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Men, if you don't plan to enter the world of fatherhood before age 20, you might want to consider freezing your sperm. 

New research has claimed that 40-year-old fathers are two-and-half times more likely to pass on damaging mutations than 20-year-olds. 

The study is published in the journal Nature. 

Researchers examined 78 families with children who  were either on the autistic spectrum or had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and compared them to data from hundreds more families with no link to either condition.

According to the researchers, fathers pass down the majority of the faulty genes linked to conditions such as autism and schizophrenia.

Researchers said a 20-year-old father transmitted on average 25 mutations to his child, while 40-year-old fathers, the oldest in the study, transmitted around 65. The mother transmitted around 15, regardless of her age.

Nearly all genetic mutations could be a result of the father's age and researchers found that age of the mothers did not matter. 

Older mothers are known to increase their child's risk of more serious chromosome abnormalities, which make them more likely to miscarry or have children with Down's syndrome.

"Strikingly, this study found that a father's age at the time a child is conceived explains nearly all of the population diversity in new hereditary mutations found in the offspring," said study lead author Kari Stefansson, M.D., Dr. Med., CEO of deCODE Genetics.  "With the results here, it is now clear that demographic transitions that affect the age at which males reproduce can have a considerable impact on the rate of certain diseases linked to new mutation."

This is the first large study to link late fatherhood to autism. 

Researchers said men should have kids as soon as they can as long as they're in a position to.