/sci/ - Science & Math

Not a /sci/ lurker. Sorry if this isn't the appropriate thread.
The other day I read about there is a correlation between age of the parents and chance of known genetic defects, such as Down's Syndrome. The age of both parents is important. Pic related is an example.
I'm wondering if there's more to that. Not a scientist so I have trouble expressing my thoughts on it. Getting Down's is sort of yes/no, 1/0 digital question. You either have it or not. The same thing applies to other defects studied. What I'm wondering is: could it be that age not only increases the risk of those defects appearing, but also carries other defects that are more difficult to asses and are more in an analog range? For example, slight increase of getting cancer, slight decrease in fertility, slight decrease in intelligence, etc.
It makes sense to me since I think chromosomes degenerate over age. So passing your genes at 40 might be bad for your child even if he isn't born with a particular syndrome.
I guess this might be difficult to test in humans. But maybe it could be done with controled mice population? One population is bred over 100 generations at a very young age. The other is bred over 100 generations at a very old age. Both 100th populations are tested for several generic health indexes.

Maybe this has already been tested and is known, but I've tried to google it and had no luck. Maybe I'm not using the appropriate terms, or I should look into specific science search engines.

I'm a bit worried because my grandma had my mother at an old age, my mother had me at 39yo and I'm already 31 and still have no kids.

Thanks and sorry for the long post.