Another day, another accusatory headline. Or several of them, actually. This week, new figures were released showing that the average age of women starting IVF has nudged over 35. According to British fertility regulator Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), 52,500 women went through IVF cycles in 2022 and their average age was just over 35, but this makes treatment less likely to work. According to the report, 42 per cent of women aged 18-35 will have successful IVF cycles, but this figure drops to 26 per cent for those in their late thirties, and 5 per cent in their early forties.
‘Women are leaving it too late,’ declared much of the subsequent reporting and commentary. A good number of these articles had a whiff of the old finger-wagging accusation that women are too ‘obsessed’ with their careers and travelling, and probably avocados, and are delaying having children as a result. It’s entirely women’s fault, in other words. Selfish, selfish women.
Quick biology recap: how are babies made? Because the last time I checked it took an egg and sperm, which means there’s one party which is being entirely overlooked when it comes to whose ‘fault’ this all is. You’ll often hear the same rhetoric when it comes to discussion of the falling birth rate, or to be honest pretty much any discussion of women and babies and fertility. Women this, women that, women the other, as if men are the innocent bystanders, held ransom by these self-absorbed, child-hating feminists who don’t think about their ovaries until they’ve shrivelled like raisins. Too late, sorry! You should have somehow squeezed a baby from between your legs in your 20s when you were also trying to work, and pay the rent, and the bills, and feed and clothe yourself in the meantime.
Single women, and same-sex couples who’ve gone through IVF, were also included in the new figures. Astonishingly, bravely, the number of single women putting themselves through it has increased 82 per cent since 2019, while the number of same-sex couples has gone up 35 per cent. But that gets lost in some of the shrieking when it comes to this subject.
The truth, as ever, is vastly more complicated than ‘it’s all women’s fault’. If we’re in the blame game, let’s share it out a bit. We have an immensely struggling and underfunded health service, which the chair of the fertility regulator pointed out right at the start of this new report. Women starting treatment later can be attribute to ‘several possible factors,’ said Julia Chain, ‘including the knock-on effect of delays across the NHS due to the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly in gynaecology.’
Whether or not you’re eligible for fertility treatment also varies wildly in different areas (already have a child from a previous relationship? Sorry, back of the queue!), and waiting times for treatment have gone up – like everything else – which means you may start looking for help in your early 30s but it could take several years to get there. Also, the money for IVF cycles has been slashed in many parts of the country. I saw a comment online this week suggesting that cancer treatment should take precedent over funding IVF cycles. Should it? I genuinely don’t know: whose life is worth more?
Ultimately, though, there are bigger societal factors at play. Money, or the lack of it, the cost of living, the cost of housing, the cost of childcare, the cost of, well, everything is partly why we’re thinking about children later in life – across the developed world, not just in the UK – because people simply cannot afford it any earlier. So if you start trying later, and discover that it’s not happening, of course you’re going to seek treatment later. Is this women’s fault? Was it women making the policies which have led to the above? Tell you what, why don’t you start paying us the same as men, then we might be able to think about babies a smidgen earlier.
Look, no woman wants to go through fertility treatment; it’s not the scenario you dream of when you’re small. It’s tough enough to be waiting for your turn, or to be injecting oneself in the ass with hormones when you finally do start, without being made to feel too old on top. Just, please, give us a break.