Fathers' behavior and birth defects

This article makes a lot of important points about the role of fathers' behavior -- drinking, smoking, etc -- in the health of their offspring:

The fathers werent supposed to matter. But in the mid-1960s, pharmacologist Gladys Friedler was making all sorts of strange findings. She discovered that when she gave morphine to female rats, it altered the development of their future offspring rat pups that hadnt even been conceived yet. Whats more, even these rats grandchildren seemed to have problems. In an effort to understand the unexpected result, she made a fateful decision: She would see what happened when she put male rodents on the opiate. So she shot up the rat daddies with morphine, waited a few days, and then mated them with healthy, drug-free females. Their pups, to Friedlers utter shock, were profoundly abnormal. They were underweight and chronic late bloomers, missing all their developmental landmarks. It made no sense, she recalls today. I didnt understand it.

For the next several decades, Friedler tried to understand this finding, ultimately assembling a strong case that morphine, alcohol and other substances could prompt male rodents to father defective offspring. There was only one problem: No one believed her. Colleagues questioned her results her former adviser urged her to abandon the research and she struggled to find funding and get her results published. It didnt occur to me that youre not supposed to look at fathers roles in birth defects, Friedler says. I initially was not aware of the resistance. I was one of the people who was actually nave enough to work in this field.

Over the last half-century, as scientists learned more and more about how women could safeguard their developing fetuses skip the vodka, take your folate few researchers even considered the possibility that men played a role in prenatal health. It would turn out to be a scientific oversight of significant proportions. A critical mass of research now demonstrates that environmental exposures from paints to pesticides can cause men to father children with all sorts of abnormalities. Drinking booze, smoking cigarettes, taking prescription medications and even just not eating a balanced diet can influence the health of mens future kids. In the several decades since Friedler started her work, the idea that chemicals in a mans environment can influence the health of his future children has, she says, moved from lunatic fringe to cutting edge.

So why dont we ever hear about it?

... Despite the accumulating findings, the idea that fathers can somehow contribute to birth defects has gained little traction in the public sphere. Cigarette packs have no warnings about the association between male smokers and birth defects. A woman who drinks while shes pregnant can be prosecuted, but most men have no idea that drinking in the months before conception is risky.

Why would we not look at the paternal side of the equation? To me thats really a social and political puzzle, says Cynthia R. Daniels, a political scientist at Rutgers who studies gender and reproductive politics. We seem to politically be in a place where we overprotect and over-warn women, but where men and fathers remain almost completely invisible. Youre not likely anytime soon to see signs in bars that say, Men who drink should not reproduce.

This all aligns with things I've heard and read before, especially the final paragraph of the article:

Theres a generational opening, too, Daniels says. In recent years, shes noticed a change in the reaction male college students have to learning about the risks they face. Ive found, especially among young men, a sense of outrage and alarm, Daniels reports. They say, How could this be? How could it be that no one has ever suggested to me that alcohol might have an impact on my ability to have healthy children? Theyre angry that they dont know about this.

Men who are closer to my own age are shockingly more likely to understand, appreciate, or ask me for my own feminist critiques, too. And no, I don't think it's just because they're trying to sleep with me. There are obviously exceptions to this trend, but it's quite striking.