Finally, Daddy’s Job Can Pose Birth Defects Just Like Mommy!

Pregnant women know the drill. It seems like everything from working 25 hours a week to standing a lot during pregnancy can somehow impact your unborn (yet, booze has officially been given the thumbs up). Finally though in the wake of every mommy-shaming, yet sometimes beneficial study that’s out there, we now have one just for the fathers — and goodness is it expansive. Apparently having any occupation from office manager to photographer to a computer scientist might put babies at risk for birth defects.

Feel the guilt, fellas.

Medical News Today reports that 1,000 men who fathered a child between 1997 and 2004 were surveyed. Researchers also conducted telephone interviews with 4,000 parents who had kids without congenial abnormalities. The children from the former group had been born with one or more birth defects, some of which resulted in stillbirth and abortion. Researchers then categorized the father’s jobs based on what they happened to be doing three months prior to conception and one month after. The results are considered “obscure” given that professions were identified by group rather than by individual occupations. Nevertheless, the high-risk careers are listed as follows:

…some occupations appeared to be linked to an elevated risk of having a child with a birth defect in three or more categories, including computer scientists, artists, mathematicians, physicists, photographers and photo processors, landscapers and grounds men, hairdressers and make-up artists, food service workers, office and admin support workers, sawmill operatives, individuals working with petrol and gas and those working in chemical industries, as well a crane and digger operators, drivers and printers.

Researchers also noted that there was a difference in birth defect depending on profession. Children of landscaping daddies were more likely to have gut defects. Babies of artists had mouth, eyes and ears, gut, limbs, and heart defects. Photo processor men were likely to father kids who had deficient eye tissue, cataracts, and glaucoma. Driver papas tended to see the same in their kids.

Chemicals or other hazards were not examined, meaning that there’s no tangible habit or tendency to hang over daddy’s head — you know, like there usually is with the ladies.

(photo: glossyplastic/ Shutterstock)