Careers? No, real reason most women freeze eggs is they can’t find Mr Right
WOMEN are freezing their eggs because they cannot find the right man – not because they are waiting to climb the career ladder, a study suggests.
Fertility experts warn that ‘equal’ relationships – where fathers are expected to take a greater role in childcare – is making men even more wary of committing.
Researchers found women who postpone motherhood by freezing their eggs for around £7,000 were often portrayed as careerists, the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Barcelona heard yesterday.
Dr Marcia Inhorn, an anthropologist at Yale University in the United States, interviewed 150 women who froze their eggs. She said: ‘The medical literature and media coverage ... usually suggest that elective egg freezing is being used to defer or delay childbearing among women pursuing education and careers.
‘Our study however suggests that the lack of a stable partner is the primary motivation.’
She found that career planning was the least common reason for having eggs frozen – at just two per cent – even among women who worked for firms where eggfreezing insurance was offered.
But some 85 per cent cited not having partners when they froze their eggs, due to relationship breakdown or divorce.
The 15 per cent of women with partners were either in new or uncertain relasaid: tionships, with a man not ready or refusing to have children – or with a partner seeing other lovers. Dr Inhorn said: ‘Egg freezing is now being included in divorce settlements where men are expected to pay for it. Most of the women had already pursued and completed their educational and career goals, but by their late 30s had been unable to find a lasting reproductive relationship with a stable partner. This is why they turned to egg freezing.’
Dr Virginia Bolton, of the British Fertility Society, said: ‘I think we still have in society at large this misapprehension that women are freezing eggs for frivolous reasons, because they’d much rather have a career and buy Gucci handbags and earn lots of money working in banks than actually embarking on parenthood.’
Dr Gillian Lockwood, medical director at Midlands Fertility Services, added: ‘ Even though Apple and Google offer egg freezing to their female executives, it’s quite clear that the majority of women that are freezing their eggs aren’t doing it for career reasons but are doing it because they are not in a position to have a baby.’
Professor Nick Macklon, medical director at London Women’s Clinic, said the man’s role in bringing up a child was also changing – and was putting off men as there was now a greater expectation for them to share childcare. He ‘Studies have shown that once a woman decides to have a baby it takes an average of two years to convince her partner. As men see the demands on them as a father increasing, they are going to take longer to be convinced to start a family.
‘She may have found Mr Right but convincing him that now’s the right time is probably going to be harder because men realise they are going to have to take more of the burden. It’s a slightly ironic outcome of the changes to society.’
In 2016, there were 1,173 egg freezing cycles, according to the UK Human Fertility and Embryology Authority, representing just 1.5 per cent of the total number of IVF cycles.