From the year she has her first kiss to the point when she decides she’s too old for bikinis, last week’s Femail looked at the ages that define a woman’s life.
But how do a woman’s landmarks compare to those of a man? This week, we reveal the intriguing answer
11 Boys start turning into men at this age, up to two years younger than their father’s generation reached puberty, according to scientists at Harvard University, possibly due to differences in diet and hormone-disrupting chemicals in the environment. On average, girls start the change to womanhood between nine and 14.
12 Boys are now seen to be turning into men at age 11, two years earlier than their father’s generation. Girls, meanwhile, start the change into womanhood between nine and 14
13 By the time they are a teenager, it is becoming more obvious that boys are maturing. At this age, a boy may be increasing in height by as much as 2¾ in to 3 in a year. By the end of this year, a boy’s voice will have broken and sound deeper as his voice box gets larger and his vocal cords grow thicker.
14 It’s now that ‘bum fluff’ is most likely to be appearing on a boy’s face. By the end of this year, the average teenager will need to start shaving — a regular task that will eventually take up five months of his life.
15 Most boys lose their virginity just before the age of consent — a few months ahead of girls — though studies have found that 31 per cent of males will have had sex earlier.
16 If a boy is gay, this is also the age when he is most likely to ‘come out’, according to a study of 471 young men in the journal Family Relations.
18 It’s at this age when a young man’s levels of the sex hormone testosterone, which governs sex drive, will finally peak before experiencing a slight drop in his 20s and a 2 per cent fall every year after the age of 30.
21 By now, the average male graduate will have a full-time job — and be earning £3 an hour more than a woman the same age with the same qualifications. Over the course of his career, the typical male office worker will have six jobs, one work romance, 125 days off sick and eight pay rises.
At 21, the average male graduate will have a full-time job – and be earning more than £3 an hour more than his female counterparts (stock image)
22 Traditionally, a woman has been seen to be more affected by her biological clock. But research has found that when a man is only 22, the speed with which sperm move through the female reproductive tract starts slowing down by 0.7 per cent a year from their average speed of 5mm a second. This ‘motility’ is a key measure of male fertility.
25 While 23 may be the average age that a young man passes his driving test — 48 per cent of boy racers pass first time compared to 44 per cent of women — he won’t be able to afford to buy his own car for another two years, often due to rising insurance rates and student debt.
29 Either as a single man or one in a more established relationship, thanks to a high libido and lots of opportunity, this is the phase of a life when the average man enjoys the most sex.
30 Until now, keeping a boyish figure may not have taken much work for most 20-something males. But by the age of 30, a beer belly is on its way for most unless they start the fight-back and work to keep up their muscle mass and metabolism.
32 Most grooms will walk down the aisle at 32. And contrary to the cliché that a man is less keen to commit than a woman, research shows that it is a man who will have declared his love first. Men take an average of 88 days to make the all-important declaration, while women wait 134 days to say those special three words first. The average age when a man becomes a father is 32½ years old, compared to 30 for a woman, according to the Office for National Statistics.
35 It seems men don’t enjoy their golden years for long. For men, 35 is the average age when they start to worry about losing their crowing glory, as hereditary hair loss affects 40 per cent of men.
37 This is the age when a man feels his most content, compared to the age of 34 for a woman. He is not only likely to be fit and well, but will have achieved three top milestones — getting married, having a child and buying a home. But it’s the simple things that out a smile on his face, including eating his favourite lunch, buying clothes and gadgets, and hanging out with the lads.
38 If a man has already become a father, this is the average age when he will decide to have the snip, reports the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Most dads will have had two children before having a vasectomy.
39 If they still have plenty to work with, this is when men feel they get their hair right — after trying out just five hairstyles compared to a woman’s 32 over a lifetime.
40 Life may begin at 40, but it’s also when a man’s chance of fathering a healthy baby starts to drop significantly. A study by the Columbia University in New York found that the risk of miscarriage to expectant mothers is 60 per cent higher when their partner is aged 40 or over compared to a man who is 25 to 29 years old. This applies whatever the woman’s age.
41 It seems that men are starting to understand how women feel when they hit middle-age — because males start to feel invisible to the opposite sex at just 41, compared to a decade older for a woman.
At this age, they also suffer other symptoms of mid-life crisis, including worrying about their double chins, thinning hair and bad teeth.
And women are twice as likely as men to feel that they were the ‘grown-up’ ones in their relationships. Maybe for this reason, 43 is also the average age of a man’s first divorce. The most common age for a woman to sign a decree nisi is 40.
49 Men are most likely to cheat on the cusp of a new decade, with 49 being the peak danger point. Other risk factors include his height. If a man is more than 5 ft 10 in, he is more likely to stray, because other women will find him more attractive than his shorter counterparts.
Compared to men, women are more likely to have got the need to play away out of their system before marriage and children — at the age of 28.
50 A man’s earning power is at it peak — he will be raking in an average £15.54 an hour. However, his libido may be falling. The average Viagra user is 50 and has at least one health problem, such as high blood pressure or raised cholesterol.
53 No one apparently told George Clooney, but 53 is the age when women think a man stops looking sexy.
64 After a lifetime of work, 64 years and seven months is the most common age for a man to retire.
70 Love-MAKING really does get better with age, with a growing number of 70-year-old men reporting they have fulfilling sex lives. Nearly seven out of ten men are still having sex, according to the British Medical Journal.
78 The good news is that a man can expect to live longer than at any time in history, according to the latest Office for National Statistics figures, which says the average male can expect to reach at least this age.
90 And it seems the fun doesn’t stop there. Some 80 per cent of sexually active men are satisfied with their sex lives up until their tenth decade, according to a study by Age UK and the University of Manchester. According to Dr David Lee, of Manchester University, who led the research: ‘Sex doesn’t stop or go away… it just changes.’
Source: Daily Mail