Building a family at advanced parental age: a systematic review on the risks and opportunities for parents and their offspring.

Study Question: What is the existing empirical literature on the psychosocial health and wellbeing of the parents and offspring born at an advanced parental age (APA), defined as 40 years onwards?

Summary Answer: Although the studies show discrepancies in defining who is an APA parent and an imbalance in the empirical evidence for offspring, mothers, and fathers, there is a drive towards finding psychotic disorders and (neuro-)developmental disorders among the offspring; overall, the observed advantages and disadvantages are difficult to compare.

What Is Known Already: In many societies, children are born to parents at advanced ages and there is rising attention in the literature towards the consequences of this trend.

Study Design Size Duration: The systematic search was conducted in six electronic databases (PubMed including Medline, Embase, Scopus, PsycInfo, CINAHL, and SocINDEX) and was limited to papers published between 2000 and 2021 and to English-language articles.