It’s not enough for women to become mothers; they must do it in the right way (with a husband), and at the right time (late twenties, early thirties at a push). Otherwise, they risk disrupting the “natural” order and becoming general menaces to society that must be probed and prodded into eventual submission.
That’s the takeaway, anyway, from the conversations I’ve been having with my single thirtysomething female friends, many of whom, like me, are ambivalent about having children, and even if we weren’t, we lack the necessary infrastructure to even have one if we wanted to.
In our current positions, we don’t fit the mould of mother: no houses, no partners, and no financial security. Even admitting to wanting children in such circumstances feels strangely taboo. Like it’s not something women like us are supposed to even be allowed to even think about. And this societal subversion just becomes even more potent as we get older.
These aren’t paranoid thoughts, either; they’re reinforced all around us: hence why anyone having children over the age of 35 is often met with a mix of scepticism and shock, with little understanding as to why we might not have been able to have them earlier. Meanwhile, those who don’t have them at all are seen as pariahs in an increasingly tradwife world.
Historically, and according to various folklores, women without children were hags at best, and witches at worst. These are not roles anyone wants, but ones we are cast into, especially as women have the delight of social media, which has an algorithm peculiarly alert to painting a picture of how we should be living our lives, as opposed to how we are living them in reality.
It is no surprise at all that a new study has found that almost 40 per cent of women are becoming mothers later than they’d wanted to. Conducted by GfK, a market research company, on behalf of the IVI Institute, the research also found that women were having fewer children than they wanted, with the average delay in having them standing at six years. It follows similar findings published by the Office for National Statistics earlier this year, which found that the average age for becoming a mother is now 31, compared with 26 in 1975.
Many would wrongly assume that the unwanted delay is because women are choosing to prioritise other things besides children, aka themselves: “selfish career women”, and so on. But the study’s results – and the voices of women themselves – paint a more nuanced and complex picture. The most common reasons were that women felt they were too young, didn’t have enough money, and hadn’t met the right partner.
“For many women, delaying having children is not necessarily their preferred choice, but a reflection of the economy, social and professional pressures”, says Venkatesh Subramanian, at The Medical Chambers Kensington. “As an IVF consultant, I think one of the biggest challenges is the moment when women are ready to have children and when their fertility is biologically at its strongest and are no longer overlapping, and the gap is growing wider.”
There are endless myths and misconceptions about advances in reproductive medicine, too, which can come at enormous expense, financially, physiologically and emotionally. Just last week, I was speaking to a 35-year-old single friend who is freezing her eggs. This is no mean feat: she has had to fork out thousands of pounds for the treatment and is currently undergoing weeks of poor mental health as a result of the hormones she’s having to take. At one point, she couldn’t get out of bed for days. Everything is taking a little longer than it should. In an ideal world, she would’ve had children by now, but like so many of us, a big breakup and professional precarity have resulted in a change of plans.
“Female fertility declines with age, particularly from the mid-to-late thirties onwards, because both egg quantity and egg quality diminish,” says Subramanian. “This can affect the likelihood of conception, increase miscarriage risk and reduce the chances of successful IVF treatment using a woman’s own eggs. Sperm quality declines with age too, and miscarriage risk rises with the age of both partners.”
Lest we forget, whenever we talk about why people are having children later, the conversation is almost exclusively centred around women. This is despite the fact that we biologically need men to conceive, and their health is just as paramount as ours when it comes to reproducing.
For many men, fertility issues can impact their feelings around masculinity, so the possibility of a problem feels like a judgement on who they are rather than a health question
“From around 40, research shows that some men will have lower sperm motility, a longer time to conceive and a higher risk of miscarriage,” says Francesca Steyn, a registered fertility nurse and Head of Clinical Services at Malebox, the male fertility health company.
The problems here are often sociological, too: “For many men, fertility issues can impact their feelings around masculinity, so the possibility of a problem feels like a judgement on who they are rather than a health question. They also find producing samples in a clinic or clinical environment incredibly awkward, so many men put it off or never ask at all.”
Certainly, men aren’t talking about fertility in the same way women are; it’s not ever a conversation I’ve ever had with any of my single male friends. Whereas with the women, it’s almost always at the top of the agenda. There are some who will argue this so-called fertility crisis is all men’s fault, anyway: they’re the ones taking longer to mature and commit, hence why so many straight women are left scrambling around without suitable partners in our increasingly hetero-fatalistic age.
“If I’d met the right person who wanted children at 30, I would have spent the last seventeen years living another life,” says Chloe Alana Williams, 47, a cultural demographer and writer who does not have children. “I didn’t meet anyone and I didn’t want to do it alone. I did all the other things right, worked on my career, my finances, but I couldn’t make meeting the right person happen.”
Dating feels tougher than ever today; just ask any of your single friends. A cross between app fatigue, souring gender relations, and an ongoing, tech-fuelled loneliness epidemic can make it feel impossible to meaningfully connect with anyone. No wonder experts are saying we’re in the midst of a “dating recession”.
The irony is that the demands placed on women who want to be mothers, as well as healthy relationships, feel higher, and yet, as any fertility expert will tell you, the biology remains somewhat non-negotiable – of course, women can and do still have children over the age of 35, but we all know it’s less likely.
“I think we've created an ever-increasing list of things women are supposed to do before they're ready to settle down and have children,” adds Williams. “We’re told to get an education, establish ourselves in a career and become financially independent. Then you need to travel, work on yourself, have all the therapy, learn to be happy alone and know who you are and what you want. At what point are we ever done?”
Women are caught in a bind, you see: we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t, and damned if we can’t decide. Frankly, I just wish we’d learned about fertility issues in school; men and women need to be educated about this from an early age to balance out some of the inequalities. I had no idea how taxing egg freezing could be until my friend told me.
“Every woman deserves accurate fertility information early enough to make genuinely informed choices about her reproductive future,” says Subramanian. “Education and informed decision-making around fertility are essential to empowering women to make choices about their reproductive futures, and this should happen early on.”