One in four babies has foreign-born father When teenagers were discounted, 90 per cent of babies born in 2011 had fathers who were either married to or in a long term cohabiting relationship with their mother. Even among under 20s almost half of new fathers were in this category. Like women, men are also leaving it later in life to have children. The average of age of a father in England and Wales is now 32.6 years - up from just over 30 a decade earlier. The number of older men becoming fathers has also risen steadily. In 2011, the most recent year for which figures are available 31,643 babies were born in England and Wales with fathers over the age of 45, up from 29,221 in 2009 - an eight per cent rise. Meanwhile 833 men over 60 became fathers. The proportion of fathers born overseas has risen steadily in recent years, rising by one per cent from the level in 2010 and 2009 to 24 per cent in 2011. But while 131,100 children were born into families in which both parents are foreign born, another 86,000 were born into families in which one parent comes from the UK. Dr David Green, director of the think-tank Civitas, said the figures were a reminder of the "massive influx" of immigrants moving to Britain in the last decade but that the full impact on the make-up of the country remains to be seen. "This is a measure of the problem we have stumbled into," he said. It is important if it becomes a problem of integration - of people having enough in common to be able to live in peace with each other - and it is a measure of the potential for social cohesion to be weakened. It is also a measure of the potential problem for schools, in particular if English isn't the first language in the home, that could create real problems for schools.