Women ‘freeze their eggs waiting for Mr Right’

MOST women who have their eggs frozen to delay motherhood are doing so because they have yet to find Mr Right rather than because they are putting their career first.

A study found less than a quarter of women who store their eggs to delay starting a family do so because of work while 88 per cent do so because they are single or have not found the right partner.

It suggests women are not prepared to lower their expectations from Mr Right to ‘Mr Will Do’. The poster girl for childless thirtysomething women is Bridget Jones, the fictional diarist seeking her ‘Mr Darcy’.

The Bridget Jones generation has led a surge in women having babies in their 40s and turning to IVF after leaving it too late. Egg freezing for social reasons is not availa- ble on the NHS and costs up to £10,000 privately. In 2014, 816 British women opted to store their eggs, up 25 per cent in a year.

The new research, from Albany Medical College in New York, was unveiled at a Progress Educational Trust discussion in Edinburgh. The other factors behind social egg freezing, according to the study presented by Dr Angel Petropanagos, are financial considerations and a feeling that having a family is too large a commitment. Dr Sarah Martins Da Silva, a consultant gynaecologist at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, said: ‘We are all so imperfect, and certainly Mr Darcy is not for all of us.’

But she also told of a patient who sought advice on egg freezing because her partner had an affair, leaving her single and childless at 36. Dr Da Silva added: ‘There is also a real demographic of relationships that break.’