clubs, y'know).

But there is risk here, too. Suppose something gets lost in translation when I am laying out what I want in a kid. Suppose I say, "I want him to be as fast as a cheetah!" and it turns out that Junior leaves home at an early age to pursue his passion for chasing down antelopes on the African savanna. Or suppose that Junior becomes too perfect, views me as fatally flawed and packs me off on an ice floe in the Bering Sea. That would be a crappy end to an Alaskan cruise. Or suppose his impossibly good looks means that every time I try to date a woman 30 years younger than me, she rushes past me toward his embrace. Even when he is only 12. Then again, that could work to my advantage. Adonis-like looks could mean droves of hot chicks clamoring for his affections, and I could pick up what falls by the wayside. Of course, there is something very unseemly about a father pleading with his son "C'mon, son, c'mon! Just let me have what falls on the floor! Just what falls on the floor, if you know what I mean!"

Or I could just hope for the best and do the best I can for any kid I might one day have. I'll see if I can get my DNA altered to allow that.