FEMAIL MAGAZINE

That’s the incendiary claim of an academic who’s spent years researching the trend – and the sex war it can trigger

FOr her 30th birthday, Anna Brown was taken out for a special supper by her husband. Seizing the moment to have what she thought would be a wonderful watershed moment in their relationship, she said: ‘Let’s not wait any longer: I’m 30 now, we’re happily married, let’s start trying for a baby.’ Her husband’s response? ‘Oh my God. What? No, no, no.’

Bewildered and upset, Anna asked him if not now, when? To which he replied: ‘I don’t know. Maybe in a couple of years. But the more you talk about it the less I’m going to want to do it.’

Anna told me in retrospect that she knew then the relationship was over. But it was some time before she came to terms with the bitter truth that she’d have to end the marriage and find a partner who actively wanted to be a father if she was ever to fulfil her dream of motherhood. By then in her mid-30s, with her fertility waning, Anna took the step of freezing her eggs to buy herself more time.

She wanted to be able to get to know new prospective partners without the pressure on them, or herself, of having children immediately.

I don’t know how her story ended, but it’s typical of so many I am told. As a senior lecturer in the Centre for reproduction research at de Montfort university, Leicester, I specialise in researching the growing trend of women who freeze their eggs for non-medical purposes.

The number of egg freezing cycles performed in the uK rose by more than 400 per cent between 2010 and 2016. And although the most common age to freeze eggs is around 37, anecdotal evidence is beginning to suggest that women are engaging with this technology at an earlier

age — perhaps spurred on by sustained media and public interest in the procedure.

But contrary to popular belief, the main reason for doing so is not because a woman’s career comes first. When I hear that lazy assumption it makes me want to scream.

The truth is, ‘social egg freezing’ — when a woman chooses to do this rather than because she is having a medical procedure such as chemotherapy which will make her infertile — is linked to men and their behaviour.

Far from investing so heavily in their careers that they are egg freezing to postpone motherhood, single women are sensibly doing the maths in their early to mid-30s and working out that it takes at least a year to get to know if someone is the right partner and actively wants fatherhood, and then at least another year to enjoy life together, under no pressure, and another 18 months to get engaged and married.

That’s three years before even attempting to conceive.

For many of the women I speak to who live in big cities, the large number of single and unmarried adults creates less of a sense of urgency among men to pursue parenthood.

Women also tell me the men they meet simply aren’ t committing to fatherhood or are seeking relationships with younger women so that they are able to put off such decisions for longer.

According to the office of national Statistics, the average age of fathers at the birth of a child has risen by four years in four decades and according to the latest figures recorded in 2017 is now 33.4 years.

men’s indecision about becoming a father seems to be acting as a drag on the fertility of some women around them. So the time and fertility equation just doesn’t add up.

All of the women I spoke to in my research had assumed they would one day become mothers. They’d either been in long-term relationships they thought would lead to motherhood which had then broken down or they had not met a man they loved who was prepared to commit to starting a family.

They didn’t want to use sperm donors to become single mothers or ‘panic partner’ with a man and regret it later.

none of the women I have talked to wanted to freeze their eggs. many had spent years thinking about it, putting it off in the hope they would find a partner and conceive naturally.

But it was the lack of a suitable man who also wanted to become a father that was the problem.

I recall one lovely woman who effectively used egg freezing as a last ditch wake-up call for her partner, who flatly refused to start a family with her.

He was older than her and already had a teenage son from his previous relationship. He had told her he didn’t want any more children but she hoped he would change his mind as time went on.

When he didn’t she decided, aged 34, to freeze her eggs — and to tell him she was doing so. He was supportive, but ultimately her actions ended their relationship. He, correctly, took it as a sign that if he didn’t change his mind she would leave him for a man who wanted children with her. But at least through her decisive actions she found out exactly what he wanted and had her eggs banked in time to have the option of becoming a mother in the future.

Another woman, a film producer called Rosie, told me her decision to have her eggs frozen at 37 allowed her to be free of ‘an intense and overwhelming anxiety about motherhood’.

She’d always known she wanted to have children but the serious relationship she thought would lead to parenthood stalled when they discussed children and he said he ‘wasn’t ready’. She then found herself single in her mid 30s, aware that time was running out.

So, at 37, she paid for egg freezing. ‘It wasn’t a guarantee but it felt comforting to know I had them banked,’ she said.

not long after, Rosie met a man