Teach girls that their ovaries will wear out, says government adviser
TEENAGE girls should be taught that their “ovaries get worn out”, a government health ambassador has said.
Professor Dame Lesley Regan said much more effort should be invested in educating young generations to “take charge of their fertility”.
The government’s women’s health ambassador called for Tiktok videos and messages on social media to ensure simple messages were understood.
On average, women in the UK are now over the age of 30 by the time they have their first child – up from 26.4 years in the mid-seventies.
The trend also means many women who try to start a family later in life end up disappointed.
Women are at their most fertile in their 20s but, on average, fertility begins to decline after the age of 30 and drops off sharply after 35.
Speaking at the annual conference of the fertility charity Progress Educational Trust (PET), Dame Lesley said society needed to “do a lot more” to help prepare teenagers for adulthood, including spreading educational messages about fertility in magazines and on social media. “We need Tiktok videos, and all of those sorts of things [like]: ‘Remember that your ovaries get worn out or they get tired or they get too old’,” she added.
“We’ve got to impress on [young people] the importance of all of those things and of taking charge of their fertility, either to explore it or to curtail it.
“So, I think the education side of it is absolutely crucial. And I don’t think it should just be schools.
“I think it should be all of us in society making sure that we give adolescents the tools that they need to make the best decisions for themselves later in life – and I include the boys in that as well as the girls.”
Dr Gitau Mburu, a World Health Organisation scientist, said if a teenager was old enough to be taught about contraception and avoiding unplanned pregnancy, then they were mature enough to be taught about the limits to their fertility potential.
He told the online event: “We do need to try to engage [young people]. It doesn’t have to be bombarding them with, ‘plan your fertility now’, that’s not what we are saying.
“But they need to have some ageappropriate information, using the right language, to pass on that information, as we need to break the barriers.”
Julia Chain, chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, said she had spoken to many “independent young women” who didn’t fully appreciate that fertility wasn’t guaranteed, despite modern advances in fertility technologies, such as egg freezing.
“[It needs to be explained] to young women that actually fertility is something that is time-limited, and that whether you freeze your eggs or whatever you do, there is no guarantee that at the end of it that you will have a baby – and that you cannot take your fertility for granted and be sure of success, like [you can] in many other areas of your life,” she told the conference.